Illinois Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said Illinois now has a total of 52,918 confirmed cases of the virus in 97 counties, including 2,355 deaths.
Illinois saw the second highest number of new COVID-19 cases and second most virus deaths in a single day over the past 24 hours, with 2,563 new cases and 141 deaths since Wednesday.
Illinois Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said Illinois now has a total of 52,918 confirmed cases of the virus in 97 counties, including 2,355 deaths.
So far, Illinois has performed a total of 269,867 tests for the novel coronavirus, including more than 13,000 in the past 24 hours.
“Testing is vital to our efforts to reduce social restrictions, get our economy going, and to protect our residents,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.
For each day in the past week, Illinois has tested more than 10,000 people for the virus, a milestone Pritzker had hoped to reach weeks earlier.
“Accomplishing a goal of expanding testing involves much more than just a machine to run tests,” the governor said. “A lab needs the raw materials that are necessary to sustain and increase our testing output, and when this pandemic hit the United States, it became immediately evident that our nation just doesn’t produce enough of these raw materials to meet the need.
