BREAKING: Experts Advise Illinois To Issue Stay-Home Order Due To Spiking Covid Numbers
BREAKING NEWS: With covid-19 numbers beginning to soar nationwide, a consortium of researchers has recommended that some states — including Illinois — should again issue stay-home orders to stop the momentum of the outbreaks.
As of yet, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has remained optimistic about the state’s ability to turn the numbers around, however, he has acknowledged the negative trend.
Covid numbers have been on the rise in Illinois over the past few weeks, particularly surging around Chicago and Central Illinois, most notably Peoria, which could drive Region 2, which includes the Illinois Quad-Cities, back into mitigations.
A new map shows Illinois among the states which are recommended to go back into covid shut-downs due to a surge in numbers.
The recommendations and surge risk levels are based on a scale developed by the Harvard Global Health Institute and a collaboration of top scientists at institutions around the country, and were published by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, Census Bureau 2019 population estimates, 2010 Census (U.S. territories)
According to NPR, the consortium of researchers and public health experts who developed these risk levels advises states in the red category to issue stay-home orders. They advise orange states to consider stay-home orders, along with increased testing and contact tracing. Yellow states need to keep up social distancing and mask usage, and all states should continue testing and contact tracing.
The most recently released Illinois Region 2 covid numbers show a rising tide which doesn’t bode well.
Region 2 has seen a rise in covid cases for more than seven days, which would put it in danger of having some mitigations reinstated; it has seen three consecutive days with under 20 percent ICU bed availability, which also puts it in danger of having some mitigations reinstated, and its test positivity rate has been at 7.1 percent for two consecutive days, with 8 percent being the line to potentially trigger a warning or some mitigations. That is not to say that if all of those numbers are gone over slightly that Illinois Governor JB Pritzker would reinstate mitigations, but it could be a possibility as it would put our region in a warning zone.
The numbers in the Illinois Quad-Cities, while rising, are not going up massively. In fact, the potential mitigations would be driven by the Peoria area, which, according to data from the New
Numbers in the Peoria area are spiking in the wrong direction over the past week, prompting warning from Illinois officials of possible mitigations for Region 2.
York Times, is now the ninth-highest growing region in terms of covid cases, per capita, in the United States.
That has led some Peoria area restaurants and businesses to shut down or enact more mitigation policies, and has triggered the Illinois Department of Health to warn Region 2 of possible backsliding towards more mitigations and possible shutdowns in the coming weeks if numbers don’t improve. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker also announced that the state is sending more vaccines into the Peoria area to try to stop the surge.
A few weeks back, the Rock Island County Health Department warned of rising numbers in the Quad-Cities area, and has continued to monitor the situation. While the Rock Island County numbers aren’t rising as much as Peoria’s, given that Illinois judges the mitigation policies on the entire region rather than individual counties, Peoria’s numbers could result in the Illinois Quad-Cities being subject to those harsher mitigations.
Continue to follow QuadCities.com for more updates on this important issue.
