Increase in COVID-19 cases put strain on southwestern Illinois’ available hospital beds
The number of available hospital beds in the seven-county metro-east took another drop Thursday, due to an influx of new COVID-19 patients, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
As of Thursday, 11.1% of the metro-east’s staffed hospital beds were available for patient use, down from 11.2% on Wednesday, according to state health department data. Additionally, 17.1% of the region’s intensive care unit beds were available Thursday, down from 20.9%.
Thursday also marked the 10th-consecutive day the region’s hospital bed availability has been under the state-set threshold of 20%, which plays a part in determining whether COVID-19 restrictions need to be tightened or relaxed. Currently, the entire state is in Tier 3 mitigations.
For Tier 3 mitigation metrics to be relaxed or to move to Tier 2, the region must experience a seven-day rolling average positivity rate of less than 12% for three consecutive days while also seeing 20% available intensive care unit and medical/surgical bed availability for three consecutive days.
Region 4’s rolling seven-day average positivity rate, meanwhile, was 13.5% on Thursday, up from 13.3% on Wednesday. Additionally, the region reported a daily positivity rate of 16.6% on Thursday, up from 15.1% on Wednesday.
The new testing positivity rate is based on data recorded as of Jan. 4 and the hospital and ICU bed availability is based on data recorded as of Jan. 6. A region’s positivity rate is its percentage of positive COVID-19 tests versus the number of tests taken over a seven-day period.
Restrictions on Illinois businesses may be lifted as early as Jan. 15, depending on the level of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in their communities, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced Wednesday. Illinois officials had paused any removal of restrictions through the end of year holidays, even as statistics improved in some areas of the state.
Officials picked Jan. 15 as the earliest date for that to happen because it is outside of the time frame when the state may see any potential surge in COVID-19 diagnoses from holiday gatherings.
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.
Officials in the metro-east have continuously warned about the possibility of the region running low on hospital and ICU beds, prompting some area hospitals to temporarily cease elective surgeries. Officials also worry a spike of new COVID-19 cases could be on the way due to Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations.
On Monday, St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern said the effect of those celebrations should start to show up in the coming weeks.
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.
State of Illinois surpasses 1 million COVID-19 cases
Meanwhile, the state of Illinois announced 8,757 new COVID-19 cases Thursday, bringing the total to 1,008,045 The state health department also announced 177 additional deaths to bring the total to 17,272 since the pandemic began.
Also within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 105,518 new tests have been administered for a total of 13,803,946.
As of Wednesday, when the latest data was available, 3,921 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 783 patients were in the ICU and 455 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests from Dec. 31-Jan. 6 is 8.5%.
BND reporter Lexi Cortes contributed to this story.
This story was originally published January 7, 2021 at 12:43 PM.