PEORIA, Ill. — The Tri-County region has reached 222 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Only one new case was reported in the last 24 hours, the case is in Peoria County.
Peoria County has 149 confirmed cases of COVID-19, Tazewell has 58, and Woodford remains at 15.
The recovery rate for the counties has increased to 73%, while 17% of cases are self-isolating and 4% are hospitalized.
Dr. Gregg Stoner with Heartland Health Services says the seven and 14 day trends are decreasing for intensive care unit capacity, as well as new cases.
“The total number of ICU beds in use right now are nine, person under investigations in ICU are two and confirmed patients are seven,” Stoner said. “Non-ICU beds in use are 25 and there have been no deaths in the last 24 hours.”
Dr. Ralph Velazquez, Chief Medical Officer for OSF Healthcare, said elective surgeries may resume at hospitals beginning Monday.
“Those elective surgeries here in Peoria at Saint Francis are less than half the volume that we normally do,” Velazquez said.
Velazquez said the lower number in surgeries being performed was intentional.
“There’s been a number of changes we’ve done to try and make the environment even safer for patients,” Velazquez said. “So, by reducing the volume, it allows us to test these new changes we’ve implemented.”
The changes include patients being dropped off at the door, escorted to the surgery from the parking lot, go through surgery, recovery, then escorted to be picked up with discharge instructions given to family members.
Velazquez said it is the kiss and drive method.
“Another component of that is creating parts of the hospital that are called non-COVID care zones, NCCZ’s,” Velazquez said. “These are zones where there would not be any COVID or COVID suspected patients.”
All hospital staff and visitors are screened before entering the facility.
