Southwestern Illinois is running out of hospital beds, state COVID-19 update says
Roughly 80% of the metro-east’s hospital beds are occupied, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health’s daily COVID-19 update.
On Tuesday, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported the region’s hospital bed capacity — the percentage of beds that are available in the region — fell to 20%, from 22% Monday. Meanwhile, only 27% of the region’s intensive care unit beds were available.
Under rules set by the Restore Illinois plan, if a region reaches 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 28 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 several hospital admission and hospitalization records for the St. Louis region were broken Tuesday. A new daily admission record was set with 144 new admissions, while a new hospitalization record was set with 838 total patients.
A new seven-day average record was set for hospital admissions as well with an average of 124 individuals being admitted a day.
Meanwhile, the 7-day positivity rate for COVID-19 tests in southwestern Illinois fell for the first time in 22 days, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
The 7-day rolling average was 16.1% Tuesday, down from 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. 14. 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 12.6% on Tuesday, down from 18.8% on Monday.
State of Illinois announces new cases, deaths
Meanwhile, the state of Illinois announced 12,601 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday, bringing the total to 597,849. The state health department also announced 97 additional deaths, bringing the total to 10,875 since the pandemic began.
Also, within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 94,205 new tests for a total of 9,255,658.
As of Monday night, 5,887 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 1,158 patients were in the ICU, and 545 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary 7-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests from Nov. 10-16 is 12.5%
This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 1:26 PM.