Illinois health officials reported 183,722 new COVID-19 cases over the past week, along with 746 additional deaths and over 310,000 new vaccine doses administered.
The new cases mark a decline from the previous week, which saw 207,203 new cases, but the deaths marked an increase compared to the previous seven days, which reported 738.
The drop in cases comes as state officials report the omicron peak has been reached, particularly surrounding hospitalizations.
"Over the last two years, I’ve said over and over that you don’t know when a surge has reached its peak until you’re on the other side of it," Pritzker said during a COVID update Wednesday. "Today is our seventh day since we saw peak hospitalizations of 7,380 reported on Jan. 13 – that’s 1,145 more than the previous pandemic peak on Nov. 21."
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In all, 2,773,362 cases of coronavirus have been reported in the state since the pandemic began, according to the latest data from the Illinois Department of Public Health. The additional deaths bring the state to 29,845 confirmed COVID fatalities.
The state has administered 1,539,013 tests since last Friday, officials said, bringing the total to nearly 50 million tests conducted during the pandemic.
The state’s positivity rate on tests in the last week rose to 11.9%, a jump from the 10.6% reported last Friday. Meanwhile, the positivity rate on individuals tested stands at 15.3%.
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Over the past seven days, a total of 310,939 doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered to Illinois residents. The latest figures brought the state’s average down to 44,420 daily vaccination doses over the last week, per IDPH data.
More than 20 million vaccine doses have been administered in Illinois since vaccinations began in December 2020. More than 65% of Illinois resident are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, with more than 74% receiving at least one dose. Nearly 49% are also boosted.
As of midnight Thursday, , 6,054 patients were hospitalized due to COVID in the state, marking an increase of roughly 300 over the last week. Of those patients, 972 are in ICU beds, and 560 are on ventilators, both of which have decreased in the last seven days.
