CHICAGO — Illinois health officials reported a record number of new coronavirus cases for the second straight day Friday, with newly confirmed infections topping 10,000 for the first time.
The daily case count of 10,376 was up from 9,935 on Thursday. The state is now averaging more than 7,900 newly confirmed cases per day over the past week. A week ago, the seven-day average was just under 5,500 cases per day.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Thursday said he's considering new statewide restrictions if the current COVID-19 surge continues.
There also were 49 more COVID-19 related deaths reported Friday, bringing the statewide death toll to 10,079 since the pandemic began. The seven-day average for daily deaths is now 53, up from 42 a week earlier.
Hospitalizations for COVID-19 also continue to rise, with 4,090 patients in the hospital as of Thursday night, according to the state. It's the first time more than 4,000 people have been hospitalized due to the coronavirus since May 20. Daily hospitalizations have doubled over the past three weeks.
In all, there have been 465,540 known COVID-19 cases in Illinois since the start of the outbreak.
Friday's new cases came from a batch of 98,401 tests reported in the previous 24 hours, also a record.
The statewide case positivity rate — the percentage of positive cases per test — hit a seven-day average of 9.6% on Thursday, up from 7.3% week earlier and 3.4% a month ago.
The test positivity rate — the percentage of positive tests out of all tests conducted — was at a seven-day average of 11.1%, up from 8.2% since the state began reporting the figure statewide on Oct. 29.
