CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Coronavirus cases in Illinois continue to climb upward as health officials announced the highest daily caseload of new infections since the start of the pandemic on Thursday.
Another 6,363 people tested positive for the disease, including 56 new deaths, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
At his daily press conference, Gov. Pritzker combed through the COVID-19 data of the last month, representing the steep climb the state has seen and that could only get worse, he said.
Pritzker and health officials said hospitalizations in the state are up 73% since the start of October, averaging 2,700 patients in the hospital.
He said this also applied to patients in the ICU and on ventilators. On Oct. 1, the state saw about 360 in the ICU statewide. Now, there are over 580 in the ICU.
Patients on ventilators are up 61% since the start of the pandemic, which is worrisome, he said.
"Too many patients who end up on ventilators don’t come back," Pritzker said.
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Deaths have gone up since the start of the month too, he said, with an 82% rise.
Dr. Ngozi Ezike, the state's top doctor, said the data and new numbers from the last 24 hours point to the gravity of the state's second surge.
As of last night, 3,030 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 643 patients were in the ICU and 269 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators, she said.
"As these numbers surge, public health officials are being stretched very thin," Ezike said.
Seeing the surge happen statewide, Pritzker also announced new coronavirus restrictions in central Illinois. Region 3 – which encompasses Quincy, Springfield and much of West-Central Illinois – now has an average positivity rate of 8% or higher for three days, hitting 8.8% Thursday, he said.
“Starting Sunday, they will join the majority of the state in operating under resurgence mitigations,” Pritzker said. “Something has got to give, and these mitigations aim to cut down on those high-risk activities until we bring down the positivity rate in an area once again."
Pritzker said that even "well-meaning and reasonable people" can have fair disagreements about how and where to draw lines and connect dots on COVID-19 restrictions, but they are needed to try and prevent the virus spread, he said.
"When every single metric in every single corner of the state is trending poorly, we have to take meaningful action to keep our people safe," he said.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, 395,458 people in Illinois have tested positive for the virus, 9,675 of whom have died.