Illinois health officials on Friday reported 7,983 new COVID-19 cases in the past week, along with 47 additional deaths and more than 139,000 new vaccine doses administered.
In all, 1,407,929 cases of coronavirus have been reported in the state since the pandemic began. The additional deaths reported this week bring the state to 23,401 confirmed COVID fatalities.
The state has administered 241,150 tests since last Friday, officials said, bringing the total to more than 26 million tests conducted during the pandemic.
The state’s seven-day positivity rate on all tests rose to 3.3% from 1.9% the week before and 1.5% two weeks prior - meaning the positivity rate has more than doubled in the past two weeks. The rolling average seven-day positivity rate on individuals tested rose to 3.5%, up from 1.7% then 2.3% in the past two weeks, officials said.
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Over the past seven days, a total of 139,495 doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered to Illinois residents. That brings the state’s average to 19,928 daily vaccination doses over the last week, down from the figures reported last Friday, per IDPH data.
State officials say Illinois this week crossed the threshold of 13 million vaccine doses administered since vaccinations began in December. More than 58% of adult residents in the state are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, with 73% receiving at least one dose.
As of midnight, 670 patients are currently hospitalized due to COVID in the state. Of those patients, 135 are in intensive care units, and 44 are on ventilators. All three metrics are a reported increase since last Friday.
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Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker warned Tuesday that stricter mitigations could return for areas seeing a rise in COVID cases.
"I believe strongly that we will impose mitigations as it's appropriate, where it's appropriate," Pritzker said in an interview.
Calling on anyone who is unvaccinated to get vaccinated, Pritzker said the state continues to monitor COVID metrics like positivity rate, case numbers and hospitalizations.
"It is always a difficult thing for me," he said. "I wake up every morning and I look at those numbers and when they're rising, you know, that's a bad day, and I want to do whatever I can to mitigate that. So that's included making sure testing is widely available, making sure that the vaccines are widely available, and I'll continue to do that and if we need to take stricter mitigations we will."
The same day, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she was "sounding the alarm" due to a recent uptick in coronavirus cases across the city.
Citing a rise in both average daily cases and test positivity in Chicago largely attributed to the more transmissible delta variant, Lightfoot said that while numbers are still well below the spikes seen during the peak of the pandemic, "it's still a concerning development that we want to not only stay ahead of, but to quash completely."
"If we allow the virus to continue to linger here in Chicago we will likely see further mutations, some of which our current vaccines may not be able to protect against and have to reinforce some of the restrictions that have come to infamously define much of 2020, and part of 2021," Lightfoot said during a coronavirus update alongside city health officials.
"The reality is this scenario - the worst case - is entirely preventable, and that's because we have three different vaccines readily available to all of our residents, which offer very good protection against delta, and other new variants," she added.
