COVID-19 positivity rate continues to fall in southwestern Illinois
The metro-east moved closer to the 12% COVID-19 test positivity rate threshold Wednesday,
Region 4’s rolling seven-day average positivity rate was 12.4%, down from 12.7% on Tuesday. The new rate is based on tests recorded as of Dec. 13. A region’s positivity rate is its percentage of positive COVID-19 tests versus the number of tests taken over a seven-day period.
For Tier 3 mitigation metrics to be relaxed or to move to Tier 2, the region must experience a less than 12% test seven-day rolling average positivity rate for three consecutive days while also seeing 20% available intensive care unit and medical/surgical bed availability for three consecutive days.
Meanwhile, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 84.2% of staffed hospital beds in the metro-east were in use as of Wednesday, down from 85% Tuesday. Additionally, 22.6% of the metro-east’s staffed hospital beds were available for patient use, down from 23.5% Tuesday.
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.
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 upcoming gatherings during the December holidays could lead to another spike in cases and deaths.
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.
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 10.6% on Wednesday, down from 11.3% on Tuesday.
State of Illinois announces new cases, deaths
Meanwhile, the state of Illinois announced 7,123 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday, bringing the total to 870,600. The state health department also announced 146 additional deaths to bring the total to 14,655 since the pandemic began.
Also within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 93,278 new tests have been administered for a total of 12,055,288.
As of Tuesday, 4,793 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 1,045 patients were in the ICU and 590 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests from Dec. 9-15 is 8.5%.
This story was originally published December 16, 2020 at 1:18 PM.