Will-Kankakee COVID-19 Positivity Holds Steady For A Week: IDPH

WILL COUNTY, IL — Coronavirus positivity in Illinois' Will-Kankakee region has held steady for a week, according to public health data. The Illinois Department of Public Health website reports that as of Thursday, the region has a positivity of 5.7 percent, which has remained unchanged since Sept. 18.

This comes after Pritzker's administration issued a news release on Aug. 24 stating that Region 7 — the Will-Kankakee region — had been moved to stricter mitigations following three consecutive days of a rolling positivity rate above 8 percent. As of Sept. 18, Region 7 had reached the threshold to lift mitigations of three consecutive days of a rolling positivity rate below 6.5 percent.

The region currently has only two consecutive days of positivity increase and two days of increase in hospital admission for COVID-19-like illness over the last 10 days. This indicates that the numbers are moving in the right direction, as per IDPH metric.

Region 7 also has 31 percent surgical beds and 34 percent ICU beds available. This will reach the warning level if they fall below the 20 percent threshold. ICU utilization in this region is at 66 percent and ventilator utilization is at 25 percent. Which means, there are still 443 ventilators available to patients in Will-Kankakee.

As of Tuesday night, 1,563 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state, including 351 in intensive care and 144 on ventilators, according to IDPH — a 7.4 percent jump in hospitalizations in one day.

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