ICU Beds Availability In Will-Kankakee Continue To Shrink

WILL COUNTY, IL — The number of available ICU beds in the Will-Kankakee region has continued to fall with only 29 out of 162 available as of Wednesday, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.

The region is at a warning level for this metric, showing one day of being under the 20 percent threshold for available ICU beds. It has also been under 20 percent for three consecutive days with 16.1 percent medical/surgical beds still available.

The entire state is under the governor's Tier 3 mitigations and Region 7 (Will and Kankakee counties) recently also had Tier 2 mitigations imposed on them after a surge in coronavirus positivity. As of Thursday, the region is at a positivity rate of 16.6 percent.

The total number of coronavirus cases in Will County have surpassed 41,000, according to the Will County Public Health. As of Wednesday, the county has 41,169 coronavirus cases, while reported deaths during the same time period have gone up to 552.

The test positivity in the county was at 18.7 percent as of Friday, according to IDPH. The number of new cases per 100,000 people for the same week was 757 and the target is 50 or fewer.