Southwestern Illinois COVID-19 positivity rate lowest since early November
The region’s rolling seven-day average COVID-19 testing positivity rate was 13% on Monday, the lowest it’s been since reporting a 12.7% rate on Nov. 7.
Monday’s rate is a slight decrease from 13.1% the day prior and is based on tests recorded as of Dec. 11. A region’s positivity rate is its percentage of COVID-19 tests that come back positive over a seven-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.
Additionally, the region reported a daily positivity rate of 13% on Monday, up from 12.3% on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 85.7% of staffed hospital beds in the metro-east were in use as of Monday, a decrease from 87.2% on Sunday. Additionally, 22.0% of the metro-east’s staffed ICU beds were available for patient use Monday, up from 17.1% on Sunday.
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.
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.
State of Illinois announces new cases, deaths
The state of Illinois announced 7,214 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total to 856,118. The state health department also announced 103 additional deaths, bringing the total to 14,394 since the pandemic began.
Also, within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 92,256 new tests for a total of 11,869,088.
As of Sunday, 4,951 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 1,070 patients were in the ICU and 621 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests from Dec. 7-13 is 8.7%.