Illinois COVID-19 hospitalizations down 26% from last week

State health officials Monday reported 3,870 COVID-19 patients were being treated in hospitals throughout Illinois, a 26.1% decline from a week ago.

Of those hospitalized, 684 were in intensive care; that's 24.4% fewer than one week ago, according to Illinois Department of Public Health data.

IDPH officials reported 225 more COVID-19 deaths since Friday, the last time new figures were released. That brings the state's death toll from the virus to 30,913.

Illinois recorded 2,996 COVID-19 deaths in January, making it the second-deadliest month of the pandemic, behind only December 2020, when 4,237 COVID-19 deaths were recorded and vaccines were not yet widely available.

The state averaged 108 deaths a day over the past seven days, down from an average of 120 deaths a day a week ago.

Illinois health officials also recorded another 23,797 new cases of COVID-19 since Friday, bringing the total number of infections reported by IDPH officials to 2,920,971 since the outset of the pandemic.

The state's seven-day average case positivity rate is now at 7.2%, down from 11.6% last Monday, IDPH records show. Case positivity rates are calculated as the percentage of new cases derived from a batch of tests. A seven-day average is used to account for any anomalies in the daily reporting of those figures.

IDPH officials also reported 97,024 more doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered since Friday.

Vaccine providers in Illinois have now administered 20,520,124 doses since December 2020, IDPH figures show.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting 66.1% of Illinois' 12.7 million residents are now fully vaccinated. Of those fully vaccinated, 47.1% have received a booster dose.

At-home COVID-19 test kits began arriving in the mail last week from the federal government. IDPH officials have also made 225,000 similar test kits available for high-risk areas of the state, including parts of Bensenville. Residents of these areas are deemed to be at higher risk for contracting the disease based on a number of socio-economic factors.

Anyone living in the 60106 ZIP code is eligible to receive five free test kits in the mail by registering online at accesscovidtests.org. IDPH officials said the test kits will ship one to two weeks after an order is placed.