Fresh restrictions may be coming amid ‘unsustainable’ surge “ballooning out of control”
More drastic measures might soon be coming to Illinois as the state experiences a huge surge in positivity rates, hospitalizations, and deaths, Governor JB Pritzker warned on Thursday, November 5.
While there is no stay at home order in the works at the time of writing, in Thursday’s news conference Pritzer said the Illinois Department of Public Health is looking into imposing further mitigations regional and statewide to clamp down on the spread of coronavirus. He later tweeted “To all Illinoisans: I cannot stress enough the severity of our situation. IDPH is looking at proposing further regional and statewide restrictions because the rise in cases and hospitalizations is unsustainable.”
The announcement came only a couple of hours after Pritzer released that Illinois had surpassed a grim milestone of 10,000 deaths and its largest single-day increase since early June. 97 COVID-19 deaths were recorded in Illinois on Thursday, November 5, the most in one day since early June taking Illinois deaths to 10,030.
Today, we mark a terrible milestone in our state. Following our largest single-day increase in deaths since early June, Illinois has now surpassed more than 10,000 Illinoisans lost to COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/LtcJmNv0tE
— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) November 5, 2020
Pritzker also spoke of a record-breaking number of positive cases with 9,935 confirmed on Thursday. According to Pritzker, it isn’t just the metrics but what the hospitals are physically experiencing. Patients on a ventilator have doubled in a month going from 140 in early October to over 300. In the same amount of time, COVID-positive ICU patients have gone up by over 100%.
I can tell you these numbers until I’m blue in the face, but if local leaders don’t step up, if high-risk industries don’t act , if families don’t decide to put off that gathering, if people don’t wear a mask – we're headed down a dark, dark path toward where we were last spring.
— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) November 6, 2020
The governor refrained from giving any details or clues at what new restrictions could look like other than declaring that they would be regional and statewide and warning that if they aren’t enforced in “some areas of our state, that will mean you run out of hospital beds and nurses and doctors who can treat you.”
He finished his conference with “if local leaders don’t step up, if high-risk industries don’t act accordingly, if families don’t put off that gathering or dinner party, we’re heading down a very dark, dark path toward where we were last spring.
Watch Governor JB Pritzker and Dr. Ngozi Ezike of the Illinois Department of Public Health speak at Thursday, November 5’s news conference here:
Governor Pritzker Gives a COVID-19 Update https://t.co/CHZ3psNhw5
— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) November 5, 2020
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