Southwestern IL hospital bed, ICU availability drops as state reports 145 COVID deaths
The metro-east’s regional hospital and intensive care unit bed availability fell Tuesday after several days of improving, while state officials reported 145 new COVID-19 deaths.
The Illinois Department of Public Health reported 82.8% of staffed hospital beds in the metro-east were in use as of Tuesday, up from 82.5% Monday. Additionally, 19.8% of the metro-east’s staffed hospital beds were available for patient use, down from 20.1% Monday.
Prior to Tuesday, the state health department had reported increased hospital bed and ICU availability in the metro-east for four consecutive days, 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 Tuesday, showing no change from Monday’s rate. The new rate is based on tests recorded as of Dec. 5. 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 14.1% on Tuesday, up from 13.6% on Monday.
State of Illinois announces new cases, deaths
Meanwhile, the state of Illinois announced 7,910 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday, bringing the total to 804,174. The state health department also announced 145 additional deaths, bringing the total to 13,487 since the pandemic began.
Also, within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 95,825 new tests for a total of 11,274,608.
As of Monday, 5,199 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 1,071 patients were in the ICU and 626 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests from Dec. 1-6 is 9.9%.
This story was originally published December 8, 2020 at 12:49 PM.