To:

Chemical Industry Council of Illinois (CICI) Members

From:

Mark Biel, Chief Executive Officer
[email protected] or 217/522-5805 

Re:

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update – As More Testing Comes Online, State Encourages “Essential Workers” to get Tested; Positivity Rates Continue to Decline; Update on COVID-19 Cases; Hospitalization Rates Continue to Improve; Decontamination & Disinfection Services

As More Testing Comes Online, State Encourages “Essential Workers” to get Tested: At today’s daily press conference, Governor Pritzker announced that even more testing sites have come online all across the state.  State’s public health officials also said individuals employed and working at “Essential Businesses”, with or without symptoms, are encouraged to seek testing.  This would include employees at a number of CICI member facilities.  Please refer to this IDPH press release for more information. 

These are the current testing sites with hours, testing parameters and contact information.  Again, this is not a comprehensive list of testing sites. Locations are continuously being added as information is provided.

Positivity Rates Continue to Decline: Even though Cook County today earned the dubious distinction of having the most cases of COVID-19 in the country, positivity rates all across the state continue to decline as increased testing hits its highest number ever.  The positivity rate for the last 24 hours of testing is at 9.1% for the entire state. The state’s current seven-day rolling average is at 12%, which is still well below the 20% threshold needed to be sustained for the state or individual regions to begin advancing to Phase 3 of reopening under Governor Pritzker’s plan.     

To put this in perspective, the cumulative statewide positivity rate in late February was 16.8%.  The state reached a peak positivity rate of 23.6% on April 4.  IDPH’s webpage tracks positivity and hospitalization rates for the state’s four regions.

Update on COVID-19 Cases: The Illinois Dept. of Public Health (IDPH) is now reporting a total of 4,058 deaths, an increase of 130 since yesterday. There are currently 90,369 positive cases of COVID-19 in Illinois, an increase of 2,432 cases from yesterday. In total, 538,602 people have now been tested in Illinois for the virus, an increase of 26,565 since Thursday, which is the largest one-day number of tests conducted so far.

You can check where these cases are occurring at the State of Illinois COVID-19 website which also contains more information on this outbreak. Also, IDPH has a case breakdown of the number of positive cases in Chicago and each county relative to the number of fatalities.  The IDPH website also now includes a breakdown of the cases under each zip code in the state. In addition, Western Illinois University has an put together this Map of COVID-19 Cases in Illinois & Surrounding States which gives you picture of where COVID-19 cases are occurring in relation to areas surrounding Illinois. 

Worldometer also has a site with pertinent statistics on a state by state breakdown and comparison. Also, the City of Chicago has a good categorization of the cases within the city.   

Hospitalization Rates Continue to Improve: Of the 90,369 positive cases in Illinois, there are 4,367 cases requiring some sort of hospital care. Of those cases, 1,129 patients, or 26% of hospital cases, require ICU care and 675 patients were on ventilators.  These hospitalized patients represent only 4.8% of all positive cases. As recently as April 27, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients was 10.1%.

Decontamination & Disinfection Services: If you need to decontaminate and disinfect a site with regards to COVID-19, here is a list of the following CICI members offering such services:

SET Environmental: https://www.setenv.com/news-updates/03-2020/bloodborne-pathogen-response-covid-19

Roux Associates: Roux Decontamination, Roux Loss Claims

GZA Environmental - Deep Cleaning & Disinfection Services

Ramboll - https://ramboll.com/media/rgr/responding-to-covid19

TRC Companies: https://www.trccompanies.com/services/covid-19-resources/

ERC Midwest: https://ercmidwest.com/

Heritage Environmental Services: https://www.heritage-enviro.com/coronavirus/ and Heritage Business Services

 

1400 E. Touhy Ave, Suite 110
Des Plaines, IL 60018
Tel: (847) 544-5995
Fax: (847) 544-5999