CHICAGO — Coronavirus killed six people in the last day in Illinois, officials said Monday.
Among the victims were two people in Cook County. Illinois’ has now seen at least 7,301 people die from coronavirus, according to state data.
The state also saw 1,173 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 over the last day. In all, there have been 162,748 confirmed cases in Illinois.
The state also reported a seven-day positivity rate of 3 percent as of Sunday.
As of Sunday night, 1,410 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Illinois, including 308 people in the ICU and 133 people using ventilators.
Officials warned last week the average number of new cases per day has been climbing in Chicago and throughout Illinois, with Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Gov. JB Pritzker warning they could reimpose restrictions or take steps back if the pandemic surges here.
On Monday, Lightfoot took a small step toward that, with the city announcing bars that don’t serve food will no longer able to offer indoor service starting Friday morning. Restaurants and bars must also keep parties and tables to no more than six people now.
The city is imposing tighter restrictions on other industries, as well, saying fitness classes must now be limited to 10 people, personal services are prohibited if they’d require a customer to remove a mask and residential property managers should limit guest entry to five people per unit to avoid parties and gatherings.
That’s because the city’s average number of new cases has climbed to 233 per day as of Monday and the city’s positivity rate is at 5 percent, said Dr. Allison Arwady, head of the Chicago Department of Public Health.
The rise in new cases is being driven by young people, with Chicagoans age 18-29 making up the most new cases of coronavirus, Arwady said.
Officials are trying to limit ways for young people to gather and transmit COVID-19.
“For all of those reasons, we felt strongly that it was necessary to work to take some focused actions now,” Arwady said. “The goal, of course, is to take focused actions now that are able to keep us from having to take the very large steps backwards that we want to avoid at all costs … .”
The numbers are “not a cause for alarm,” and the increase is not as bad in Chicago as it has been elsewhere in the country. But the city should take “serious steps now while we can still get our arms around this increase,” Arwady said.
Arwady said people can help prevent the spread of coronavirus by wearing masks, practicing social distancing and not gathering with people.
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