Central Region meeting benchmarks established in Restore Illinois plan

New modeling data shows that the State of Illinois’ COVID-19 cases won’t peak until mid-June, according to Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

The updated model, developed by the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Northwestern University’s School of Medicine, University of Chicago, is the result of adding two-and-a-half weeks of data. 

“The essence of models is that they get smarter over time,” Pritzker said. 

Earlier models had Illinois experiencing a peak in late April or early May.

“In many ways, this news is disheartening,” Pritzker said. “Pushing the peak down, and to a longer time frame, might not sound like good news to some, but I promise you, it is saving lives.”

Despite the extension of Illinois’ peak, Pritzker said that the three of the  four regions established in the “Restore Illinois” plan are currently on pace to move to Phase 3 by the end of the month.

“That is under our current Phase 2 mitigations,” Pritzker said. 

“There are those who advocate, removing all restrictions now, or at the end of this month, rather than taking the gradual course that our restore Illinois plan does. If we were to lift all of our mitigations entirely at the end of the month. Modeling shows that there would be a new surge of COVID-19, and a higher are not in each of the four regions, even in the least hard hit regions of our state.

Pritzker promised to share the numbers from each region once a week during Monday’s press conference. 

All regions, except the Northeast region, which includes Cook, McHenry, Lake, Kane, DuPage, Kendall, Grundy, Will and Kankakee counties, are meeting all the benchmarks for moving to Phase 3. 

According to the Restore Illinois plan, each region has to meet the following requirements to move into the next phase:

• At or under a 20 percent positivity rate and increasing no more than 10 percentage points over a 14-day period, AND; 
• No overall increase (i.e. stability or decrease) in hospital admissions for COVID-19-like illness for 28 days, AND; 
• Available surge capacity of at least 14% of ICU beds, medical and surgical beds, and ventilators.

The Northeast region of Illinois currently has a 22.3%, positivity rate, which is of course higher than the 20% cap on this metric.

“This positivity rate cap will be measured over a 14-day period. So there’s time for the Northeast region to fall below this cap,” he said.

The North Central Region is sitting at 9.1%, currently, while the central region at 6.0%, and the southern region at 10.5%.

All of the regions have seen a decrease in hospitalizations since May 1st. The Northest region saw a 18.6% dip in the Northeast region, 35.8%decrease in the North-Central region, 44.4% decrease in the Central region, and 54.3% decrease in the Southern region.

Likewise, all regions meet the requirement of available surge capacity of at least 14% of ICU beds, medical and surgical beds, and ventilators available. 

The Northeast has 17.8% of ICU bed availability, 18.8% of bed availability and 64.3% of ventilators available. The North Central region has 41.1% of ICU availability, 40.6% bed availability and 64.9% of ventilator availability.

The Central Region has 44.2% of ICU bed availability, 52.4% of bed availability and 74.6% of ventilators available. The Southern region has 28% of ICU availability, 45.8% bed availability and 80.7% of ventilator availability.

A requirement to move forward to next phase is that a region sees no overall increase, rather stability or a decrease, in hospital admissions for COVID-like illness across a 28-day period.

As of midnight May 8, all four regions met the third requirement of available surge capacity of at least 14 percent for ICU beds, medical/surgical beds, and ventilators.

“Remember that no one can truly stop this virus, without a vaccine,” Pritzker said. “But what we’ve been aiming to do since early March is slow down the exponential rate of transmission. When we do that, it leads to a slower rate of infections, over a longer period of time, giving our healthcare system, the ability to treat those who have complications and giving our pharmaceutical researchers, time to develop effective treatments and potentially a vaccine.”