Hospital bed, ICU availability in southwestern Illinois falls for second-straight day
The metro-east’s regional hospital and intensive care unit bed availability dropped for a second-straight day Wednesday, while state officials reported 179 new COVID-19 deaths across Illinois.
The Illinois Department of Public Health reported 84.4% of staffed hospital beds in the metro-east were in use as of Wednesday, an increase from 82.8% on Tuesday. Additionally, only 18.6% of the metro-east’s staffed ICU beds were available for patient use Wednesday, down from 19.8% on Tuesday.
This marks two days in a row of decreases after the state health department had reported increased hospital bed and ICU availability in the metro-east for four consecutive days prior to Tuesday, according to the department’s latest available data.
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.
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.
Region 4’s rolling seven-day average positivity rate was 15.1% on Wednesday, showing no change from Tuesday’s rate. The new rate is based on tests recorded as of Dec. 6. A region’s positivity rate is its percentage of positive COVID-19 tests versus the number of tests taken over a seven-day period.
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 and upcoming gatherings during the December holidays 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 12.6% on Wednesday, down from 14.1% on Wednesday.
State of Illinois announces new cases, deaths
Meanwhile, the state of Illinois announced 8,256 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total to 812,430. The state health department also announced 179 additional deaths, bringing the total to 13,366 since the pandemic began.
Also, within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 92,737 new tests for a total of 11,367,345.
As of Tuesday, 5,284 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 1,176 patients were in the ICU and 647 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests from Dec. 2-8 is 9.6%.
This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 12:50 PM.