CHICAGO — Another 107 Illinoisans were reported dead from coronavirus during the past day.
The most recent victims included 24 people from Cook County, including a man in his 40s and four people in their 50s.
At least 18,398 people have died from COVID-19 in Illinois, and another 1,887 deaths are probably related to the virus, according to the state.
The state also reported 4,822 confirmed cases during the past day. That brings the total number of confirmed cases in Illinois up to 1,081,354.
Chicago and Illinois are weeks into vaccinating people, and new cases, hospitalizations and deaths have dropped in the city and statewide since a mid-November peak.
The state is administering an average of 21,869 vaccine doses per day, based on a seven-day rolling average. So far, Illinois has administered at least 451,560 vaccine doses out of the 864,150 it’s been allocated directly. More than 105,000 doses of vaccine have been administered to Chicagoans.
Another 524,050 doses have been provided for long-term care facilities in Illinois, and 86,180 vaccines have been administered in those settings. Those vaccinations are done through a federal partnership with pharmacy chains.
All together, at least 537,740 vaccines have been administered in Illinois.
Illinois will start vaccinating people 65 and older and frontline workers when it moves into Phase 1B of vaccinations Monday. Illinoisans will be able to make appointments to get vaccinated at pharmacies, state-run mass vaccination sites and other places, Gov. JB Pritzker announced last week. The state will soon put up a website with information about how people can sign up to be vaccinated.
Chicago — which has a separate vaccination campaign — will also move into Phase 1B on Monday, said Dr. Allison Arwady, head of the Chicago Department of Public Health. She said the city will release more information this week about how people can make appointments.
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The state is peeling back some of its coronavirus safety restrictions as regions get their outbreaks more under control. Chicago has been moved into Tier 2, allowing museums and sports to reopen.
The city has a stay at home advisory that recommends everyone stay at home as much as possible, only leaving for essential activities such as work and to get groceries. Arwady has also said people should not travel to other states since COVID-19 is surging across the United States.
At the same time, a more contagious variant of the virus from the United Kingdom has been found in Chicago.
And officials have cautioned it will be months before vaccines are widely available to the public. Chicago’s plan tentatively predicts vaccines will be available to everyone 16 and older by late May.
That means people are still at risk and will have to continue taking precautions for much of 2021, officials have said. People should keep wearing a mask, staying socially distant, washing their hands frequently, not gathering, not traveling and not having people into their home, experts have said.
Illinois’ seven-day positivity rate fell to 5.5 percent Wednesday with 86,121 tests reported. It was at 5.7 percent Tuesday. The figure represents the percentage of people testing positive among recent tests.
Illinois’ seven-day test positivity, which measures the percentage of tests that were positive, fell to 6.8 percent Wednesday. It was at 6.9 percent Tuesday.
As of Tuesday night, 3,284 people were hospitalized with coronavirus in Illinois, including 722 people in the ICU and 379 people using ventilators.
In Chicago, 17 deaths and 672 confirmed cases were reported since Tuesday. There have been at least 4,476 deaths from COVID-19 in Chicago and 226,856 confirmed cases, according to state data.
The city is seeing an average of 12 deaths per day, down from an average of 14 deaths per day the week prior.
An average of 902 confirmed cases are being reported per day, a 17 percent decrease from the previous week. At the same time, testing has fallen by 5 percent.
The city’s seven-day positivity rate is at 7.7 percent, down from 10.3 percent the week before.
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