State health officials reported another 14,612 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19 Thursday, as well as 168 deaths, due to the coronavirus.
The number of people being treated in Illinois hospitals for COVID-19 has now crossed the 6,000 mark.
As of Wednesday night, 6,037 people in Illinois hospital patients were being treated for the virus. Of that number, 1,192 were in intensive care units and 587 were on ventilators.
Recent case counts have broken state records set in the spring, during the first wave of the virus.
On Wednesday, health officials reported the coronavirus is now the third-leading cause of death in Illinois this year — 11,178 people have died from the virus, more than those killed by strokes and accidents in the state combined.
Only heart disease and cancer are ahead of the virus, according to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office.
Thursday’s case count comes a day before the state enters Tier 3 of Pritzker’s mitigation plan:
• Museums, theaters and casinos across Illinois will be closed in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.
• Capacity limits will be slashed to 25% at big box stores and other retailers.
• Grocery stores and pharmacies will be limited to 50% capacity.
Those Tier 3 resurgence mitigations take effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday.
Pritzker said his enhanced guidelines boil down to a simple idea: “If you don’t need to do it, don’t.”
The guidelines stave off another stay-at-home order like the one that shut down most of the state economy in the spring — for now, at least. That’ll depend on how well residents and businesses follow the rules, the governor said.
“This is a temporary set of rules that are designed by doctors to keep you safe,” Pritzker said. “I’m hopeful that by limiting our in-person interactions now, we will succeed at avoiding a stay-at-home order like what we had last spring, when the choice between saving lives and saving livelihoods was even more stark. Tier 3 may allow us to do both.”
