COVID-19 positivity rate in southwestern Illinois drops after two days of increases
The metro-east’s positivity rate decreased Wednesday after two consecutive days of increases.
Region 4’s rolling seven-day average was 14.1% on Wednesday, down from 14.3% on Tuesday, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported. The new rate is based on tests recorded as of Nov. 29. A region’s positivity rate is its percentage of positive COVID-19 tests versus the number of tests taken over a seven-day period.
Meanwhile, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 85% of staffed hospital beds in the metro-east were in use as of Wednesday, up from 84.2% on Tuesday. Additionally, 15.9% of the metro-east’s ICU beds were available for patient use Wednesday, down from 16.6% on Tuesday.
Under rules set by the Restore Illinois plan, if a region falls below the 20% threshold of clinically staffed hospital beds, the state may impose tighter restrictions. Wednesday’s figures marked the region’s 11th consecutive day under the 20% threshold for hospital bed availability and the 9th consecutive day under that threshold for ICU bed availability.
Tier 3 restrictions went into place statewide on Friday, Nov. 20. The third tier tightens restrictions on indoor dining, bars and social gatherings while adding restrictions to casinos, retailers, video gaming and museums.
Over the past weeks, officials have warned about the possibility of the region running low on hospital and ICU beds, prompting some area hospitals to temporarily cease elective surgeries. More recently, officials have publicly worried that the Thanksgiving holiday could lead to another spike in cases and deaths.
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.
Additionally, the region reported a daily positivity rate of 13.2% on Wednesday, down from 14% on Tuesday.
State of Illinois announces new cases, deaths
The state of Illinois announced 9,757 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday, bringing the total to 748,603. The state health department also announced 238 additional deaths, bringing the total to 12,639 since the pandemic began.
Also, within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 85,507 new tests for a total of 10,699,586.
As of Tuesday, 5,764 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 1,190 patients were in the ICU and 714 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests from Nov. 25-Dec. 1 is 10.6%.