Public health officials announced Friday that 1,384 other people tested positive for COVID-19 in Illinois, the highest daily total reported by the state in more than six weeks.
But those new cases were detected among the last record batch of 43,692 coronavirus test results reported to the Illinois Department of Public Health, which lowered the positivity rate on state tests in the past week to 3%.
That rate is still above 2.5% last week, a “slight rebound” that Governor JB Pritzker has said he is concerned that Illinois may be on the brink of an increase in cases like that seen in dozens of other states.
Authorities also announced the latest 22 deaths attributed to COVID-19 on Friday, bringing the state’s death toll to 7,272. And the health department modified its estimated number of “probable” but unproven cases of COVID-19: 193 additional deaths and 1,175 non-fatal infections.
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At least 159,334 people have tested positive among the almost 2.2 million that have been evaluated since March, with a recovery rate of 95%.
Most of the state’s coronavirus deaths, 3,974 of them, have been linked to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, which have seen at least 23,604 cases.
But an increasing percentage of the latest infections, which officials have said explain the recent increase in cases, have been detected among young people in the 18-29 age range. The youngest fatality reported Friday was a 30-year-old Cook County woman.
After a devastating peak month of May, when authorities announced an average of approximately 2,172 new coronavirus cases per day, the state topped 1,000 cases in one day only twice in June.
That has happened six times in July. The state averages about 950 new cases per day during the month.
It is still a long way from the furious outbreaks that have plagued dozens of states spanning mainly the south and west for the past month, but now include Illinois’ midwestern neighbor Iowa.
The state of Hawkeye was added to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s travel quarantine list earlier this week, a strip of access points from 17 states from which travelers, both visitors and returning residents, have been ordered to isolate for two weeks.
Cook County officials announced Friday that an identical order now exists for most suburbs of Cook County.
“We have come a long way in Cook County and Illinois and we want to keep it that way,” Dr. Rachel Rubin of the Cook County Department of Public Health said in a statement. “It is summer and we know that people want to travel, but we have to remain vigilant to maintain our achievements and avoid having to close places that we have just reopened.”
The order does not apply to Evanston and Skokie residents, who have their own state-certified local health departments. Skokie’s director of health, Dr. Catherine Counard, said her northern suburb has “a difference of opinion on this matter.”
“At Skokie, we believe the most important messages are that everyone should stay home if they are sick, maintain social distance and wear face covers in public places, and wash their hands frequently,” Counard said in an email. “This is true no matter where a person is: simply spending time in another state, without engaging in risky behaviors, is not expected to increase the risk of COVID-19 infection.”
Evanston officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In addition to Iowa, the travel quarantine list includes Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Oklahoma.
As of Thursday night, 1,431 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized across Illinois, with 309 in intensive care units and 128 in ventilators.
