State sees most new cases in more than five weeks

25 additional deaths; positivity rate increases

Illinois reported 1,317 new coronavirus cases on Friday, the highest daily total in more than five weeks and the first two-day stretch with tallies exceeding 1,000 since May.

Another 25 people have died of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, according to new figures released by the Illinois Department of Public Health, raising the state’s pandemic death toll to 7,144.

The latest cases account for 4% of the 32,987 tests done in the past day, leaving the state with its highest single-day positivity rate since early June. The number of new cases pushed the state’s total case count to 151,767. It’s the highest daily tally since June 2, which saw 1,614.

Daily caseloads have slowly inched upward since a nearly three-month low of 462 on June 22. Public health officials have attributed some of that rise in cases to a parallel increase in testing.

But the uptick this week has also prompted the seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests to slightly creep up, from 2.6% on Monday to 2.9% on Friday.

During Illinois’ peak month of May, an average of about 2,172 cases were being confirmed each day as about 20,270 daily tests were administered. So far this month, about 10,000 more tests per day have yielded an average of 858 new daily cases.

The 25 additional deaths reported Friday maintains the state’s generally declining COVID-19 fatality rate. On average, about 22 daily deaths have been reported over the first 10 days of July.

That’s down sharply from May, the state’s most deadly month for the coronavirus, when an average of about 100 people were dying each day. That rate fell to about 52 COVID-19 deaths per day in June.

As of Thursday night, 1,436 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19, according to the state health department. Of those, 306 patients were in the ICU and 155 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.