BREAKING NEWS: Covid numbers for Illinois Region 2, which includes the Illinois Quad-Cities, continue to worsen, bringing our area ominously close to potential mitigations, according to data released over the weekend.

As earlier reported on QuadCities.com, covid-19 numbers in Illinois Region 2, which includes the Quad-Cities area, have been surging over the past two weeks, putting the area at risk for mitigations and a shutdown of some activities.

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.

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 York Times, is now the ninth-highest growing region in terms of covid cases, per capita, in the United States.

Cases are spiking in the Peoria area, which is a large portion of the population of Region 2, which includes the Quad-Cities. Consequently, the

The most recently released Illinois Region 2 covid numbers show a rising tide which doesn’t bode well.

numbers for the larger population areas skew the total numbers for the region, and when one of the larger population centers experiences a surge, it places the entire region in jeopardy of moving backwards into mitigations.

Data shows that the new spike in cases is overwhelmingly due to people under 40 contracting the virus, and it’s been speculated that it’s been driven by more people going out to bars and other social gatherings, as well as high school and college sports.

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.

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Sean Leary Director of Digital Media

Sean Leary is an author, director, artist, musician, producer and entrepreneur who has been writing professionally since debuting at age 11 in the pages of the Comics Buyers Guide. An honors graduate of the University of Southern California masters program, he has written over 50 books including the best-sellers The Arimathean, Every Number is Lucky to Someone and We Are All Characters.