A second wave of the coronavirus has yet to subside in Kane County, with the county’s death toll climbing quicker than at any point in the past six months, according to public health data.
Statistics from the Illinois Department of Public Health show 62 Kane County residents have died from COVID-19 in the first 23 days of November; 58 deaths were recorded over the previous three months.
May remains the county’s deadliest month during the pandemic, with 123 people dying from coronavirus-related conditions that month.
As of Monday, 417 Kane County residents have died from COVID-19, public health data shows.
Fifty-six people in Region 8 — made up of Kane and DuPage counties — were hospitalized with COVID-19-like illnesses Thursday, the most recent day for which hospitalization data is available.
An average of about 500 people in Kane County have tested positive each of the past 10 days, the state’s data shows. That’s twice as high as that figure was at any point before Oct. 30.
Kane County’s seven-day rolling average of new cases — a measure that accounts for daily fluctuations in testing to show longer-term trends in coronavirus data — hit 207 in mid-May at the worst point of the first wave.
The county’s average surpassed that previous high Oct. 27 then soared to 595 cases Nov. 12, fueled in part by the county’s only day with more than 1,000 new cases (1,068 on Nov. 6).
That figure stands at about 494 cases, as of Monday.
The Illinois Department of Public Health imposed “Tier 3” restrictions Friday in all 11 coronavirus-management regions after a significant surge in cases and hospitalizations across the state. Tier 3 restrictions order some non-essential businesses to close, while many stores must now enforce capacity limits.
A region can move back to Tier 2 mitigations if its positivity rate drops below 12 percent for three consecutive days, if it has more than 20 percent of hospital beds open, and if it sees a sustained drop in hospitalizations for coronavirus-related illnesses.
The positivity rate in Region 8 dropped from 16 percent on Nov. 13 to 14.5 percent Monday, according to public health data. Kane County’s positivity rate has dropped two percentage points over the same period, from 18.4 percent to 16.4 percent.
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