Southwest IL nears COVID testing milestone, but looser rules probably aren’t coming
The metro-east is a day away from reaching a milestone that, by state COVID-19 rules, could lower restrictions on indoor dining and other businesses. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has said, however, that reduced mitigations probably are not coming.
Region 4’s rolling seven-day average positivity rate was 11.7% Monday, making it two consecutive days that it’s been below 12%. The new rate is based on tests recorded as of Dec. 18. A region’s positivity rate is its percentage of positive COVID-19 tests versus the number of tests taken 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.
For Tier 3 mitigation metrics to be relaxed or to move to Tier 2, the region must experience a less than 12% 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.
But last week Pritzker said, while numbers are heading in the right direction, the state may not be ready for relaxed mitigations in any of its 11 regions. State health officials are worried upcoming holiday gatherings and the possible effect new cases from gatherings could further strain hospital capacity, he said.
As of Monday, 16% of the metro-east’s staffed hospital beds were available for patient use, down from 17.1% Sunday. The metro-east’s hospital bed availability has been under that threshold for 11 consecutive days. Additionally, the region’s intensive care unit availability was at 17.7% on Monday, the same as Sunday.
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.
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.
Additionally, the region reported a daily positivity rate of 12.8% on Monday, up from 10.6% on Sunday.
State of Illinois announces new cases, deaths
Meanwhile, the state of Illinois announced 4,699 new COVID-19 cases Monday, bringing the total to 905,069. The state health department also announced 98 additional deaths to bring the total to 15,299 since the pandemic began.
Also within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 86,454 new tests have been administered for a total of 12,520,979.
As of Friday, when the latest data was available, 4,460 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 981 patients were in the ICU and 546 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests from Dec. 14-20is 9.3%.
This story was originally published December 21, 2020 at 12:29 PM.