Four Illinois counties now in medium risk for COVID-19; IDPH will start texting booster reminders

Four counties in Illinois have been upgraded to “medium” risk for COVID-19 according to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Illinois Department of Public Health announced Friday.

DuPage, Champaign, McLean and Piatt counties are now classified under the medium community level by the CDC. That means persons who are elderly or immunocompromised (at risk of severe outcomes) are advised to wear a mask in indoor public places.

IDPH also announced it has started sending text messages to about 2.5 million Illinois residents in the coming weeks to remind them they are due for a COVID-19 vaccination or a booster shot. “The messages are being sent to people who have their vaccination records in the Illinois Comprehensive Automated Immunization Registry Exchange (I-CARE), a web-based immunization record-sharing application developed by IDPH that allows healthcare providers to share the immunization records of Illinois residents with other physicians statewide,” according to an IDPH news release.

The text messages say: “IDPH records indicate that you or someone in your care are due for a COVID-19 shot.  For more info please visit: https://dph.illinois.gov/COVIDup2date.”

“The most important thing we can do to protect ourselves and our loved ones from severe health outcomes from COVID-19 is to remain up-to-date with our vaccinations,” IDPH Acting Director Amaal Tokars said in a news release. “These text alerts will provide those whose records are included in I-CARE an important reminder that they are due for a vaccination shot or a booster. This is especially important for those who are at higher risk for serious outcomes.”

IDPH reported 3,807 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 and nine additional deaths Friday.

The state’s seven-day rolling average for new cases went up to 2,793 new cases per day, the highest average since February 19.

For Thursday, the state administered 20,089 shots.

From the IDPH’s data dashboard:

Case rate per 100,000: 21.9 (Up 1.5 from Thursday)

Percentage of ICU beds available: 23%

COVID-19 diagnosed hospital admissions (7-day rolling average): 38 (-1 from Thursday)

Weekly deaths reported: 58 (up 13)

Illinois has seen 3,114,036 total cases of the virus, and 33,568 people have died.

As of late Thursday, Illinois had 613 COVID-19 patients in the hospital, the most since March 12. Of those, 82 were in intensive care units, and 26 were on ventilators. COVID-19 hospitalizations have gone up for six consecutive days.

County-by-county update: As of last week, the IDPH will provide a county-by-county update focusing on the case rate per 100,000 people, the percentage of ICU beds available, a rolling seven-day average of COVID-19 diagnosed hospital admissions and weekly deaths.

The definition of a COVID-19 diagnosed hospital admission is as follows: The seven-day average of daily number of hospital admissions given a diagnosis of COVID-19 as measured using the Illinois Syndromic Surveillance System.

Illinois collects all emergency department and inpatient visits through syndromic surveillance from all acute care hospitals in Illinois in near-real time. Data is presented with a three-day lag to allow time for diagnosis to be reported.

At the county level, a visit is counted by where the patient resides. A patient with multiple visits will be counted for each visit. Admissions may not be because of COVID-19 as the primary cause. Syndromic surveillance data is not the same source used by CDC to report COVID-19 hospital admissions data.

Vaccine update: As of Friday, the IDPH reported a total of 26,548,245 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed statewide, with 21,760,073 vaccines administered.

As of Friday, 8,232,881 Illinoisans have been fully vaccinated, or 64.62% of the population. Illinois has a population of 12,741,080 people.

CDC numbers:

Among Illinois residents 5 and older:

Fully Vaccinated: 8,680,137 (72.8%)

At Least 1 Dose: 9,691,435 (81.3%)

Among Illinois residents 12 and older:

Fully Vaccinated: 8,268,870 (76.3%)

At Least 1 Dose: 9,226,761 (85.1%)

Among Illinois residents 18 and older:

Fully Vaccinated: 7,633,155 (77.5%)

At Least 1 Dose: 8,527,778 (86.5%)

Among Illinois residents 65 and older:

Fully Vaccinated: 1,803,032 (88.2%)

At Least 1 Dose: 1,974,564 (95%)

There can be as much as a 72-hour delay in reporting from health care providers on vaccines administered.

In northern Illinois, here is the percentage of the population fully vaccinated by county:

Chicago: 68.15%

Suburban Cook: 72.27%

Lake: 69.26%

McHenry: 65.20%

DuPage: 74.97%

Kane: 65.92%

Will: 66.16%

Kendall: 68.49%

La Salle: 58.02%

Grundy: 57.23%

DeKalb: 56.22%

Ogle: 56.51%

Lee: 58.58%

Whiteside: 51.51%

Bureau: 56.36%