Kendall Co. Reopening: Region 2 Surpasses 8% Positivity Threshold
KENDALL COUNTY, IL — As cases and hospitalizations keep rising across the state, the Restore Illinois region, to which Kendall County belongs, has crossed the 8 percent threshold for its coronavirus positivity rate. As of Friday, Region 2 has a positivity of 8.5 percent, according to data reported by the Illinois Department of Public Health.
The region is seeing a positivity increase for six consecutive days. Hospitalizations have also increased over the past 10-day period.
Region 2 is one of the two regions in the state that is currently not under added mitigations. During a press conference Monday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said that Region 2 is doing better than all the others in the state. Although better, its numbers are "nothing to write home about" and the region is also seeing a slight uptick in hospitalizations after levelling off in August and September, he said.
Any region that sustains an 8 percent positivity rate for three days in a row or sees an increase in positivity rates and simultaneous decrease in hospital capacity will need to implement additional community mitigation interventions, the IDPH website states.
Other than three days with average coronavirus positivity rates above 8 percent, restrictions can also be triggered by a combination of seven days out of the past 10 with increasing positivity rates — plus either a decline in hospital bed capacity below 20 percent or an increase for seven of the last 10 days in the rounded average number of new hospital admissions with "COVID-like illness."
Those measures could include restricting the size of social gatherings, reducing capacity at businesses or scaling back operations in industries that pose a higher risk of transmission, like indoor dining, bars, salons and personal care services.
The region has currently utilized 62 percent of its ICUs and 17 percent of its ventilators, according to IDPH data.
Positivity rate in Kendall County has also spiked and is at 9.3 percent as of Friday. This is a substantial increase from 6.5 percent two weeks prior. The county is also at a warning level for the number of new cases per 100,000 people. There are 179 new cases and the target is 50 or less.
As of Thursday, the Kendall County Health Department reports a total of 2,832 cases with 2,177 in recovery and 28 deaths. No new deaths have been reported in two weeks.
This article originally appeared on the Oswego Patch
