Illinois health officials on Monday said another seven people have died from the coronavirus, bringing the state’s death toll to 72 people — as COVID-19 has spread to 52 of the state’s 102 counties.
President Donald Trump on Sunday extended federal social distancing guidelines to April 30, and states including Illinois are expected to lengthen their stay-at-home orders.
Illinois residents are under a stay-at-home executive order through April 7. An extension of the order — as well as a mandated extension of school closures — is expected this week. But Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office said as of Monday, the order had not been extended.
The state on Monday reported 461 new cases, bringing the total number of positive cases to 5,056. The figure is a large drop from the 1,105 reported on Sunday, the largest single-day count the state has seen — but Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office said that is due, in part, to some commercial laboratories not running tests on Sundays.
At his daily briefing, Gov. J.B. Pritzker planned to outline how the state will use the McCormick Place convention center as a field hospital. The state is also working on re-opening some closed hospitals and opening up some older buildings to serve as hospitals.
The McCormick Place field site would not be for COVID-19 patients in severe conditions. Those patients would remain in hospitals, the governor’s office said.
Pritzker on Sunday had spent some of his daily press conference outlining the state’s testing capacity. He said the state ran 2,000 tests per day on March 24 and by Sunday had stretched that to 4,000 tests a day. The state plans to run 10,000 tests a day within about 9 days.
Both Pritzker and Dr. Ngozi Ezike, the head of the Illinois Dept. of Public Health, have said more testing would help them know where the virus is spreading. which will ultimately limit the infection and the spread.
“This is how we will get to the end of this pandemic sooner,” Ezike said on Sunday.
Also on Sunday, Pritzker warned that despite the state seeing its highest single-day death count — 18 — Illinois has not yet seen its peak numbers.
“We’re going to see an increase, unfortunately, of the cases and likely deaths,” the governor said.
