McHenry County reports 83 new COVID-19 cases

The McHenry County Department of Health reported 83 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, and no additional deaths.

This brings the total number of cases in the county to 27,180 confirmed and probable cases, 272 confirmed deaths and 28 deaths in which the cause likely was COVID-19 but could not be confirmed.

The county’s recovery rate remained at 99%.

As of Wednesday, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported a total of 8,342,542 doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered statewide, including 184,555 in McHenry County.

So far, 23.82% (73,509 of 308,570) of county residents have been fully vaccinated, meaning they’ve received all of the doses recommended for the vaccine they received.

In February, Region 9 moved from Tier 1 to Phase 4, allowing for competitive high school sports to be played, loosening capacity limits for retail and personal care businesses, and enabling restaurants to serve parties of as many as 10 people.

The state will reach Phase 5 of Gov. JB Pritzker’s reopening plan once 50% of residents aged 16 and older have received at least one vaccine dose and stable or declining COVID-19 metrics are recorded during a 28-day monitoring period, Pritzker announced last month.

The state can first move to a bridge phase, however, if 70% of Illinois residents aged 65 and older have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and the state doesn’t see a reversal in the current trends for COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths.

As of Wednesday, 77.36% of those aged 65 and older had received at least one dose. Additionally, 50.42% of those 16 and older had received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the state’s dashboard. However, hospitalizations related to COVID-19 continue to rise.

The region that includes McHenry County also could return to increased mitigations if the region’s positivity rate rises to 8% or higher for three consecutive days or it sees a sustained increase in test positivity rate.

As of Wednesday, McHenry County’s positivity rate fell to 7.8% and Region 9 fell to 4.2%, marking the region’s 88th day under the threshold.

Additionally, mitigations could take effect if the region were to experience a sustained increase in hospitalized COVID-19 patients and if staffed intensive care unit bed availability were to fall below 20% for three consecutive days.

Region 9 had 34% of its ICU beds available as of Wednesday and reported that COVID-19-related hospital admissions increased for five days out of the past 10.

Statewide, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 1,309,552 cases, 21,722 confirmed deaths and 2,296 probable deaths.

Among McHenry County ZIP codes, Crystal Lake (60014) has the highest number of COVID-19 cases with a total of 4,131 confirmed cases, according to county data. Woodstock (60098) follows with 3,169 cases.

The McHenry County health department reports ZIP code data only for parts located within McHenry County, a department spokeswoman said. Any discrepancies between county and IDPH numbers likely are because of the data’s provisional nature and because each health department finalizes its data at different times, she said.

The following is the rest of the local breakdown of cases by ZIP code: McHenry (60050) 2,868; Lake in the Hills (60156) 2,517; Algonquin (60102) 2,037; Huntley (60142) 1,986; Cary (60013) 1,921; Johnsburg and McHenry (60051) 1,814; Harvard (60033) 1,518; Marengo (60152) 1,099; Crystal Lake, Bull Valley and Prairie Grove (60012) 972; Wonder Lake (60097) 866; Spring Grove (60081) 671; Island Lake (60042) 375; Fox River Grove (60021) 335; Richmond (60071) 297; Hebron (60034) 161; Barrington (60010) 142; Union (60180) 123; and Ringwood and Wonder Lake (60072) 52.