There are signs Illinois’ latest surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations may be subsiding.
New hospital admissions and hospitalizations are declining and Illinois posted its lowest daily new case count since early August.
“I couldn’t give you a date on when we might be able to alleviate some mitigations but, it’s certainly heartening to see, as I have, that hospitalizations are not going up,” Gov. JB Pritzker said Monday. “That’s a very important indication that maybe things have flattened out.”
Currently, 2,247 people are hospitalized with COVID-related illness, the lowest number in nearly two weeks. Gov. Pritzker expressed cautious optimism that improving numbers may lead to relaxing the state’s indoor mask mandate.
“None of us prefer to wear masks indoors or prefer to follow mitigations but this pandemic is unfortunately still with us so we’re just going to have to be careful,” he said.