Patients hospitalized by COVID in St. Clair County at new low, none on ventilators
The number of people hospitalized or on ventilators in St. Clair County dropped to a new low this week, but officials are asking people to remain vigilant and keep wearing a mask.
St. Clair County health officials on Friday reported the number of COVID-19 patients in need of a ventilator dropped to zero for the second time in April and the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 dropped to the lowest rate the county has seen since June 2020.
Monday marked the first time that ventilator use had dropped to zero in the county since August 2020. Additionally, as of April 10, the county has only reported one COVID-19 death this month. By March 10, the county had reported 15 virus-related deaths already that month.
“We’d like it to be zero for the hospitalizations but the numbers really appear to be headed in the right direction,” said County Chairman Mark Kern during a daily COVID-19 briefing Friday. “If we can just get through April and into May and get needles in arm we can enjoy our summer like we did two years ago.”
Cases, hospitalizations and ventilator use have been trending downward in the county since the start of 2021 and officials say vaccines are only helping slow the spread and effects of COVID-19.
“It’s not a secret why these numbers are down, why hospitalizations are down, it’s because of the vaccine,” Kern said.
“It’s an indication of what is working,” said Herb Simmons, director of St. Clair County Emergency Management Agency, about the case rate being affected by the rollout of vaccines in the area. Simmons said, however, to keep COVID-19 from surging again, people need to continue to wear a mask, wash their and social distance as the virus is still a threat.
Simmons said out of Friday’s 54 new COVID-19 cases, 44 were people under the age of 40. The amount of young people contracting COVID-19 is “alarming,” he said, urging people to be more careful.
According to the county, 73.4% of the county’s population over 65 has been vaccinated while only 30.2% of the population under 65 has been vaccinated. In total, as of Friday, 23% of the county’s population had been vaccinated.
In the past weeks, Kern and other county officials have said the biggest challenge for the county’s vaccine effort has shifted from needing more vaccines to needing more arms to put them into.
“We can get these numbers down to zero, we just have to get people vaccinated,” Kern said.
Currently, anyone who lives, works or goes to school in Illinois can be vaccinated in St. Clair County.
This story was originally published April 10, 2021 at 12:01 PM with the headline "Patients hospitalized by COVID in St. Clair County at new low, none on ventilators."