COVID-19 hospitalizations in Illinois continue to go up

The Illinois Department of Public Health reported 5,686 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 and three additional deaths Thursday.

The state’s seven-day rolling average for new cases per day went up to 5,618, the highest average since Feb. 10.

For Wednesday, the state administered 11,533 vaccines.

From the IDPH’s data dashboard:

Case rate per 100,000: 44.1 (+1.7 from Wednesday)

Percentage of ICU beds available: 19%

COVID-19 diagnosed hospital admissions (7-day rolling average): 77 (+2 from Wednesday, highest rate since Feb. 28)

Weekly deaths reported: 46

Illinois has seen 3,200,930 total cases of the virus, and 33,698 people have died.

As of late Wednesday, Illinois had 880 COVID-19 patients in the hospital, an overnight increase of 19 patients and the most total people in the hospital with COVID-19 since March 2. Of those, 85 were in intensive care units, and 21 were on ventilators.

County-by-county update: As of mid-April, 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 Thursday, the IDPH reported a total of 26,953,045 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed statewide, with 22,081,962 vaccines administered.

As of Thursday, 8,256,023 Illinoisans have been fully vaccinated, or 64.80% of the population. Illinois has a population of 12,741,080 people.

CDC numbers:

Among Illinois residents 5 and older:

Fully Vaccinated: 8,741,238 (73.3%)

At Least 1 Dose: 9,728,492 (81.6%)

Among Illinois residents 12 and older:

Fully Vaccinated: 8,326,771 (76.8%)

At Least 1 Dose: 9,261,528 (85.5%)

Among Illinois residents 18 and older:

Fully Vaccinated: 7,691,166 (78.1%)

At Least 1 Dose: 8,563,899 (86.9%)

Among Illinois residents 65 and older:

Fully Vaccinated: 1,821,558 (89.2%)

At Least 1 Dose: 1,988,317 (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: 68.34%

Suburban Cook: 72.49%

Lake: 69.55%

McHenry: 65.37%

DuPage: 75.15%

Kane: 66.09%

Will: 66.34%

Kendall: 68.62%

La Salle: 58.12%

Grundy: 57.39%

DeKalb: 56.33%

Ogle: 56.67%

Lee: 58.70%

Whiteside: 51.64%

Bureau: 56.45%