Will Illinois impose more COVID restrictions? Watch our region’s daily progress here

Illinois leaders will impose restrictions on when and where metro-east residents can gather if the rate of new COVID-19 diagnoses grows.

One threshold for restrictions is if 8% or more of the tests performed in the past seven days were positive for COVID-19. If that happens for three consecutive days, the state says it will bring back some restrictions that had been lifted.

COVID-19 is a respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Restrictions to help prevent the virus from spreading could include limits on crowd size or serving capacity inside restaurants.

The state defines the metro-east as St. Clair, Madison, Randolph, Clinton, Monroe, Washington and Bond counties. Regional boundaries are based on hospital systems.

The Belleville News-Democrat will continue to chart the region’s progress toward restrictions. The Illinois Department of Public Health releases new information daily at dph.illinois.gov/regionmetrics.

This story was originally published August 5, 2020 at 12:18 PM.