CHICAGO — An additional 1,549 cases of coronavirus were reported in Illinois in the past day as the state’s rate of positive cases remained at the same 4.1 percent level as the day before.
Another 20 people died in the past day, as well, bringing the total number of deaths in the state to 7,657, officials announced Tuesday.
Illinois saw a spike of new confirmed cases late last week, including the first daily totals over 2,000 since May. For the past three days, however, the daily number has dropped beneath 2,000 as official hope to avoid a surge on par with what’s been seen in other states around the United States.
There have now been 196,948 cases of COVID-19 in Illinois since the start of the pandemic.
As of Monday night, 1,459 people were hospitalized with coronavirus in Illinois, including 336 people in the ICU and 127 people on ventilators.
In Chicago, meanwhile, the citywide positivity rate, the rolling seven-day average of people testing positive, is at 5.1 percent. It sat at 4.7 percent last week.
There are an average of 290 people testing positive each day, Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of the city’s Department of Public Health, said during a livestreamed Q&A.
That’s higher than city officials would like, but it shows Chicago is not “surging” like other places, Arwady said.
And deaths from coronavirus have remained relatively flat in the city since July 16, Arwady said, which means Chicago is staying in a “good spot there.”
Arwady said the city’s biggest outbreaks are still coming from households rather than restaurants, workplaces and longterm care facilities. About one-third of the city’s new cases are from spread within households, she said.
That’s because people are going to work, going out to see friends and doing other activities outside their home, getting coronavirus and then bringing the virus back to members of their household, Arwady said.
“It’s been much less tied to individual locations and much more to the fact I think people have expanded their social circles” and aren’t taking as many precautions, Arwady said.
The doctor said Chicagoans should have a “bubble” of people they trust, but that bubble should largely be confined to their household and should include few, if any, outsiders.
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