Illinois surpasses 10,000 COVID-19 deaths

Illinois surpassed 10,000 COVID-19 deaths Thursday, as the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 97 more.

Thursday’s total brings the total number of deaths in Illinois to 10,030. The 97 new deaths are the highest single-day total since 116 deaths were reported on June 4.

The department also reported a single-day high of 9,935 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the state’s total to 447,491.

Gov. JB Pritzker said during his Thursday press conference that additional restrictions may be necessary to stem the tide, as every region of the state continues to see a rise in cases and hospitalizations.

He told reporters the state may have to revert back to restrictions similar to those put in place in the early days of the pandemic, saying they would consider moving regions back into phase three or possibly even phase two of the state’s reopening plan. That would mean more restrictions on businesses and gatherings.

“If the current trajectory continues, if our hospitals continue to fill up, if more and more people continue to lose their lives to this disease, we’re going to implement further statewide mitigations, which nobody, and I mean nobody, wants,” Pritzker said.

Officials also raised concerns that the spike is occurring three weeks before Thanksgiving, which Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said could be a week-long “super spreader” event as families get together.

“There is significant potential for harm and death, let’s be very plain,” Ezike said Thursday. “It’s not just to yourself, to the people who feel that nothing could ever happen to them, but it’s to other members of your family and other people that you may not even know that you may unwittingly pass the virus onto.”

Illinois’ seven-day statewide positivity rate for cases as a percent of total tests is 9.1 percent, a 2.2 percent increase from last week. The preliminary seven-day statewide test positivity using the number of COVID-19 positive tests over total tests is 10.5 percent.

There were 86,015 more tests processed during the past day. A total of 8,116,728 tests have been processed.

As of Wednesday night, 3,891 Illinoisans were in the hospital with COVID-19, an increase of 861 from last week. Of the patients in the hospital this week, 772 were in the ICU and 343 patients were on ventilators.

Thirty-one percent of Illinois’ 35,040 hospital beds were available as of Thursday morning. Thirty-two percent of the state’s 3,770 ICU beds were available as were 74 percent of the state’s 5,710 ventilators.