Positive COVID test percentage falls in Southwest IL — not enough to relax restrictions
The percentage of coronavirus tests coming back positive in the metro-east decreased slightly this week, but it’s still too high for the state to consider relaxing restrictions, according to numbers Illinois officials released Friday.
The testing metric is known as the positivity rate. It gives an indication of the rate of transmission, according to state leaders.
The figure fell from an average of 15.2% positive tests over one week of testing as of Monday to 14.5% as of Tuesday. Positivity rates are delayed by three days, so Tuesday was the latest date available on Friday.
Statewide restrictions on businesses and social gatherings aimed at preventing the virus from spreading have been in place since Nov. 20.
The metro-east needs a positivity rate of less than 12% for three consecutive days, hospital bed availability of more than 20% and a decline in hospitalizations for seven out of 10 days to see those restrictions relaxed.
Hospitals in the region remain below the state’s 20% threshold, which was set to avoid overwhelming local health care systems amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The Illinois Department of Public Health provides daily updates on each region’s progress at dph.illinois.gov/regionmetrics. The metro-east is Region 4. It includes St. Clair, Madison, Clinton, Randolph, Monroe, Bond and Washington counties.
Across Illinois as of Thursday night, 5,141 people were in the hospital with COVID-19, a respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.
State leaders on Friday announced 9,420 new diagnoses of COVID-19 and 190 deaths since Thursday.
The state has had a total of 832,951 diagnoses out of 11,586,296 coronavirus tests that have been administered since the pandemic began. A total of 14,050 Illinoisans have died from the disease.
