COVID-19 hospital bed availability in southwest Illinois falls below state threshold

Roughly 84% of the metro-east’s hospital beds are occupied, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health’s daily COVID-19 update.

On Wednesday, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported the region’s hospital bed capacity — the percentage of beds available in the region — fell to 16% on Wednesday from 20% on Tuesday. Meanwhile, only 25% of the region’s intensive care unit beds were available, down from 27% on Tuesday.

Under rules set by the Restore Illinois plan, if a region reaches or falls below the 20% threshold, the state may impose tighter restrictions to avoid the possibility of the region running out of hospital and ICU beds.

That means the metro-east now has reached two prerequisites for tightened restrictions. The region was also tasked with keeping its 7-day positivity rate below 8% over a 14-day observation period. That rate has been over 8% for 29-straight days.

Over the past weeks, officials have warned about the possibility of the region running low on hospital and ICU beds, prompting area hospitals to temporarily cease elective surgeries.

In St. Louis, the Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force reported a new 7-day average record was set for hospital admissions with an average of 125 individuals being admitted a day, up from the previous record of 124 individuals set Tuesday.

A new hospitalization record also was set Wednesday with 841 total patients, up from the previous record of 838 patients set Tuesday.

The task force did report a decrease in new admissions from 144 on Tuesday to 130 on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the 7-day positivity rate for COVID-19 tests in southwestern Illinois fell for the second-straight day after 22 consecutive days of increases, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.

The 7-day rolling average was 16.0% on Wednesday, down from 16.1% on Tuesday. This comes after reaching 16.3% on Monday, the highest level since the pandemic began. The previous high of 15.3% was set Sunday.

The new rate is based on tests recorded as of Nov. 15. A region’s positivity rate is its percentage of positive COVID-19 tests versus the number of tests taken over a 7-day period.

The state classifies the metro-east as Region 4, which covers seven counties: St. Clair, Madison, Monroe, Bond, Washington, Clinton and Randolph. County-by-county data is available on the state health department’s website.

On Oct. 28, the state re-implemented tier 1 restrictions from Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s Restore Illinois plan after the metro-east reported three consecutive days with an 8% positivity rate or higher. Currently, all 11 regions in Illinois are under tier 1 restrictions or higher.

Additionally, the region reported a daily positivity rate of 15.1% on Wednesday, up from 12.6% on Tuesday.

State of Illinois announces new cases, deaths

Meanwhile, the state of Illinois announced 8,922 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday, bringing the total to 606,771. The state health department also announced 140 additional deaths, bringing the total to 11,014 since the pandemic began.

Also, within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 103,569 new tests for a total of 9,359,227.

As of Tuesday night, 5,953 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19 — up from 5,887 the day prior. Of those, 1,146 patients were in the ICU — down from 1,158 — and 547 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators — up from 545.

The preliminary 7-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests from Nov. 11-17 is 11.9%, down from 12.5% on Tuesday.

This story was originally published November 18, 2020 at 12:40 PM.