“Deaths are the last thing to come down,” he said. “Unfortunately, they lag all the other statistics. So, look, I don’t know if there’s any other thing that should be more powerful in people’s minds about why they ought to follow the mitigations and stay home right now, then the number of people who are passing away.”
Hospitalizations for the virus continued to trend downward, with 5,653 individuals with COVID-19 occupying hospital beds, the lowest number in 17 days. That included 1,170 patients in intensive care unit beds and 693 on ventilators, both decreases from the day prior.
Overall hospital and ICU bed availability decreased from the day prior, however, as the number of non-COVID-19 hospitalizations increased. Approximately 23.9% of hospital beds and 18.1% of ICU beds were available at the end of Wednesday.
As of Nov. 30, the latest data available showed none of the state’s 11 regions were meeting all of the thresholds to move away from strict Tier 3 mitigations.
Only Region 3, which includes the Springfield area and several surrounding counties, and Region 11, which includes only Chicago, were below a 12% rolling seven-day average positivity rate. Those regions had positivity rates of 11.2% and 11.9%, respectively, but had not met hospitalization thresholds necessary to move back into Tier 2.
Even if they were meeting hospitalization thresholds, which require 20% availability for hospital and ICU beds, Pritzker said this week regions would remain in Tier 3 “for the next few weeks even if they might be on track to meet those metrics.”
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