Another 1,532 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Illinois, health officials announced Friday, the latest four-digit daily caseload that has Gov. J.B. Pritzker worried the state is on the brink of a dangerous coronavirus resurgence.
The new cases were confirmed among 44,330 tests received by the state, keeping Illinois’ testing rolling positivity rate at 3.4% over the last week.
That rate has increased from 2.5% two weeks ago, a gradual increase that Illinois Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike has stressed is not due to the state’s massive uptick in testing capacity this month.
“We have seen an increase in cases,” she said at a news conference earlier this week. “Some will say it’s just because of more testing — actually, if you do more testing, your positivity should go down. So, yes, we’re seeing increased transmission.”
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Since the state hit a three-month low with 462 new cases reported June 22, Illinois has averaged 976 new cases per day, with 11 daily tallies in July topping 1,000. That happened just twice in June.
Thursday’s case total of 1,624 was the highest the state had seen in two months.
After dividing the state into 11 regions for more closely targeted responses to potential COVID-19 resurgence hotspots, Pritzker’s office on Friday singled out four downstate counties “considered to be at a warning level” due to risk indicators of increased transmission.
Those counties seeing “outbreaks associated with business and risky behavior,” according to the state health department, are Adams, LaSalle, Peoria and Randolph.
State officials pointed to large social gatherings, bars not complying with masking and social distancing guidelines, youth sports and travel to hotspot states as reasons for outbreaks there.
The four counties singled out Friday are scattered across the state, LaSalle in the north, Peoria central, Adams west-central and Randolph in southern Illinois.
Randolph is in the Metro East region near St. Louis, an area the Democratic governor has warned is “dangerously close” to a state intervention — one that could potentially result in some businesses shutting down.
Chicago and suburban Cook County aren’t at the state’s warning level, though officials flagged both for relatively high case rates: 64 cases per 100,000 people in the city, and 56 per 100,000 in the suburbs.
Overall, Illinois’ positivity rate is still less than half those of most nearby states.
And while cases have been on the rise, daily death tolls have remained about level. The state health department announced 19 more deaths have been attributed to the virus, which mirrors July’s daily average.
The state averaged 98 deaths per day during a peak month of May, and 51 deaths per day as the state’s pandemic curve flattened through June.
Since mid-March, the coronavirus has claimed 7,385 lives in Illinois. A total of 168,457 people have been confirmed carrying the virus among more than 2.4 million tested.
Additionally, the state on Friday updated its tally of “probable” but untested cases of the coronavirus: 192 more deaths and 1,242 nonfatal infections.
As of Thursday night, 1,471 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state, with 325 in intensive care units and 115 on ventilators.
