CHICAGO – Illinois has now vaccinated 10 percent of the population against the corona virus, the state announced on Friday.
COVID-19 is still making people sick and killing people, but there are signs of hope: Vaccinations in Chicago and Illinois have accelerated in recent weeks, and new cases, deaths, and positivity rates have dropped.
Another 32 Illinoisans were reported dead from the coronavirus in the past day. The most recent victims included 14 people from Cook County, including a woman in her 50s.
At least 19,873 people have died from COVID-19 in Illinois, and another 2,154 deaths are likely related to the virus, the state said.
The state reported 2,598 confirmed cases in the past day. That brings the total number of confirmed cases in Illinois to 1,158,431.
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The state administers an average of 59,009 vaccine doses per day, based on a seven-day moving average. To date, Illinois has administered at least 1,412,669 vaccine doses of the 1,940,425 given to it.
More than 313,000 doses of vaccine have been administered to residents of Chicago.
A further 231,814 vaccines have been administered in long-term care facilities, providing 445,200 doses. Those vaccinations are done through a federal partnership with pharmacy chains.
All told, at least 1,644,483 vaccine doses have been administered in Illinois and 10 percent of Illinois residents have received their first injection. The state broke its record for one-day vaccinations with 95,375 doses administered Thursday.
Still, the state lags behind others.
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The city is also making “very good progress” on vaccinations, said Dr. Allison Arwady, head of the Chicago Department of Public Health, on a livestream Tuesday morning. But Chicago and Illinois are getting very limited supply of vaccine doses from the federal government, and demand is high.
The federal government will likely send more vaccine doses per week to Chicago within weeks, with the bump in late February or early March, Arwady said.
“Getting Chicago vaccinated will help us get past COVID,” Arwady said.
Illinois and Chicago are vaccinating people over 65 and frontline workers as part of Phase 1B of the vaccination campaign. Eligible Illinoisans can make arrangements to get vaccinated at pharmacies, their healthcare provider’s office, state-run mass vaccination sites, and other places.
The state will also begin to vaccinate people with underlying conditions or disabilities starting Feb. 25, although Pritzker said Thursday there is still a “massive” shortage of doses. Chicago will not add people with underlying conditions or disabilities to Stage 1B.
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The state is scrapping some of its coronavirus security restrictions as regions get better control of their outbreaks. Chicago is now in Stage 4, the stage where state restrictions have been eased most before returning fully to the norm.
The city has released a roadmap outlining the metrics it will use to lift corporate restrictions as it gets better control of the COVID-19 outbreak. On Thursday, students also began to return to schools.
At the same time, a more contagious variant of the virus from the United Kingdom has been found in Chicago. A variant first found in South Africa has also been discovered in Illinois.
The state’s ability to have back office and youth sports “could be cut short if we are not extremely careful,” Pritzker said at a January news conference. The CDC is already warning that the faster-spreading British variety could become the dominant species in the United States in March. And a virus that is more contagious will ultimately result in more cases, more hospitalizations, and more deaths.
“I know none of us want to see another wave of COVID involving more mitigating measures, so let’s not disappoint.”
And officials have warned it will take months before vaccines are generally available to the public. The Chicago plan tentatively predicts that vaccines will be available to everyone 16 and older by the end of May.
That means people are still at risk and will have to continue to take precautions for much of 2021, officials have said. People should continue to wear masks, stay socially aloof, wash their hands often, don’t get together, don’t travel, and don’t have people in the house, experts have said.
Illinois’s seven-day positivity rate fell to 3.1 percent Friday with 103,009 tests reported. On Thursday it was 3.3 percent. The figure represents the percentage of people who test positive under recent tests.
Illinois’s seven-day test positivity, which measures the percentage of positive tests, dropped slightly to 3.7 percent on Friday. On Thursday it was 3.9 percent.
As of Thursday night, 1,915 people were hospitalized with coronavirus in Illinois, including 437 people in the ICU and 211 people using ventilator.
In Chicago, 11 deaths and 535 confirmed cases have been reported as of Thursday. According to state data, there have been at least 4,768 deaths from COVID-19 in Chicago and 240,025 confirmed cases.
The city has an average of seven deaths per day, against an average of 12 deaths per day in the previous week.
An average of 456 confirmed cases are reported per day, a 19 percent decrease from the previous week. At the same time, testing has decreased by 8 percent.
The city’s seven-day positivity rate is 4.6 percent, up from 5.3 percent the week before.
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