State says 86% of southwestern IL hospital beds are occupied due to COVID-19
Roughly 86% of the metro-east’s staffed hospital beds are currently occupied, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
As of Tuesday, 13.7% of the metro-east’s staffed hospital beds were available for patient use, down from 15.9% Monday, according to IDPH data. Additionally, 23.5% of the region’s intensive care unit beds were available Tuesday, down from 25.6% Monday.
Tuesday marked the eighth-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 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.
Region 4’s rolling seven-day average positivity rate was 13% Tuesday, down from 13.2% Monday. Additionally, the region reported a daily positivity rate of 12.6% on Tuesday, down from 12.8% on Monday.
The new testing positivity rate and hospital and ICU bed availability is based on data recorded as of Jan. 4. A region’s positivity rate is its percentage of positive COVID-19 tests versus the number of tests taken over a seven-day period.
In December, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he wasn’t ready to lift mitigations on the state, even as some regions see caseloads and hospitalizations and ICU usage decrease. Since then the metro-east has seen an uptick in its positivity rate, while its hospital bed and ICU availability has fluctuated.
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 announces new cases, deaths
Meanwhile, the state of Illinois announced 6,839 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday, bringing the total to 991,719. The state health department also announced 126 additional deaths to bring the total to 16,959 since the pandemic began.
Also within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 87,083 new tests have been administered for a total of 13,617,454.
As of Monday, when the latest data was available, 3,905 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 800 patients were in the ICU and 457 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests from Dec. 29-Jan. 4 is 9.8%.
This story was originally published January 5, 2021 at 12:48 PM.