The number of Covid-19 patients in Illinois hospitals is at its highest level in nearly a year.
As of Sunday night, there were 3,960 people hospitalized with Covid, the most since December of last year.
Of those in the hospital, 811 were in the ICU and 432 were on ventilators. State Public Health Director Dr. Ngoze Ezike says there is a common denominator in the patients.
“The vast majority of people in the hospital to the tune of 90% of all the hospital admissions are in people who are not vaccinated. We just really need to continue to get more of these individuals vaccinated so that we can have less people ending up in the hospital with Covid. Which I would say now is a vaccine-preventable illness.”
the majority of regions in the state are running low on room in the ICU, with eight out of 11 have less than 30 ICU beds available.
Locally the Pike County Health Department is reporting 261 new cases of Covid-19 over the last week, of which 92 cases were in children between the ages of 10 and 19 years old.
Pike County Health officials were also notified of the 68th death in the county attributed to the virus, one person in their 80’s passed away over the last week. Pike County now has 229 active cases with 10 people currently hospitalized.
the Scott County Health Department confirmed 35 new cases since the last reporting on December 13th. Scott County now has a total of 34 active with two people hospitalized.