PEORIA, Ill. — A mere 59 residents of the Peoria, Tazewell, and Woodford tri-county over the past week tested positive for COVID-19, while four new deaths occurred.
The rolling seven-day average for new cases has dropped to eight, the lowest since the start of the pandemic.
With that, the Peoria City/County Health Department announced Thursday’s news briefing would be the last regularly-scheduled one.
“This is not a sign the pandemic is over or even COVID is over,” said Health Administrator Monica Hendrickson.
“The reasons why we feel comfortable moving away from these scheduled briefings are we are at a point where our hospitals are within their capacity, our cases have decreased significantly, and vaccinations are readily available.”
Hendrickson warned if wintertime is any indication, there could still be another spike.
“After mitigation, we were at some of our lowest levels, and then around St. Patrick’s Day, we started averaging over 200 cases in Peoria County, alone,” she said. “So, we need to continue to monitor.
“We are actually at a crossroads. There’s so much families, friends, businesses, and our community have done to stay healthy and safe, but we are not close to the end of our journey.”
Hendrickson identified the Delta variant of the virus as an indicator the pandemic remains a threat.
“But, there’s something we can do: vaccinate,” she added.
42% of Peoria County adults as of Thursday were vaccinated, a number that expands to 50% when also accounting for people ages 12 to 17.
Hendrickson said some area zip codes have 50%-70% of their populations vaccinated, but some zip codes are not even a quarter vaccinated, such as 61605, which has 20.6% vaccinated.
Even though the regular briefings are over, WMBD News will keep updating its running list of vaccination sites.
