NOTE: NBC Chicago will offer a live feed of the press conferences beginning at 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. CST in the video player above.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is scheduled to deliver two updates discussing the state's response to the coronavirus pandemic on Monday.
The first is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. CST at the Adams County Health Department in Quincy, according to his public schedule. The second will be at the Rock Island Health Department in Rock Island.
At both news conferences, Pritzker's office said he will be joined by local leaders to discuss "the COVID-19 response."
Details on what specific elements of the response Pritzker would be discussing weren't immediately known. His most recent coronavirus briefing was on Wednesday, when he again warned that the state would not hesitate to take "immediate action" should coronavirus metrics continue to rise.
"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. "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 also warned on 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.
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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 Wednesday.
Pritzker's latest updates on Monday also come days after the Illinois Department of Public Health said four Illinois counties have reached a "warning level" for the spread of coronavirus.
Adams, LaSalle, Peoria and Randolph counties were all named by the department Friday for reaching "two or more COVID-19 risk indicators."
According to IDPH, the concerning numbers coming out of the four counties are due in large part to "outbreaks associated with business and risky behavior," pointing to large social events and gatherings, travel to hotspots, increases in cases among people 29 and younger, inconsistencies in compliance with requirements and more.
These warning levels corresponded with a color-coded map state health officials launched in late June that offers a look at how each county fares based on "indicators" such as percentage of positive cases, amount of testing and other metrics used by the state.
According to IDPH, when a county reaches a warning level it is "intended to be used for local level awareness to help local leaders, businesses, local health departments and the public make informed decisions about personal and family gatherings, as well as what activities they choose to do."
Illinois health officials reported 1,541 new coronavirus cases and one additional death on Sunday. The new cases bring the state’s total number of COVID-19 cases to 171,424 since the pandemic began, officials said. With Sunday’s additional fatality, reported in Bond County, Illinois is now at 7,398 COVID-19 related deaths during the pandemic.
The one fatality reported Sunday is the lowest single-day increase in the death toll from the virus since all the way back on March 21, with the number also reflecting a continued decline in the number of fatalities reported over the last two months.
The state’s seven-day positivity rate continued to rise, going up to 3.69 percent. Nearly 10,000 new coronavirus cases have been confirmed by the state over the last seven days, the highest rate of infection the state has seen since late May.
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, 345 COVID-19 patients were in intensive care units statewide.
