coronavirus illinois

Watch Live: Pritzker Gives Coronavirus Update at 12 P.M.

NOTE: NBC Chicago will offer a live feed of the press conference beginning at 12 p.m. CST in the video player above.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is scheduled to deliver an update on the state's response to the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday.

The briefing will take place beginning at 12 p.m. CST at the Thompson Center in downtown Chicago, according to his public schedule.

Details on what Pritzker would specifically be discussing weren't immediately known. His most recent events centering around the pandemic were updates delivered alongside local leaders in Quincy and Rock Island on Monday.

At the first event on Monday, Pritzker sounded the alarm that Adams County was one of four counties in the state that the Illinois Department of Public Health had placed on a "warning level" due to increased community spread.

"What's happening here in Adams County is alarming and if these trends continue in the negative direction, the state will need to take immediate action to impose additional mitigations to slow the spread and keep more people from getting sick," Pritzker added, repeating a warning he's issued several times before that officials "won't hesitate" to impose stricter restrictions on areas seeing coronavirus metrics increase.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker delivered a coronavirus update from a downstate Illinois county recently named one of four to reach a “warning level” during the pandemic.

That was the central message of his most recent coronavirus briefing last Wednesday, when he again warned that the state would not hesitate to take "immediate action" if necessary.

"We're counting on city and county leaders doing what they know is right to protect their residents and we're counting on local residents to hold their elected leaders accountable," Pritzker said last week. "Demand that they take action early so regions don't have to undergo the challenges of staying at home or closing local businesses again."

Pritzker said last Wednesday that one of the state's 11 new regions was "dangerously close" to seeing more restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Region 4, the Metro East region bordering St. Louis, Missouri, is the area in question, Pritzker said. That region includes Bond, Clinton, Madison, Monroe, Randolph, St. Clair and Washington counties.

"Yesterday in the Metro East region, I sounded the alarm on the region’s 7.1% rolling seven-day average positivity rate compared to the state’s overall 3.1%," Pritzker said at a news conference. He added that the other 10 regions in the state have a positivity rate below 5%.

"The state will take immediate action to impose additional mitigations if a region crosses above the metrics we set, and Metro East is coming dangerously close to that, so I have spoken with local leaders and asked them to clamp down on the outbreaks where they are occurring so the state won’t have to step in," Pritzker said last week.

On Monday, Pritzker also issued a warning to residents traveling to other states, specifically Iowa and Missouri, as the pandemic continues.

"If you cross the border to Iowa or Missouri, remember that they have three and four times our positivity rate," Pritzker said Monday.

"So even if you see someone there not wearing a mask, don't think you're safe," Pritzker continued. "Wear your mask. In fact, encourage them to wear theirs."

Illinois has seen "relative success in the handling of this pandemic," Pritzker said Monday, adding that the state has maintained a positivity rate "around half of our nearest neighbors, or a third or a fourth in some cases, including Missouri."

He also gave an estimate of how long residents should be prepared to continue dealing with the coronavirus, asking everyone to "keep social distance" for at least another six months.

"We don't have to do this forever," Pritzker said while speaking in Quincy, Illinois, where he said positivity rates are on the rise. "You've seen there's progress on vaccines and treatments and, you know, we're not there yet. We're not there yet. And frankly, we're not going to be there until 2021. In my humble opinion, I'm not a doctor, but that's what my observation is, that we're not going to be able to take off the mask and go about everything we were doing, you know, seven, eight months ago, for a few more months, maybe six plus months. So let's all work together on this."

One of Illinois’ 11 health care regions is “dangerously close” to seeing more restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus, Gov. J.B. Pritzker warned Wednesday.

Illinois health officials on Tuesday reported 1,076 new cases of the virus, along with 30 additional deaths, nearly double the amount of fatalities reported a day earlier.

The new cases bring the state’s total number of COVID-19 cases to 173,731 since the pandemic began, according to data from IDPH.

With Tuesday's additional 30 fatalities, Illinois is now at 7,446 COVID-19 related deaths during the pandemic.

Tuesday's case number was lower than recent days, but the state continued to see lower testing numbers Tuesday, dropping below 30,000.

Officials reported 28,331 new coronavirus test specimens turned into state labs over the last 24 hours, bringing the statewide total to more than 2.5 million during the ongoing pandemic.

The state’s seven-day positivity rate stayed flat at 3.8% after rising from the 3.6% reported Sunday

While Illinois’ hospitalization and ventilator usage numbers have both been either stagnant or declining in recent weeks, ICU usage by COVID-19 patients has crept up in recent days, although it still remains fairly close to the state’s low watermark in that metric. As of midnight, 329 COVID-19 patients are in intensive care units statewide.

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