WILL COUNTY – Five weeks ago, Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) remove Will County from a list of state counties listed under the cautionary alerts. On Friday, the area was listed again at warning levels along with 33 other counties across Illinois.
Other counties listed in warning levels included Adams, Alexander, Boone, Cass, Christian, Clay, Clinton, Crawford, DeKalb, DeWitt, Jasper, Jefferson, Jo Daviess, Johnson, Kane, Lee, Macon, McDonough, McHenry Mercer, Monroe, Pike, Pulaski, Randolph, Saline, Stephenson, Union, Vermilion, Warren, Washington, Wayne, Whiteside, and Winnebago.
As of Friday, the Will County Health Department had reported 16,181 cases in the county since the pandemic began, including 415 deaths.
The agency reports reasoning’s for counties reaching warning levels include outbreaks associated with gatherings in people’s homes, weddings, funerals, bars and clubs, university and college parties including outbreaks associated with college sports, long term care facilities, corrections centers, schools and cases at large among the community, associated with those in their 20s.
The announcements came as IDPH released new record numbers of COVID-19 cases. Friday afternoon IDPH reported 4,554 new cases of the virus among 87,000 tests ran in the past 24 hours. The agency also reported 38 new deaths, two from Will County.
As of Friday, IDPH had reported 336,174 cases of COVID-19, including 9,165 deaths.
Illinois’ seven-day statewide positivity went up again on Friday and now sits at 5.1%. Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 87,759 specimens for a total of 6,618,768. As of last night, 2,016 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 410 patients were in the ICU and 151 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
