Illinois health officials report 2,352 new cases of coronavirus statewide
The Illinois Department of Public Health announced 2,352 more people have tested positive for COVID-19 and 75 more people have died statewide.
Illinois has seen a total of 4,790 deaths across the state during the pandemic, officials reported Saturday. A total of 107,796 people have been diagnosed with coronavirus.
An additional 25,114 have been tested for the virus, bringing the total number of administered tests to 722,247, IDPH said in a news release.
The statewide rolling seven-day rate of tests coming back positive from May 14-20 was 13%.
The latest IDPH metrics showed that Southern Illinois is on track to start Phase 3 of the Restore Illinois plan at the end of the current stay-at-home order on May 30. Phase 3 includes the reopening of manufacturing, offices, retail, barbershops and salons with proper safety precautions and groups of 10 or fewer will be allowed.
The requirements to reopen under Phase 3 are:
- At or under a 20% positivity rate of all COVID-19 tests and increasing no more than 10% over a 14-day period,
- No overall increase in hospital admissions for COVID-19-like illness for 28 days, and
- Available surge capacity of at least 14% of ICU beds, medical and surgical beds and ventilators.
As of Saturday, southern Illinois was on pace on all three metrics:
- A positivity rate of 5.7% and a decrease of 5.5 percentage points over a 14-day period
- A 59.8% decrease in hospital admissions for COVID-like illness since May 1
- A surge capacity of 46% of ICU beds, 37.8% of medical and surgical beds and 77.4% of ventilators.
This story was originally published May 23, 2020 at 4:13 PM.
