Will County Remains Within State Coronavirus Guidelines: IDPH

WILL COUNTY, IL — Public health officials are warning residents that there are signs of significant increases in coronavirus transmission in Illinois, with data about COVID-19 rates and hospitalizations heading the wrong direction in each of the state's emergency medical services regions. However, in the region to which Will County belongs, all metrics are currently within state guidelines.

This comes a few weeks after Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a new mitigation plan that divided the state into 11 regions. The administration uses indicators including positivity rates, hospital admissions, new cases, clusters and deaths to assess the level of COVID-19 activity in each region.

Any region that sustains an 8 percent positivity rate for three days in a row or sees an increase in positivity rates and simultaneous decrease in hospital capacity will need to implement additional community mitigation interventions, the Illinois Department of Public Health website states.

In Region 7 — which is composed of Will and Kankakee counties — an average of 8 people are admitted to the hospital every day, with increases on two of the last 10 days where regional metrics are available from the IDPH.

There are 34 percent of surgical beds available and 36 percent of ICU beds across the two-county region. Over the last 10 days, hospital admission has only increased on four days.

As per the IDPH metrics:

• The target is to have fewer than 7 days in the last 10 with a daily increase in the average number of hospital admissions.
• The target is to have at least 20 percent of medical, surgical and ICU beds available.

Will County by itself is also doing well. As of Friday, the number of hospital admissions, availability of ICU beds and the number of tests performed have been on target. However, the county is still showing a high rate of test positivity with 6.6 percent.

According to IDPH, the target is to have less than 50 new cases per 100,000 people in a week. However, as of Friday, there are 71 cases in Will County, leading state health officials to issue a warning.

For more news and information like this, subscribe to the Plainfield Patch for free. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app; download the free Patch Android app here. Don't forget to like us on Facebook!