County removed from pandemic warning status

GALENA–Jo Daviess County has been removed from the state’s list of counties at the warning level. Fourteen counties were added to the list last week–Bureau, Cass, Clinton, Franklin, Greene, Grundy, Hancock, Jefferson, Kane, LaSalle, Moultrie, Perry, Union and Will. Jo Daviess County was added to the list of warned counties on July 31.

“Just remember it goes week to week,” says Scott Toot, Jo Daviess County Board chairman.

Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) uses numerous indicators when determining if a county is experiencing stable COVID-19 activity, or if there are warning signs of increased COVID-19 risk in the county.

The indicators are:

•New cases per 100,000 people–If there are 50 new cases per 100,000 people in the county, this triggers a warning.

•Number of deaths–This metric indicates a warning when the weekly number of deaths increases more than 20 percent for two consecutive weeks.

•Weekly test positivity–This metric indicates a warning when the seven day positivity rate rises above eight percent.

•ICU availability–If there are fewer than 20 percent of intensive care units available in the region, this triggers a warning.

•Weekly emergency department visits–When the weekly percent of COVID-19-like illness emergency department visits increase by more than 20 percent for two consecutive weeks, this triggers a warning.

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•Weekly hospital admissions–A warning is triggered when the weekly number of hospital admissions increases by more than 20 percent for two consecutive weeks.

•Tests perform–This metric is used to provide context and indicate if more testing is needed in the county.

•Clusters–This metric looks at COVID-19 cases associated with clusters or outbreaks and is used to understand a large increase in cases.

“I think that we are fighting a war with the virus and we all need to get on the same team to defeat this virus,” said Toot. “We are up to 170,000 that passed away, there are some people that question those numbers. Even if you take off 70,000, that is still 100,000 people. Look at World War II, that was four years and they had 400,000 deaths. We have had 100,000 people pass away from this in six months.”

The state got its first glimpse of what a rollback would look like this week when region four, which includes counties in suburban St. Louis were rolled back and had new mitigation measures put into place due to three consecutive days of a test positivity rate of 8 percent or higher.

“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, I have made it clear that neither arbitrary dates on a calendar nor political pressure will dictate Illinois’ efforts to protect our people. If the data shows we need to go backwards in our reopening, I won’t hesitate to tighten restrictions to protect our collective health,” said Gov. J.B. Pritzker. “Region 4 of our statewide 11 reopening regions–the Metro East–has now surpassed an 8 percent seven-day rolling average positivity rate–a trend that I have made clear would trigger stricter mitigations when this plan was announced in July.”

Toot is one of many local leaders concerned about some segments of the population not taking the virus seriously.

“During World War II they had rationing and people had to make sacrifices,” said Toot. “I can guarantee that people wouldn’t have questioned it then. There has been a lot of confusion created about (the virus). The problem is it has been politicized.”

Toot is also concerned about the potential of a rollback from the state similar to what happened in region four, if local residents don’t take the virus seriously.

“I do not want to see us go back and I don’t want to see another shut down,” said Toot. “It was devastating.”