Illinois COVID Update: IL reports 30,319 new cases, 178 deaths over past week

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Illinois Department of Public Health officials reported 5,980 new confirmed and probable cases Friday.

Friday's numbers mark the largest one-day increase since 7,042 were reported on Jan. 22, 2021. It comes as Gov. JB Pritzker announced Friday that he will extend the vaccination deadline for health care workers and school employees.

All health care workers and K-12 teachers and staff, as well as higher education personnel and students, will now be required to get an initial dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 19, 2021.

IDPH also reported 30,319 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19, and 178 related deaths in just a week. That's up 18% from the 25,636 reported one week prior.

There have been 1,538,324 total COVID cases, including 24,067 deaths in the state since the pandemic began.

Illinois COVID vaccine map shows how many residents vaccinated by county

The preliminary seven-day statewide test positivity from Aug. 27-Sept. 2 is at 5.4%.

Since last Friday, laboratories have reported testing 609,585 specimens for a total of 29,177,890 since the pandemic began. Friday's update of variants of concern data, no variants saw an increase.

26 IL schools report COVID-19 outbreaks; 546 have 'potential exposures'

As of Thursday night, 2,286 patients in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 551 patients were in the ICU and 302 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.

More than 78% of Illinois adults have received at least one vaccine dose and more than 61% are fully vaccinated

A total of 14,005,857 vaccines have been administered in Illinois as of Thursday. The seven-day average in new doses administered has dropped from 40,046 to 26,431. That seemingly large drop is due to the 122,680 doses reported on Aug. 26 no longer being included in the 7-day average. Aug. 26's number of doses was much higher than normal due to a backlog of doses released by Will County.

Since last Friday, 185,014 vaccines were administered.