COVID-19 update
Friday, Mar 25, 2022 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Cases are up by a few hundred, or 7.7 percent from last week. Hospitalizations, a lagging indicator, are still dropping, down 11 percent. ICU usage decreased 27 percent and ventilator usage was down about 5 percent. Deaths fell by 11 percent. Test and case positivity rates are both up slightly from last week, but we’re talking fractions of a point. New vaccination doses are down again, this time by 7 percent. IDPH…
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today reported 8,039 new confirmed and probable cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including an increase of 109 deaths since March 18, 2022.
Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 3,061,224 cases, including 33,307 deaths, in 102 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years. Since March 18, 2022, laboratories have reported 563,249 specimens for a total of 56,891,628. As of last night, 470 individuals in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 64 patients were in the ICU and 33 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total test from March 18-24, 2022 is 1.4%. The preliminary seven-day statewide test positivity from March 18-24, 2022 is 1.6%.
A total of 21,315,893 vaccines have been administered in Illinois as of last midnight. The seven-day rolling average of vaccines administered daily is 7,513 doses. Since March 18, 2022, 52,589 doses were reported administered in Illinois. Of Illinois’ total population, more than 76% has received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, more than 68% of Illinois’ total population is fully vaccinated, and almost 50% is boosted according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
All data are provisional and will change. Additional information and COVID-19 data can be found at https://dph.illinois.gov/covid19.html.
Vaccination is the key to ending this pandemic. To find a COVID-19 vaccination location near you, go to www.vaccines.gov.
* NBC 5…
While numbers are still low in the city of Chicago in terms of new COVID cases, there is an uptick in cases that has been noted by health experts. As of Thursday, the city is averaging 177 new cases of COVID per day, a 29% increase over a week ago when the city was at 137.
* CNBC…
Omicron’s more contagious subvariant, BA.2, has more than doubled in prevalence over the past two weeks in the U.S. and now represents more than 34% of Covid-19 infections that have undergone genetic sequencing, according to data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week.
BA.2 has been steadily growing as a proportion of the Covid variants circulating in the U.S. since Feb. 5, when it represented about 1% of genetically sequenced virus samples, according to the CDC. BA.2 probably already accounts for 50% of new infections in the U.S. because many people are taking tests at home that aren’t picked up in the official data, according to Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
Data from Walgreens, which conducts testing at its pharmacies nationwide, shows BA.2 as the dominant variant, at 51% of all positive Covid cases for the week ending March 19.
Though BA.2 is rising in the U.S., leading public health officials are not expecting another dramatic surge in new cases, largely due to the level of immunity the population has from vaccination and the fierce outbreak during the winter omicron wave.
- Benjamin - Friday, Mar 25, 22 @ 1:11 pm:
Uh-oh. Hope nobody threw away their masks.
- Grandson of Man - Friday, Mar 25, 22 @ 1:21 pm:
“leading public health officials are not expecting another dramatic surge in new cases, largely due to the level of immunity the population has from vaccination and the fierce outbreak during the winter omicron wave”
That is the fervent hope. Hopefully we have reached a point where future outbreaks will be less severe. That would lessen the need for more stringent responses. We should still push for vaccination, and boosters that make a big difference, especially for the elderly and infirm.
- Walt - Friday, Mar 25, 22 @ 1:31 pm:
This might be pedantic of me …..but…. none of the variants are any more contagious than the original wuhan variant. There has never been scientific studies providing evidence of increased transmissibility. There have been studies showing a fitness advantage of SARS-cov2, and that advantage is presenting as immune evasion. So if you catch omicron it’s more able to wiggle around your antibodies and present symptoms at a higher rate than say delta. Which is in part why we saw a huge omicron spike.
- NonAFSCMEStateEmployeeFromChatham - Friday, Mar 25, 22 @ 1:46 pm:
==Cases are up by a few hundred, or 7.7 percent from last week.==
Looks like the after effects of “Halloween in March” celebrations coming home to roost.
- NonAFSCMEStateEmployeeFromChatham - Friday, Mar 25, 22 @ 1:47 pm:
All the more reason I don’t want to let down my guard yet.
- lake county democrat - Friday, Mar 25, 22 @ 1:57 pm:
Some backtracking was to be expected with the sudden drop of mitigation rules - the key is whether the increase in cases and hospitalizations stays modest. More and more people seem ready to “live with COVID’ if it remains as mild as the first omicron variant. High risk people soon may be able to go straight from a positive test to getting the Pfizer treatment at the drug store - no intervening need for a doctor to issue a prescription. All that said, it does seem like we’re always a month to early letting our guard down.
- Won’t go back - Friday, Mar 25, 22 @ 2:00 pm:
No more masks. Done being a team player. Wore it, vaxed, natural immunity from the April 2020 case and still had the omicron cold. Let’s move on.
- Michelle Flaherty - Friday, Mar 25, 22 @ 2:01 pm:
I forgot which post I’m on.
Is BA.2 our credit rating or the latest variant?
- Oswego Willy - Friday, Mar 25, 22 @ 2:11 pm:
===No more masks. Done being a team player.===
Well that’s not very humane. You were a team player except when it becomes inconvenient?
I’m glad you hit that off your chest, lol
To the post,
There’s following what society is requesting or requiring me to do and what I feel or know I should be doing for others.
I’m still a tester before seeing people I know could be hurt by me not testing and maybe exposing them unknowingly, I also am doing many things I’d normally have done in “before times”
I’m saying all that and in context to the post, testing and awareness, for me, is going to be the hallmark, and while I may go eat in restaurants or go out in general, catch a ball game, the likelihood of me in the near term going into a CVS or Walgreens without a mask isn’t that great, and I’ll honor establishments’ rules that some have to protect employees.
It’s about others, which in reality comes back to it coming to me.
Testing and awareness.