The Illinois Department of Public Health announced today that there are 1,624 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 20 additional deaths. The IDPH is also reporting that region 3 which includes Sangamon, Christian, and Montgomery Counties have hit the “warning level” due to the increase in positivity rate. The region has had 7 days in a row of positivity increases. 

In central Illinois, there were 44 new positive COVID tests on Wednesday and Thursday morning with 25 of those in Sangamon County and 8 in Macon County. The seven-day positivity rates for the area as of July 11th are Christian County at 1.4%, Montgomery County at 2.9%, Shelby County at .5%, Sangamon County at 2.7%, Macon County at 1.3%, Moultrie County at 2.3% and Fayette County at 1.3%.

IDPH is reporting a total of 166,925 cases, including 7,367 deaths. Labs over the last 24 hours have reported 39,706 tests for a total of 2,388,193 tests complete.  The seven-day positivity rate for all of Illinois from July 16th through the 22nd is up .2% to 3.4%. 1,473 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19.  Of those, 309 patients were in the ICU and 135 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.

For health questions about COVID-19 call 1-800-889-3931 or email dph.sick@illinois.gov. For a complete look at breakdowns of the Regional Radio listening area visit taylorvilledailynews.com and click on the “current coronavirus cases by county” icon at the top of the page.