Illinois close to reaching vaccination milestone

Nearly half of Illinois residents 16 and older have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, putting the state inches from a milestone that could have triggered a full reopening under the plan Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced one month ago.

“This lifesaving protection is getting us closer and closer to getting back to normal,” Pritzker said in tweet Monday.

But rising hospitalizations and cases, along with the looming threat of COVID19 variants, are holding the state back from loosening restrictions.

Pritzker’s plan was previously delayed in late March when 70% of those 65 and older had received at least one dose. That mark was supposed to kick off a “bridge” phase that would precede a full-scale reopening, allowing a wide range of businesses to open their doors to more customers.

In addition to the vaccination levels, Pritzker’s plan required a sustained decline in new cases and hospitalizations before the rules could be loosened, and that has not happened.

Over the last month, cases, hospital admissions and the number of COVID19 patients in hospitals have risen statewide.

As of Sunday night, 2,128 people in Illinois were hospitalized with COVID-19, with 491 patients in intensive care units and 227 patients on ventilators.

The seven-day average of total hospitalizations is 2,089, the highest since an average of 2,098 was recorded Feb. 11.

The continued rise in ICU admissions is putting stress on the health care system in some parts of the state. In suburban Cook County, for example, the rolling average of available intensive care beds had been below 20% for seven straight days as of Sunday. Earlier in the pandemic, ICU capacity below 20% for three straight days was one of the criteria that could trigger tighter restrictions.

Even after those trends begin to reserve, the governor’s plan calls for a monitoring period before restrictions are lifted.

The Pritzker administration did not respond to a request for comment Monday on whether it was planning to change its approach in light of the stalled progress toward reopening or continue to rely on vaccinations in an effort to get ahead of the virus.

Officials reported 1,959 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 on Monday, the lowest daily total this month. The cases resulted from 47,506 tests. The seven-day statewide positivity rate for cases as a share of total tests is 4% as of Sunday, dipping slightly from a 4.4% rate recorded last week.

The state on Monday also reported an additional 22 fatalities, bringing the statewide death toll to 21,685 since March 2020.

Over the past week, the state has averaged 3,142 new cases per day, down from an average of 3,353 a week earlier but still nearly double the average of 1,669 daily cases on the day Pritzker announced his revamped reopening plan March 18.

“We are seeing upward movement of our cases and hospitalizations, obviously, but we have seen a beginning of, maybe, a lessening of the rise of cases,” Pritzker said last week. “I don’t want to predict anything because this virus is unpredictable, but I think at least in the short term that seems to be good news.”

But “there is no strong signal of a slowdown in growth,” researchers from Northwestern University said in report last week from a team of experts who have been modeling coronavirus trends and advising the governor’s office since last spring. The volunteer team also includes members from University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Argonne National Laboratory.

The researchers say that without additional restrictions, which Pritzker and other elected officials appear reluctant to consider of late, “the next wave is unlikely to stop soon.”

In the absence of stricter rules or greater caution taken by the public, the state would have to increase the daily vaccination rate by 50% or more to stall the spread of the virus within two weeks, according to U. of C. researchers. That would mean administering more than 60,000 additional shots per day, based on the most recent seven-day average of daily vaccinations.

There also are questions about the reasoning behind the bench marks in Pritzker’s reopening plan, including using the threshold of 50% of residents 16 and older having received one dose of vaccine as a determinant of when it is safe to reopen.

Jaline Gerardin, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and member of the modeling team, said she has “no idea where those numbers came from and why those numbers were deemed to have protected the population sufficiently.”

An additional 65,233 coronavirus vaccine doses were administered Sunday in Illinois, bringing the statewide total to 8,119,867, public health officials reported. Over the last seven days, the state reached a record average of 125,212 vaccines administered daily.

The number of residents who have been fully vaccinated — receiving both of the required two shots, or Johnson & Johnson’s one shot — reached 3,365,282, or 26.4% of the total population. Officials said 49.5% of residents 16 and older having received at least one dose as of Monday.

The state on Sunday reported 149 additional cases of the coronavirus variant that was first seen in the United Kingdom for a total of 1,037.