Increased testing continues to push COVID-19 count higher in Illinois; Macon County cases rise to 121 – Herald & Review

There were also 105 more deaths related to the virus reported in the previous 24 hours, and 4,717 COVID-19 patients were still hospitalized as of midnight Friday, according to Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike. There were 1,250 COVID-19 patients in intensive care beds and 789 on ventilators as of midnight as well, according to IDPH.

Those numbers are either still ticking upward or in a state of plateau in various areas, Pritzker said, and they are more telling than the total test count.

As we've been talking about flattening and bending the curve, you know, as I have indicated, we're still going up by a little bit (in hospitalization numbers) ... maybe you would call that flat, Pritzker said. But whatever you would call it at the moment, we're not going down. And that's what we really need to do.

The states R-naught number, which characterizes a diseases infectiousness by tracking how many people one carrier spreads it to, is roughly 1.2 at the moment, Ezike said. Thats down from higher than three, and Pritzker has said a goal is to get the number below one.

The point is that it definitely came down, Ezike said. Again, thanks to the mitigation strategies because people work so hard to stay at home and to help limit the transmission of this virus. And so we're very proud that it came down. And, you know, we hope that it's not going to see a significant rise as people, if people change their behavior.

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Increased testing continues to push COVID-19 count higher in Illinois; Macon County cases rise to 121 - Herald & Review