The number of people being admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 is dropping quickly in Illinois after cases peaked earlier this month, state data shows.
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) reported 4,824 people in hospital beds across the state on Wednesday.
864 of those are in intensive care unit beds and 485 are on ventilators, IDPH data shows.
At the peak, 7,380 people were in hospital beds across the state two weeks ago on January 12.
New hospital admissions for COVID-19-like-illness have dropped from a high of nearly 650 new admissions per day to under 400 new admissions per day this week.
On Monday, health officials marked the two-year anniversary of the first COVID-19 case reported in Illinois.
Since then, more than 30,000 COVID-19 deaths were reported in the state.
“On January 24, 2020, when we announced the first case of COVID-19 in Illinois, we were not imagining that two years later we would still be battling the virus with this ferocity,” IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said.
“While we have seen the highest number of cases and hospitalizations throughout the entire pandemic this January, we are cautiously optimistic that those numbers will continue to decrease as quickly as they rose due to the Omicron variant,” Ezike added.
Officials continue to urge residents to get vaccinated and boosted.
“We have learned a great deal in the two years since the first case was reported in Illinois and we continue to learn as this virus and its variants are constantly changing,” Ezike said.
“We now have safe and effective vaccines; we have oral antiviral and monoclonal antibody treatments; and we know that proper masking, testing, and isolation and quarantine can help slow the spread of the virus.”