More than 6 million in Illinois fully vaccinated; 50 test positive at downstate youth camp

More than 6 million Illinois residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the most recent figures from the Illinois Department of Public Health.

While that's slightly less than half the state's population, the vaccine is only available to residents 12 and older. Of that population, more than 52% are fully vaccinated and 68.3% have received at least one dose, according to IDPH records.

State health officials announced the milestone today along with 40,323 more doses of the vaccine being administered statewide.

That brings the total number of vaccine doses administered statewide to 12,360,117 over the past six-plus months.

IDPH figures show of the 6,021,634 fully vaccinated in the state, 4,113,724 are from Chicago, suburban Cook County and the five collar counties of DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will. That is 68.3% of all Illinoisans fully vaccinated.

Meanwhile, IDPH officials also announced eight more COVID-19 deaths, as well as 292 new cases of the virus.

An outbreak of COVID-19 hospitalized at least one person and more than 50 people tested positive June 13-17 at Crossing Camp in Rushville in west central Illinois, Pike County Health Department officials said. All were eligible to be vaccinated but few had been, and the camp was not checking vaccination status or requiring masks while indoors, state officials said Friday. Everyone was sent home, asked to be tested and told to quarantine, and subsequent camp sessions were postponed, state officials and the camp reported.

Since the start of the pandemic, 23,199 Illinois residents have died and 1,390,432 have been infected.

Hospitals throughout Illinois are treating 442 COVID-19 patients, with at least 99 in intensive care beds, IDPH records show.

That's the first time there's been fewer than 100 COVID-19 patients in ICU beds statewide since the state started keeping track in April 2020. One month ago, 351 COVID-19 patients were in hospital ICU beds and 53 on ventilators, state records show.

The state's seven-day case positivity rate remains at 0.6%.

Case positivity tracks the level of infection within a certain population by showing the percentage of new cases developed from a batch of tests. A seven-day average is used to account for any anomalies in the daily reporting of those figures.