COVID-19 hospitalizations at six-week low

‘We seem to have come off the peak,’ says Gov. Pritzker, while counseling continued containment

Joined by a sign-language translator, Dr. Ngozi Ezike delivers good news Tuesday at the daily coronavirus briefing. (Illinois.gov)

By Ted Cox

Cautioning that some data were lowered by the long Memorial Day weekend, the Illinois public health director nonetheless delivered a string of good news on the COVID-19 pandemic at the daily briefing Tuesday in Chicago.

Dr. Ngozi Ezike reported 1,178 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases statewide Tuesday, a figure no doubt lowered by the state giving its lab workers a day off Monday for the first time in weeks. That brought the state total to 113,195 cases, while 39 new deaths — only slightly above the 31 reported Monday — took the statewide toll to 4,923.

“I’d also like to share some hope,” Ezike added. “For the week ending May 16, we reported out a total of 780 deaths. While 780 deaths of course represents 780 individuals who lost their lives — and families and loved ones and communities who are mourning those deaths — it still signals the first week where there have been fewer deaths than the previous week. And so I am hopeful that this fact is the beginning of a downward trend.”

Tuesday’s death count wasn’t altered by the holiday, and neither were the hospitalization figures, according to Ezike. Statewide hospitalizations for COVID-19 dropped to 3,788, with 1,035 patients under intensive care and 590 on ventilators.

(Facebook/Illinois Comptroller)

Gov. Pritzker said that represented a six-week low for hospitalizations, adding, “We seem to have come off the peak.”

Pritzker and Ezike continued to caution people against ignoring the stay-at-home order and the demands to wear masks in public and observe social distancing — even as the state prepared to move to the third phase of the Restore Illinois plan to reopen the economy as scheduled on Friday.

“Until we have a definitive cure and a vaccine, we must continue to protect ourselves from the virus and prevent further spread,” Ezike said. Although she granted that we are all learning to “coexist with COVID” on a “risk-benefit ratio,” she warned against people “expanding their circle” of friends or family in close contact.

“I can’t give anybody a COVID-free pass,” she said. “The more you increase your circle … the more risk.”

Pritzker said, “I am terribly dismayed, frankly,” at reports Illinoisans were “going and partying” across the border to the Indiana shore of Lake Michigan and Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. Citing data showing that Wisconsin had seen a 16 percent increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations since the state’s Supreme Court quashed a stay-at-home order similar to Illinois’s — with a 30 percent increase in Milwaukee — Pritzker called that “an example of what can happen,” adding, “The pandemic is still here. Just because the numbers are moving in the right direction in the state of Illinois, that does not mean that the virus has gone away. It’s still there. The reason that we’re doing so much better here in Illinois than we would otherwise have is because people have worn face coverings, people are washing their hands, they’re doing the things to keep themselves safe.”

Pritzker said that progress proves “the importance of everyday actions” in limiting transmission of the coronavirus. He called a gradual reopening of the economy, combined with continued mitigation efforts, “the keys to moving quickly through all the phases of Restore Illinois.”

“All of our goals should be to lower the rate of transmission,” Ezike said. “The least we can do is to wear our mask and promote social distancing.”