The coronavirus is spreading at a excessive price of an infection throughout practically all of Illinois, portray the general public well being model of the state map an ominous sea of crimson.
All however 4 of the state’s 102 counties fall into the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention’s color-coded crimson “excessive transmission” class. And three of the 4 — Whiteside and Lee in western Illinois and close by Putnam — are just one class under that, the “substantial transmission” class.
Excessive transmission is outlined as greater than 100 new instances per 100,000 residents over the previous seven days or a check positivity price exceeding 10% over that interval.
Solely Stark County in central Illinois is on the “reasonable transmission” degree.
At an unrelated information convention Monday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker warned “we’re going to be on this a short time longer.”
“I’m speaking about COVID-19 and the problem that it brings to all of us,” Pritzker mentioned. “We’re going to be coping with this for a while, it’s clear as a result of there are lots of individuals who aren’t but vaccinated — and we wish them to go get vaccinated as quickly as doable — however the variants are additionally alive, effectively and transferring the world over.”
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These remarks have been in response to a query about how lengthy Pritzker’s masks requirement for faculties would stay in place. The governor introduced that mandate earlier this month.
Pritzker didn’t present an finish date or timeline for when college students, lecturers and employees would have the ability to forgo the face coverings, saying “this virus tends to have cycles to it and variants” and the face coverings are one solution to preserve individuals “protected and wholesome in our faculties.”
“It’s extremely doubtless {that a} variant you see hitting another nation goes to come back to the USA,” Pritzker mentioned. “We’ve got to organize ourselves for the, hopefully, ramping down of COVID over quite a few months and perhaps over the subsequent yr, however we now have to comply with the science and we’ll be requiring individuals to put on masks in faculties to maintain our children protected till we not have to.”
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The governor’s remarks and the newly updated state map come because the Illinois Division of Public Well being reported an extra 2,463 instances of COVID-19 on Monday. That’s down a bit from the two,631 on Sunday and the 4,032 on Saturday — the very best each day caseload since Jan. 29.
An extra 4 coronavirus deaths have been reported on Monday, down from 9 on Sunday and 17 on Saturday.
As of final week, new COVID-19 instances have multiplied by an element of 10 since early July, with Delta inflicting upwards of 90% of the newest infections, officers have estimated.
On Friday, the state reported greater than 21,000 instances over the previous seven days, a 27% bounce in comparison with the earlier week and a 167% spike from late July.
