COVID-19 infections fell again on Monday with 4,699 new cases, the lowest since the end of October as health departments and hospitals prepare to reach 174,000 doses of the recently approved vaccine on Wednesday and Thursday. by Moderna Inc.
To date, 63,000 Illinois health workers outside of Chicago have received the first doses of the two-shot vaccine. Chicago maintains a separate count.
And 60,450 more doses of the Pfizer vaccine should be delivered on Tuesday and Wednesday, Governor JB Pritzker’s office announced.
The Illinois Department of Public Health also reported 98 more deaths from respiratory disease.
New case records are usually lower on Mondays due to delayed notification over the weekend.
Following federal protocols, all of this week’s vaccines are aimed at health care workers, but CVS and Walgreens officials are coordinating the logistics of shooting people in long-term care centers beginning Dec. 28.
“We will reach nearly 900 specialized nursing and assisted living facilities in Illinois, with the potential for 150,000 Illinois patients to access the vaccine,” CVS spokesman Charlie Rice-Minoso said. “We will provide approximately 2,700 on-site clinics over the next 12 weeks.”
CVS is being inoculated this week at nursing homes in other states and vaccines are being well received, he said.
Illinois hospitals have been treating 4,460 patients with the virus since Sunday night. This is below the seven-day average of 4,667 and below the hospitalization highs of November’s 5,000 and 6,000, but remains a worrying level, experts said.
Last week, the IDPH and Chicago received about 109,000 doses of vaccine separately.
“By the end of this week, the DuPage County Health Department is expected to receive the first shipment of the Modern vaccine,” said spokeswoman Stephanie Cavillo. “We continue to work with local health systems to coordinate timely deliveries of their vaccine allocation.”
Moderna’s rise is good news after Pritzker announced Wednesday that the state would get only 50% of Pfizer’s assigned vaccines this week.
Loyola University Medical Center manages three vaccine clinics and had exhausted about half of its allocation as of Monday, said regional clinic manager Richard Freeman.
“We don’t want to lose any momentum,” he said. After vaccinating medical staff, the hospital wants to start inoculating patients with underlying medical conditions such as cancer, Freeman said.
Initially, some vaccines were first delivered to a Peoria state warehouse, but now the doses will be directed directly to hospitals, Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said.
Although the state operates under strict COVID-19 restrictions with closed movie theaters, banquet halls and no indoor dining room, the crowd spans indoor and outdoor malls on Sunday picking up gifts.
This poses a risk of contracting the virus, said pediatrician Michael Bauer, medical director of Northwestern Medicine and Lake Forest Hospital.
But if you take that risk, mask yourself, be smart about social distancing, and “don’t stay in line,” Bauer advised.
“If inside a store they only allow 10 people, but outside there are 50 people in line, and it’s like a typical line that doesn’t distance itself. I wouldn’t be waiting on that kind of line,” he said.
The positivity rate of cases in COVID-19 cases is 7.5% based on a seven-day average.
The number of COVID-19 cases in Illinois since the pandemic began is 905,069, with 15,299 deaths.
Laboratories processed 86,454 tests in the last 24 hours.