SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Gov. J.B Pritzker said Illinois on Tuesday reached another milestone.
Illinois became the number one state in the country for COVID-19 testing per capita, overtaking New York.
“There is much more work to do to advance testing, to make it even more widely available, but I do want to recognize the folks who made this happen,” he said, pointing specifically to Illinois Department of Public Health, university partners, commercial labs, and hospitals.
Pritzker said all four regions of Illinois were on track to move to phase three of Restore Illinois by the end of the month.
“I can say with confidence, here in Illinois, we’ve committed to operate with a focus on public health and transparent, measurable benchmarks to move to each new phase,” he said.
Phase three is titled “recovery,” in which manufacturing, offices, retail, barbershops, and salons could reopen with certain guidelines.
Gatherings of ten or fewer people would be allowed.
Dr. Ngozi Ezike with the IDPH said the stay at home order is working.
Without the order, Illinois could have seen over tens of thousands of deaths, according to Ezike.
“Back in March, if you did not commit to our safety so early on, Illinois would not be ready to be advancing to the next phases of our Restore Illinois plan,” she said.
“We must continue to follow the data.”
Wearing face coverings, social distancing, washing hands frequently, and cleaning frequently touched surfaces is what is going to help the state move into the next phases of Restore Illinois, Ezike emphasized.
“Picture, if you will, dominoes lined up,” she said.
“You knock over the first dominoes, and the other dominoes are closely behind it, the rest will fall in succession. However, if you take some of those dominoes out of the line or space them further apart, and then knock over the first domino, the rest of the line does not fall, because there isn’t another domino to contact.
“So think of that as, some of the dominoes stayed at home, or if the next domino is too far away to be knocked over, think of that as social distancing.”
Ezike announced 1,545 new cases of COVID-19 in Illinois, adding to a total of 98,030 confirmed cases.
An additional 146 deaths related to the virus were also reported in the past 24 hours, bringing Illinois’ total lives lost to 4,379.
Ezike also announced another encouraging trend: hospitalization numbers were the lowest daily numbers since such reporting began April 12.
“It is great news, to fall under 4,000 for number of people hospitalized,” she said.
“It is a good sign there is fewer people in the hospital, but we have to remember things are going to start changing, so we will continue to follow these numbers, and this is why we need a hard reset and can’t just jump from phase two to phase four.
“With each phase, we’ve made changes in loosening things up, so we want to make sure these new things coming on board are not resulting in another spike or increase.”
Ezike said that majority of those who test positive do recover from the virus.
“And we have consistently seen that 70-74% of individuals after 28 days following their positive test have reported that they were fully recovered,” Ezike said.
