Illinois Officials Say Omicron Cases Have Peaked In State

“The threat is in no way over, but the news is good in terms of the direction that it’s turning," Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said at a news conference.fueled by the omicron variant is slowing statewide and in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city.

But even as record numbers of hospitalizations decline, authorities said health care resources are still stretched to the limit.“We are a long way from being out of the woods,” Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said at a news conference. “The threat is in no way over, but the news is good in terms of the direction that it’s turning.”

At a separate briefing, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced that since Jan. 13, when the number of hospital patients statewide hit an all-time high of 7,308, it’s dropped nearly 12%. “But there are an awful lot of people still battling for their lives in hospitals across the state...,” Pritzker said. “We have lost so many people in recent weeks” — 1,500 just since the beginning of the year.

Most of those were never vaccinated. Nine in 10 people now hospitalized with the omicron variant have not received protective initial inoculations or booster shots.In Chicago, COVID-19 test positivity peaked at nearly 20% on Jan. 1 and is about 13% currently. The peak of daily cases was 8,553 on Jan. 4 and currently is averaging just under 3,000 a day. Hospitalizations haven’t dropped but started to plateau.

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