State health officials on Monday reported 165 new coronavirus cases, the fewest number of new cases since March 20, 2020, and nine additional COVID-19 deaths across six different counties.
Those latest positive cases are from 25,235 COVID-19 tests taken within the past 24 hours and raises the total number of positive cases in the state to 1,387,769. The preliminary seven-day infection rate was 0.8% as of Monday — another record low since experts started tracking the metric in May 2020.
The Illinois Department of Public Health also noted 627 people in the state were hospitalized with COVID-19. Of those patients, 176 patients were in the ICU and 91 patients were on ventilators.
Almost 69% of adults in Illinois received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose with 52% of adults being fully vaccinated, a total of nearly 11,947,090 vaccine doses have been administered. Yesterday, 22,124 people were inoculated.
Health officials also announced they will stop issuing daily coronavirus updates as the state continues to see a downward trend in infection rates, new reported cases and deaths. Instead, the Illinois Department of Public Health will issue a news release every Friday with data on the website being updated every weekday.
The state will distribute its first weekly update this Friday with daily updates ending immediately, a spokeswoman said.
This shift in how officials communicate the impact of coronavirus across Illinois is another sign that the state is emerging, albeit slowly, from the pandemic that has claimed 23,070 lives across the state as of Monday.
“As the number of people vaccinated against COVID-19 continues to increase, the numbers of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have decreased, along with case and test positivity,” said Melaney Arnold, spokeswoman for the state’s health department. “The immediate threat of the ongoing pandemic has decreased at this time, and the cadence of updates is being scaled back to reflect this change.”
Illinois lifted most of its pandemic restrictions after 15 months of limitations.
