Illinois’ coronavirus testing positivity fell to its lowest point since Christmastime as public health officials on Thursday announced 6,652 new cases of COVID-19 and 88 more deaths attributed to the disease.
The latest infections were diagnosed among 118,036 tests submitted to the Illinois Department of Public Health, decreasing the seven-day average positivity rate to 6.8%.
That indicator of transmission has been on the decline for a full week after a steady post-holiday increase. It had topped 13% on Nov. 13 during the state’s record-breaking resurgence and fell to 6.8% by Dec. 26 — and then edged back up to 8.6% as recently as Jan. 4.
The positivity rate soared over 20% when the pandemic first gripped the state and sank as low as 2.5% in early July.
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Meanwhile, hospitals are treating the fewest coronavirus patients they’ve seen since the beginning of November, with 3,511 beds occupied statewide as of Wednesday night. Nightly hospitalizations have fallen by about 30% over the last month.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker has said he thinks most regions of the state have “made real progress and won’t reverse that progress” in the roller coaster pandemic. Some regions of the state could see business restrictions loosened starting Friday, though further improvement would be required to reopen bars and restaurants to indoor service under the Democratic governor’s plan.
The virus is still claiming an average of 104 Illinois lives each day, but that’s down from a rate of about 152 deaths per day over the first two weeks of December.
The latest 88 deaths included 33 Chicago-area residents. A total of 17,928 people have died of COVID-19 over the past 10 months as more than a million residents have been infected.
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While the state has logged roughly 6,400 new cases every day over the last week, more than four times that number of people have received coronavirus vaccine doses each day (26,703).
A total of 414,296 doses have been administered, including nearly 92,000 people who have been fully vaccinated with two doses.
Months remain before most of the state’s 12.7 million residents can get shots.
