The coronavirus is killing more Illinoisans than ever before, as public health officials on Friday attributed 148 more deaths to the respiratory disease that has infected an additional 10,526 residents statewide.
COVID-19 has claimed almost 1,000 lives in the last week alone, averaging about 137 deaths per day over that span — the worst stretch the state has suffered so far throughout nine months of the pandemic.
During the worst week of the first wave in mid-May, about 117 Illinoisans were dying of COVID-19 each day.
The latest victims included 62 Chicago-area residents, a DuPage County man in his 30s and two Cook County women in their 40s.
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The unprecedented surge in deaths follows the predictable pattern health officials have been laying out for months: an October spike in cases, leading to a November spike in hospitalizations and record numbers of fatalities so far in December.
The 10,526 new coronavirus cases were diagnosed among 112,634 tests to lower the state’s average positivity rate a tenth of a percentage point to 10.3%.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker has said he’s “very hopeful” Illinois has seen the worst of its resurgence, but that’s no guarantee as his public health team braces for another uptick in cases due to super-spreading family gatherings held for Thanksgiving last week.
The state’s hospitals, while still treating more coronavirus patients than they ever saw during the first wave, have seen a gradual decline in admissions since Nov. 22. As of Thursday night, 5,453 beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients, with 1,153 of them receiving intensive care and 703 using ventilators.
Some parts of the state are still close to a critical point, though, with only 17 ICU beds available for the entire southern Illinois region, and 20 ICU beds each available for the central Illinois region that includes Springfield and the downstate Metro East region that includes East St. Louis.
It could still be another week before Illinois sees any noticeable increase in cases due to transmission over the holiday weekend.
“There are people who may not have realized what it is that they were portending for the state and for themselves when they went to Thanksgiving gatherings that they had been hoping to go to,” Pritzker said Thursday. “I do think that people are making different plans for their Christmas holiday, or for Hanukkah or other celebratory holidays, and I’m very hopeful that we can divert people from having large family gatherings so that we don’t have yet a third surge on top of this potential second surge.”
Since March, 10.9 million COVID-19 tests have been administered in Illinois, with at least 770,088 people contracting the virus and 12,974 of those dying.
