Gov. Pritzker warns of increased COVID-19 mitigations as DeKalb County Health Department reports 7 new cases Wednesday

The DeKalb County Health Department on Wednesday announced seven new cases of COVID-19 as the total number of cases rose to 1,544, and Gov. JB Pritzker warned that the region that includes DeKalb County has a positivity rate growing "at a concerning rate."

Region 1, which includes DeKalb County along with Rockford and northwest Illinois counties that border Wisconsin and Iowa, turned in a 7.5% positivity rate on Wednesday.

The state has a threshold of 8% for three consecutive days before it steps in for mitigations. It has done so on two occasions in the past two months, putting restrictions on Region 4 (Metro East) and Region 7 (Will and Kankakee counties).

Restrictions for those regions included limiting indoor dining, no indoor service for bars and no seating of multiple parties at one table in restaurants, among other efforts aimed at slowing down the spread of the virus.

One of the new cases Wednesday was linked to a long-term care facility: Oak Crest-DeKalb Area Retirement Center in DeKalb reported one additional case, and to date, there are five cases in residents and two in staff.

Willow Crest Nursing Pavilion in Sandwich remained at 66 total cases of the viral respiratory disease, with 13 deaths in residents. DeKalb County Rehabilitation and Nursing Center remained at seven cases and

The death toll remained at 38 in the county (the latest reported Friday was an infant, younger than 1 year old).

Of the new cases countywide, four were in residents younger than 20, two in their 20s, one in their 40s.

In total, 249 cases have been reported among residents younger than 20, 465 in their 20s, 209 in their 30s, 192 in their 40s, 171 in their 50s, 102 in their 60s, 71 in their 70s and 85 in their 80s or older.

According to county data, the city of DeKalb reports between 801 to 805 cases (up from Tuesday). There are 201 to 205 cases in Sycamore; 161 to 165 in Sandwich; 126 to 130 cases in Genoa; 71 to 75 cases in Cortland; 31 to 35 in Hinckley; 26 to 30 in Kingston and Kirkland; 21 to 25 cases in Malta and Somonauk; 11 to 15 in Waterman and Shabbona; and six to 10 in Maple Park. Esmond, Leland and Earlville each report one to five cases.

Cases listed on the county site are for those only occurring within the county; for instance the Earlville numbers only count Earlville residents who reside in DeKalb County.

The Illinois Department of Public Health lists cases and tests performed by ZIP code, while the county health department lists cases by municipality. Numbers vary between state and health departments because of data lags.

The 60115 ZIP code, including DeKalb, had 760 cases reported and 13,286 tests administered (a positivity rate of 5.7%); the 60178 ZIP code, including Sycamore, had 205 cases and 5,293 tests (3.9%); the 60548 ZIP code, including Sandwich, had 3,872 tests and 232 cases (6.0%); the 60112 ZIP code, including Cortland, had 74 cases and 1,201 tests (6.2%); the 60135 ZIP code, including Genoa, had 118 cases and 1,807 tests (6.5%); the 60145 ZIP code, including Kingston, had 26 cases and 461 tests (5.6%); the 60146 ZIP code, including Kirkland, had 32 cases and 634 tests (5.0%); the 60520 ZIP code, including Hinckley, had 30 cases and 653 tests (4.6%); the 60550 ZIP code, including Shabbona, had 12 cases and 579 tests (2.1%); the 60151 ZIP code, including parts of Maple Park in both DeKalb and Kane counties, had 41 cases and 912 tests (4.5%); and the 60556 ZIP code, including Waterman, had 13 cases and 384 tests (3.4%).

In total, IDPH reported 279,114 people in Illinois have tested positive for COVID-19, while 8,508 people have died statewide. The number of tests performed rose to 5,231,607. The site also lists statewide recovery rates, calculated by recovered cases divided by the sum of recovered cases and dead cases. The statewide recovery remained at 96%.

According to weekly testing and recovery data released Friday, after reaching an 8.4% positivity rate last week that resulted in the county being placed into a warning by IDPH, the rate dropped to 5.4%. DeKalb was removed from the warning level on Friday. There were 77 new recoveries, bringing the total to 1,037 recoveries among the 1,463 confirmed cases. As of Friday, there have been 32,186 COVID-19 tests run on DeKalb County residents.