CHICAGO — Health officials said 19 coronavirus-related deaths have been confirmed in Illinois over the past day Sunday, the lowest daily number of deaths reported in the state since April 2.
According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, 672 new cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in the past 24 hours as well, bringing statewide totals to 132,543 confirmed cases and 6,308 related deaths to date. Of confirmed cases, 93 percent are believed to have recovered.
While the amount of coronavirus-related deaths reported by the state tends to dip on Sundays and Mondays generally, the number reported this week is the lowest overall since April 2, when 16 additional deaths were reported.
All regions of Illinois remain on track to move on to the next phase of reopening, according to the latest state data, while positivity rates dropped in most regions as well.
Republican state senators are pushing Governor JB Pritzker to speed up the timeline for moving Illinois on to the next stage of reopening as case rates continue to drop across the state, and many rural areas continue to see far fewer cases than urban areas like Chicago.
The availability of hospital resources including ventilators, intensive care unit beds and regular hospital beds remains at manageable levels as well. There are currently 1,914 patients hospitalized with confirmed or presumed cases of COVID-19 in Illinois, including 562 in intensive care and 328 on a ventilator.
After residents reported long lines at recently-reopened driver’s services facilities, Secretary of State Jesse White announced Friday that people in Illinois can now preregister online.
The number of new infections in China and South Korea have ticked up in recent days, with each reporting dozens of new cases on Saturday, showing how the disease can come back as curbs on business and travel are lifted.
In Europe, drugmaker AstraZeneca struck a deal Saturday to supply up to 400 million doses of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine to European Union countries, with the first doses going out sometime around the end of the year.