18 Comments - Dee Lay - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 12:22 pm: If you exclude region 6 (UIUC doing a ton of testing) the state is probably around 6% positive. We are kidding ourselves and the state needs to be more transparent. The same way we had to exclude NY/NJ right off the bat from nationwide data, we need to show the statewide data with and without Region 6 to give the state a better understanding of what is happening. Labor day is coming up and I fear we are going to be well over 4K/day some mid September. - Chatham Resident - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 12:27 pm: ==If you exclude region 6 (UIUC doing a ton of testing)== Will UIS (Region 3) and UIC (Region 11) also get some significant supplies of the new rapid UIUC testing kits? - Precinct Captain - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 12:47 pm: UIUC is having testing delays according to the Tribune today - UIS Grad Student - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 12:55 pm: Precinct Captain, UIS is also experiencing testing delays. Results were supposed to be available within 48 hours, but it seems that it is more like a week from what I’ve gathered from the emails warning of delays. Chatham Resident, all students and faculty on campus at UIS are required to get tested once a week. - bhartbanjo - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 1:20 pm: Here is the UIS page where they are posting current testing information. https://www.uis.edu/covid-19/testing/ They are behind a few days, and don’t yet have complete data to do the 7-day averages. - muon - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 1:48 pm: UIUC is doing a lot of testing and it shows with a Region 6 positivity rate of under 2%. However, it’s important to remember that Champaign county and Region 6 over all are only a few percent of the state population and big changes there don’t generally equate to big changes statewide. Also, Region 6 has a hot spot in the Effingham area unrelated to testing at UIUC and reduces the effect of the increased tests at UIUC on the regional numbers. Let’s be more specific about the impact of UIUC testing on the statewide positivity rate. The most recent posted data from IDPH is for the week ending 8/22. Champaign had a lot of tests that week, almost as many as suburban Cook. If I remove the reported number of tests and positives for Champaign County from the state totals for that week the positivity rate rises from 4.3% to 5.0%. The number of tests this week is averaging only slightly higher than last week, so I’d estimate that the current statewide rate would be between 4.8% and 4.9% without the UIUC tests. - Rich Miller - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 2:00 pm: ===UIUC is doing a lot of testing and it shows with a Region 6 positivity rate of under 2%=== Didn’t somebody say (on multiple occasions) that more testing would just find more cases? - ZC - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 2:02 pm: Region 5 looks like a matter of when, not if, to me. Kind of like Region 4, they’ve been dancing just under the daily 8% positivity rate for awhile now. - DownSouth - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 2:14 pm: A bit aggravated that Bryant is campaigning to have inmate numbers removed from county statistical data as “The Adminstration maintains staff give it to inmates, but inmates don’t give COVID to staff. If they are correct then why include inmate positives since there would be no risk of community spread?” Not helpful for region 4, not helpful for Randolph county. Just more grandstanding. - Pascal - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 2:30 pm: Muon: you are incorrect. This is a simple math problem. UIUC accounts for about 10 percent of statewide tests, with a positivity of 1.6. To calculate the average for the rest of the state: (9X + 1.6)/10 = 4.1 (9X + 1.6) = 41 9X = 39.4 X = 6.6 - Fixer - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 2:33 pm: Not sure why McLean isn’t on that warning list, given today is day three over 8% for here. Maybe tomorrow? - muon - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 2:37 pm: Rich brings up an important point and one that I think is worth noting a distinction. Test positivity rate and per capita positivity rate are two different measures and both can be useful in the right context. IDPH reports both rates in their metrics. In the week ending 8/22 Champaign County had a 0.6% positivity rate and 124 new cases per 100K residents. Compare that to Chicago with a 5.4% positivity rate but only 95 new cases per 100K. To the extent that UIUC has a population that mostly comes from Chicago and the collar counties, it tells me that the vast majority of UIUC tests are negative. It also says they are spotting more asymptomatic positive cases than the counties where many of the students originate. Presumably those extra positives are individuals that wouldn’t have normally been tested, but which if quarantined will help reduce the spread. - Nearly Normal - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 2:37 pm: From the pantagraph.com website–Eighty new COVID-19 cases were confirmed by the McLean County Health Department Friday, including 48 cases of people in their 20s. An infant under the age of one, has also tested positive. Since March 19, there have been 1,372 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in McLean County. As of Friday morning, 526 individuals were isolating at home and three remain hospitalized, said Jessica McKnight, the McLean County Health Department administrator. There are 827 people that have been released from isolation and considered recovered. McKnight reported that there was one new case of a youth between the ages of 10 and 17, five people in their 30s, three people in their 40s, four people in their 50s and three people in their 70s. The seven-day positivity rate jumped to 8.6%, the highest number to date. On Thursday, 832 people were tested at the McLean County Fairgrounds testing site operated by Reditus Laboratories. That shattered the previous record of 729 from Aug. 11. Graphs and data are on the McLean County health Department website– https://health.mcleancountyil.gov/708/CORONAVIRUS-COVID-19 - Cubs in '16 - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 3:20 pm: @Pascal Haven’t we been through enough already without you throwing equations at us? /s - muon - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 3:32 pm: @Pascal - it’s not about the percentage of tests and cases. That measure is way too crude given the disparity in positivity rates and overall population. It’s about the actual numbers. During the week of 8/16 to 8/22 there were 319,923 tests and 13,766 positive results. That’s a positivity rate of 4.3%. In Champaign County that same week there were 50,245 tests and a positivity rate of 0.6%, which means there were 301 positive results. Subtracting Champaign County from the state total gives 269,678 tests and 13,465 positive results for a positivity rate of 5.0%. All the above data is from the IDPH website. - Six Degrees of Separation - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 3:52 pm: Thanks for the math muon. It shows two things, that a slew of testing will bend the positive rate down, but also that one county (except maybe Cook or DuPage) doesn’t have that much effect on the overall positivity rate for the rest of the state. In other news, Iowa had more new COVID cases today than Illinois. 2,548 to 2,149. - Muon - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 3:58 pm: (5x + .6)/6 = 4.3 5x + .6 = 25.8 5x = 25.2 X = 5 Sorry I didn’t have the weekly data and was just relying on one day of reporting, either method works, mine just for not go from rates to raw data back to rates again. It is the same method you use to estimate the batting average of a team minus their star hitter, when all you have is their team average and star players average. - muon - Friday, Aug 28, 20 @ 4:25 pm: @Pascal? (@3:58 pm) - I understand your error. I’ll use estimates when I can’t get data and I’m confident that they won’t be too far off. If I can get the actual data, I’ll use that. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.