Southwestern Illinois’ COVID positivity rate is 7.9%. Restrictions return if it hits 8% for 3 days
The metro-east is closer to state thresholds for bringing back restrictions on when and where people can gather, according to information Illinois provided Thursday.
One threshold for restrictions is if 8% or more of the tests performed in the past seven days were positive for COVID-19, a respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus. If that happens for three consecutive days, the state says it will reimpose some restrictions that had been lifted.
On Thursday afternoon, the Illinois Department of Public Health’s website showed the metro-east reached its highest rate of new diagnoses yet.
The state defines the Metro East region as St. Clair, Madison, Randolph, Clinton, Monroe, Washington and Bond counties. An average of 7.9% of the coronavirus tests performed in those counties over the past seven days were positive as of Monday. That number is known as the positivity rate.
Statistics on the state’s website at dph.illinois.gov/regionmetrics are delayed by three days, so Monday was the latest date information was available on Thursday.
The metro-east’s 7.9% is a higher rate than Chicago or any other region of Illinois. The statewide average was 4.1% as of Monday.
The metro-east is also getting close to another threshold that would trigger restrictions.
Even if the rate of new diagnoses does not reach 8% for three days, the state would step in if the rate increases for seven out of 10 days and if hospital resources take a hit at the same time.
A strain on hospitals is defined as either a seven-day increase in patient admissions for a COVID-19-like illness or less than 20% availability of hospitals’ intensive care unit beds or medical and surgical beds.
The metro-east’s rate of diagnoses had increased for five days, and just 29% of medical and surgical beds in the region were available as of Monday.
Restrictions to help prevent the virus from spreading could include limits on crowd size or serving capacity inside restaurants. Bars could also be forced to close.
This story was originally published August 13, 2020 at 2:00 PM.
