By Jerry Nowicki
Another 125 individuals who tested positive for COVID-19 were reported to have died in the previous 24 hours Tuesday, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health, to bring the death toll to 12,403 since the pandemic began.
That came as the State reported another 12,542 new confirmed, or probable cases among 116,081 test results reported over the previous 24 hours. That brought the rolling seven-day average case positivity rate to 10.4%, the ninth day in a row it has hovered between 10% and 11%.
Since the pandemic began, the State has reported 738,846 confirmed, or probable cases among more than 10.6 Million tests conducted.
Governor JB Pritzker said at his daily briefing Tuesday that the new cases could have come from transmissions that occurred as many as two weeks ago, and potential Thanksgiving exposures will take longer to show up in testing results.
“That means if you didn’t socially distance at Thanksgiving, and you spent time with people who are not in your own family bubble, you may feel fine right now, but you could nevertheless be passing COVID-19 on to others without knowing it,” he said. “So for anyone who traveled or gathered with family and friends for the Thanksgiving holiday, monitor yourself for symptoms. And if you have any of those symptoms, stay home.”
He said those who traveled should get tested for COVID-19 between five and seven days after returning, even if they are not showing symptoms.
“This is the time to be extra careful with a surge of the virus expected,” he said, and added, “these next few weeks are a time to stay home as much as possible, assume you were exposed and assume more of your coworkers or friends were exposed than ever before, and act like it with social distancing, wearing your mask.”
Hospitalizations for COVID-19 remained just below second-wave highs, sitting below 6,000 for the fifth straight day after nine days above that threshold. As of Monday evening, there were 5,835 individuals reported hospitalized for COVID-19 in Illinois, including 1,192 in intensive care unit beds and 721 on ventilators.
The positivity rates in the State’s 11 COVID-19 mitigation regions ranged from 10.9% in Region 3, which includes the Springfield area and several surrounding counties, to 17 percent win Region 7, which includes Will and Kankakee Counties.
To move back to Tier 2 mitigations from the stricter Tier 3, a region must remain below a 12% positivity rate for three consecutive days, have at least 20% of ICU and hospital beds available, and have declining hospitalizations on a seven-day average for seven of 10 days. Pritzker said Monday, however, that no regions will be moved to Tier 2 “for the next few weeks even if they might be on track to meet those metrics.”
Only Region 3 and Region 11, which includes only Chicago, had positivity rates below 12% as of November 28, the latest data available. Although Chicago had hospital and ICU bed capacity exceeding 20%, it only had decreasing COVID-19 patient hospitalizations for five of 10 days.
Region 3 had hospital capacity exceeding 20%, but had just 13.6% of ICU beds available, and COVID-19 patient hospitalizations decrease for only five of 10 days.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government and distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
— Capitol News Illinois