Lake County exceeds state's COVID-19 warning levels
Lake County is one of 26 Illinois counties state health officials placed at a warning level for an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 on Friday.
Counties are placed at warning levels when two or more of the state's seven risk metrics are exceeded. Lake County has exceeded two of those metrics.
Health officials also announced Friday that 35 more Illinois residents have died from COVID-19, and 2,818 new cases of the respiratory disease have been diagnosed.
That brings the state's death toll to 8,945 since the outbreak began, with 313,518 infected residents.
Hospitalizations for the disease also grew to 1,812 by the end of the day Thursday, up 57 patients from the previous day, IDPH officials reported. It's the most COVID-19 patients hospitalized at once since mid-June. Of those hospitalized, 395 were in intensive care beds.
The state's seven-day rolling average infection rate is now up to 3.8% after the latest batch of 71,599 tests results returned Friday. At the beginning of the week, the state's seven-day average infection rate was at 3.3%.
Lake County has recorded more than 100 new cases of the virus on each of the past three days. The county hadn't seen three straight days of new cases in the triple digits since May.
Lake County is averaging 90 new cases of the virus for every 100,000 residents over the past week, according to Illinois Department of Public Health figures. The state target is an average of 50 new cases or fewer. Lake County has exceeded this threshold since the beginning of July.
Chicago and the other suburban counties are exceeding the state's target as well in this metric.
But Lake County hospitals are also reporting that emergency room visits for patients exhibiting "COVID-like illnesses" over the past week are up to 4.3%. That represents an increase of at least 20% in visits in each of the last two weeks, exceeding the metric, according to IDPH reports.
Lake County isn't the only Illinois county along the Wisconsin border IDPH placed on warning. Winnebago County to the west exceeded five of the risk metrics over the past week, according to IDPH records.
IDPH officials said they are keeping an eye on all the counties along the Wisconsin border because of a surge in cases in that state in recent weeks. Case counts increased so much that state officials there are opening a field hospital on the state fairgrounds site near Milwaukee to handle the state's growing caseload.
"Patients are not frequently transferred from Wisconsin to Illinois hospitals, but it can happen," an IDPH spokesperson wrote when emailed about the growing number of cases across the border. "Patients needing acute and emergent care need to be transferred to the closest hospital."
Most of the other counties IDPH placed at warning levels Friday were in the central and southern part of the state.
Meanwhile, IDPH officials announced an end to business and gathering size restrictions for the seven-county Metro East region near St. Louis.
The region had been undergoing mitigation efforts since mid-August. Indoor dining and service at bars had been banned, hours of operations for businesses had been reduced and gathering sizes were limited to 25 or less during that time.
"It takes communities working together to reduce the spread of the virus and lower the positivity rate," said Dr. Ngozi Ezike, head of IDPH. "I want to thank (the Metro East region) for its hard work to decrease the risk for all of Illinois."
The region's seven-day average test positivity rate had once exceeded 10%, but today IDPH officials said the region's rate is at 6%.