Hospital bed, ICU availability falls as COVID case rate climbs again in southwest IL
Roughly 89% of the metro-east’s staffed hospital beds and 83% of its intensive care unit beds are currently occupied, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
As of Friday, 11.1% of the metro-east’s staffed hospital beds were available for patient use, down from 11.2% Thursday, according to IDPH data. Additionally, 17.1% of the region’s intensive care unit beds were available Friday, down from 20.9% Thursday.
At the beginning of the week, 23.5% of ICU beds and 13.7% of staffed hospital beds in the metro-east were available.
Friday marked the eleventh-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.
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.
Region 4’s rolling seven-day average positivity rate was 13.5% Friday, up from 13.3% Thursday. Additionally, the region reported a daily positivity rate of 16.6% on Friday, up from 15.1% on Thursday.
The new testing positivity rate and hospital and ICU bed availability are 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.
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 9,277 new COVID-19 cases Friday, bringing the total to 1,017,322. The state health department also announced 126 additional deaths to bring the total to 17,395 since the pandemic began.
Also within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 118,665 new tests have been administered for a total of 13,922,611.
As of Thursday, when the latest data was available, 3,777 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 780 patients were in the ICU and 422 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests from Jan. 1-Jan. 7 is 8.5%.
This story was originally published January 8, 2021 at 1:31 PM.