COVID-19 hospitalizations down to 4,000
Gov. Pritzker also cheers ‘very exciting news’ state has taken lead in testing per capita
Dr. Richard Novak sports a Chicago Cubs mask during Tuesday’s daily coronavirus briefing held by digital teleconference. (Illinois.gov)
By Ted Cox
Calling it “great news,” the Illinois director of public health announced Tuesday that hospitalizations for COVID-19 dropped to 4,002 statewide, while coronavirus patients under intensive care fell below 1,000.
“We’re hoping that the data are showing that’s where we’re going,” on the downward side of the curve of infection, said Dr. Ngozi Ezike. “We may be headed downward now,” she added, but warned that it could take a few more days or even weeks to confirm that.
“There is evidence that the stay-at-home plans are working,” Ezike said, adding that “we could have been saying tens of thousands of deaths” statewide, instead of 146 news deaths announced Tuesday, bringing the state toll to 4,379.
Ezike announced that 993 COVID-19 patients were under intensive care, with just 576 on ventilators, while 1,545 new positive tests brought the statewide total to 98,030. They also produced a positivity rate of just 8 percent given the 18,443 tests conducted for the day.
On that note, Gov. Pritzker applauded “some frankly very exciting news” as Illinois has overtaken New York in conducting the most COVID-19 tests per capita over the last week among the 10 most populous states. “As testing expands, so will the criteria allowing more people to get a test,” he said, but even as it stands the entire state remained on course to move on to the third phase of the Restore Illinois plan in 10 more days.
“I am optimistic,” he said. “You can see the line bending in the right direction.”
“That exactly is the mark of success,” said Dr. Emily Landon of University of Chicago Medicine, an expert on infectious diseases who joined the daily coronavirus briefing Tuesday for the first time since she’d created a national sensation with her impassioned call for citizens to stay home two months ago. “The curve has flattened.”
Dr. Richard Novak, an expert on infectious diseases from University of Illinois Health, cheered the “slow but measurable decline in new hospitalizations,” adding, “Flattening the curve has prevented the hospital system from being overwhelmed.” He lauded the “slow but steady progress controlling the pandemic in Illinois.”
Even so, Novak and Landon both called for citizens to continue to observe the stay-at-home order and social distancing, with Landon calling masks a “lifeline” in that “anyone can be contagious for COVID at any time” and not know it.
“Hear me clearly. The virus is still out there,” Ezike said. She urged Illinoisans to continue to observe the stay-at-home order because “we want to get into Phase 3 and beyond.”
“We’re all itching to move ahead,” Pritzker said, but he added that the state has to make sure the numbers are moving in the right direction over the next week and a half. “We’ve got to make sure we run the full course in this phase,” he said. “We really do need to stick to the timetable we have.”
But the governor swiftly added that the potential reward is to reopen barber shops and hair salons at the end of the month, along with factories, offices, and warehouses.
Pritzker said he understood the frustration of people living in border towns who might see “a lower level of precaution just down the road,” in another state, but he urged Illinoisans to maintain the stay-at-home order.
“There should have been a national plan,” he said. “But President Trump decided to inject politics where science and data should have won out, leaving the states to create the patchwork that exists today. Some states have chosen not to listen to the advice of medical experts. There are even politicians in Illinois who ignore science and instead are playing to a small minority who protest at our state Capitol.”
Singling out “those carrying vile signs to make their point,” he echoed his criticism from the day before of state legislators who gave tacit approval to those protesters by attending Saturday’s demonstration against the stay-at-home order, saying, “I’m disgusted by the failure of so many people to call them out.”
“This is a fight against a virus, not an ideology,” Landon said.
“Some people don’t want to hear anymore that it’s about keeping people safe,” Pritzker said, “but it is.”