Governor addresses Illinois COVID-19 response after record deaths

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker held a briefing Thursday on COVID-19 in the state, which this week reported a record number of virus-related deaths.

A total of 238 deaths were reported on Wednesday, although state officials have acknowledged the figures reported each day could include deaths that happened in earlier days but were not immediately reported to the state. Another 192 deaths were reported on Thursday, CBS Chicago reports.

The Illinois Department of Public Health has reported a total of 12,830 deaths from the virus so far. The state also reported 10,959 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, bringing the total to 759,562 cases since the start of the pandemic.

While deaths from the virus have continued to trend upward since early October, when a new surge of the pandemic started in Illinois, new cases started trending downward over the past few weeks. However, they remain far higher than they were at the start of October, CBS Chicago reports. Illinois is averaging 9,870 new cases per day over the past two weeks, compared to 11,914 per day over the previous two weeks. That's still more than four times the average of 2,452 cases per day during the first two weeks of October. As of Wednesday night, 5,653 virus patients were hospitalized in Illinois, including 1,170 patients in intensive care, and 693 patients on ventilators. While hospitalizations seem to have started trending downward since peaking at 6,175 on November 20, there are still far more COVID-19 patients in the hospital at the start of December than at the start of October.

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