Illinois reported its third consecutive day with more than 100 COVID-19 deaths Tuesday. Meanwhile, most statistics the state uses to measure progress in combatting the coronavirus ticked up slightly.
On Tuesday, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 5,644 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 in Illinois, alongside 106 additional deaths caused by the virus.
Those deaths ranged in age from one man in his 20s to persons older than 100.
Statewide, the rolling seven-day average case positivity rate from Dec. 23 to Dec. 29 was 7.4 percent. That is two-tenths of a percentage point higher than the seven-day average case positivity rate reported Monday. The rolling seven-day case positivity rate has remained below 8 percent for 10 consecutive days.
Gov. JB Pritzker put the entire state under Tier 3 mitigations in November, which saw second-wave peaks in nearly every COVID-19 metric. The rolling case positivity rate remained above 10 percent for an entire month, from Nov. 7 to Dec. 7.
At the end of Monday, there were 4,313 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Illinois, an increase of 70 from the previous 24 hours.
There were 904 intensive care beds in use by COVID-19 patients as of Monday night, an increase of 20 from the previous 24 hours. That left 797 ICU beds available statewide, less than 25 percent of the total.
COVID-19 patients occupied 506 ventilators as of Monday night, a decrease of 9 from the previous 24 hours. That left 4,129 ventilators, or 72.5 percent of all ventilators available for use across the state.
More than 112,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in Illinois since the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were approved for emergency use earlier this month.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government and distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
