130 more virus deaths, but infection rate keeps declining

More than 103,000 Illinois residents so far have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, public health officials said Saturday, as the state reported COVID-19 has killed an additional 130 people and spread to 5,343 more.

The new cases were diagnosed among 102,372 tests submitted to the Illinois Department of Public Health, keeping most of the state’s metrics trending in the right direction as they have since the holidays.

Illinois’ 7-day average positivity rate fell for an eighth consecutive day, now down to 6.3%, the lowest that indicator of transmission has been since Oct. 26.

And COVID-19 hospitalizations are as low as they’ve been since Nov. 1, with 3,406 beds occupied statewide as of Friday night. Of those patients, 711 were receiving intensive care and 379 were on ventilators.

But Saturday’s death count is well above the state’s average of 107 deaths per day so far this year. A total of 1,704 Illinois lives have been lost to COVID-19 since New Year’s Day.

Since last March, the virus has infected almost 1.1 million people statewide and killed 18,179 of them.

Meanwhile, a month into a historic vaccination campaign, less than 1% of the state’s 12.7 million residents are fully inoculated.

A total of 471,157 doses have been administered. That includes 103,711 people who have received the required two doses.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he expects the state’s efforts to be bolstered in the coming weeks as President-elect Joe Biden’s administration begins shipping more doses.

The Democratic governor on Friday laid out plans for the next wave of Illinoisans to begin receiving doses Jan. 25, including essential workers and people 65 or older.

As a result of the state’s recent encouraging trend, Pritzker allowed three of the state’s 11 regions to begin loosening business restrictions Friday, and said he expects the remaining regions to join them in going down to Tier 2 mitigations “in the coming days.”

That allows casinos, museums and bigbox retailers to boost their capacity, and brings back indoor fitness classes and recreation programs. Regions need to improve further down to Tier 1 for bars and restaurants to resume limited indoor service.