Illinois surpasses 1 million COVID-19 cases

Illinois has surpassed 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases.

The Illinois Department of Public Health reported 8,757 cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, bringing the total to 1,008,045.

“In a pandemic that has contained far too many tragic milestones, today’s marking of 1 million cases of COVID-19 diagnosed in Illinois deserves particular recognition,” Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement. “As this disease continues to wreak havoc on our nation – with the United States setting another record for the most COVID-19 deaths in a day just yesterday – it is critical that we take extra caution today and in the months ahead to reduce the spread, bring down hospitalization rates, and save lives.”

As the national rollout of COVID-19 vaccines continues, department Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said she hopes the number of new cases will start to go down.

“Reporting more than 1 million COVID-19 cases in Illinois seemed like an unlikely number at the beginning of the pandemic, and we’ve now all seen how devastating this disease can be,” she said. “I urge everyone to continue to wear their mask, avoid social gatherings, and get vaccinated when it’s your turn.”

The state’s death toll is at 17,272 after 177 more deaths were reported on Thursday.

The seven-day statewide positivity rate for cases as a percent of total tests is 8.5 percent, a 0.8 percent increase from last week. The preliminary seven-day statewide test positivity using the number of COVID-19 positive tests over total tests is 9.8 percent, a 0.8 percent increase from last week.

There were 105,518 tests processed over the past 24 hours. A total of 13,803,946 tests have been processed.

As of Wednesday night, 3,921 Illinoisans were in the hospital with COVID-19, a decrease of 172 from last week. Of the patients in the hospital this week, 783 were in the ICU and 450 patients were on ventilators, the latter a decrease of 46 from last week.

Twenty-seven percent of Illinois’ 32,419 hospital beds were available as of Thursday morning. Twenty-three percent of the state’s 3,282 ICU beds were available as were 74 percent of the state’s 5,712 ventilators.