•December 9, 2020•
By Capitol News Illinois

Hospitalizations for COVID-19 have fallen from their second-wave highs, but the death toll from the disease continues to mount.
While Gov. JB Pritzker said Monday he was encouraged by the trend in the 18 days since the state levied Tier 3 mitigations, he added, “the numbers still have a long way to go to move away from what could reasonably be called the danger zone.”
“In other words, the surge on top of a surge that national experts have said might define the holiday season is still the focus of our attention,” Pritzker said at his daily COVID-19 briefing in Chicago.
From Saturday through Monday, the state reported another 372 deaths, an average of 124 each day over the three-day span. The death toll surpassed 13,000 since the pandemic began, rising to 13,343 among 796,264 cases and 11.1 million test results reported.
Statewide, the rolling seven-day average case positivity rate was 10.3 percent Monday, the 15th straight day it has hovered between 10 and 11 percent.
At the end of Sunday, there were 5,190 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Illinois, an increase of 30 from the day prior. For the seven-day period ending Dec. 6, there were 5,484 people hospitalized each day on average. That’s a decrease of 461, or about 7.7 percent, from the week prior, the second week in a row the average decreased.
Approximately 28 percent of hospital beds remained open statewide, and Pritzker said COVID-19 hospitalizations are still 14 percent above spring highs.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.