Illinois expecting half a million new vaccine doses this week

Illinois vaccine providers have received another 342,670 vaccine doses, state health officials reported Tuesday.

It's part of a 551,590-dose allocation the state is expecting in total this week, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Seventeen thousand of those doses are Johnson & Johnson vaccines that federal officials have halted use of after six women who recently received inoculations developed rare and severe blood clots in their brains.

Of the new vaccine doses, 97,200 doses are allocated for first shots in suburban Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties. Another 136,080 are earmarked for second doses in those counties, according to the IDPH.

Meanwhile, IDPH officials reported 100,729 more doses of the COVID-19 vaccine had been administered throughout Illinois over the past 24 hours.

That brings the total number of vaccine doses administered in Illinois to 7,344,112, with 2,952,843 people now considered fully vaccinated, according to Illinois Department of Public Health records.

The vaccination numbers may dip in the near term as Johnson & Johnson vaccines are shelved while authorities investigate the relationship between the six women and the vaccine. One of the women has died, according to federal health officials.

State vaccination reports show nearly 70% of DuPage County residents who are 65 and older are now fully vaccinated. Almost 64% of that age group is now fully vaccinated in Kane County.

In suburban Cook County, the fully vaccinated rate for those 65 and older is more than 57%. It's nearly 60% in Lake County. It's more than 61% for those residents in McHenry County.

Less than 56% of Will County residents 65 and older are fully vaccinated.

Also Tuesday, IDPH officials reported 17 more COVID-19 deaths, along with 3,193 new cases of the disease.

That puts the state's death toll from COVID-19 at 21,540, while 1,285,398 Illinois residents have now been infected.

Statewide, hospitalizations increased to 2,028. That's the first time hospitals around the state have reported more than 2,000 COVID-19 patients in more than two months. Of those currently hospitalized, 466 are in intensive care.

The state's seven-day average case positivity rate dipped slightly to 4.3%.