Southwest IL COVID-19 positivity rate back on the rise after week of improvements
The metro-east’s positivity rate increased for the second day in a row Tuesday, after more than a week of declines.
Region 4’s rolling 7-day average was 14.3% on Tuesday, up from 14% on Monday., the Illinois Department of Public Health reported. The new rate is based on tests recorded as of Nov. 28. A region’s positivity rate is its percentage of positive COVID-19 tests versus the number of tests taken over a 7-day period.
Meanwhile, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 84.2% of staffed hospital beds in the metro-east were in use as of Tuesday, up from 81.7% Monday. Additionally, 16.6% of the metro-east’s staffed hospital beds were available for patient use, up from 15.8% Monday.
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.
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 14% on Tuesday, down from 14.2% on Monday.
State of Illinois announces new cases, deaths
Meanwhile, the state of Illinois announced 12,542 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday, bringing the total to 738,846. The state health department also announced 125 additional deaths, bringing the total to 12,403 since the pandemic began.
Also, within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 116,081 new tests for a total of 10,614,079.
As of Monday, 5,835 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 1,195 patients were in the ICU and 721 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary 7-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests from Nov. 24-30 is 10.4%.
This story was originally published December 1, 2020 at 12:34 PM.