Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike announced an additional 1,826 cases, lifting the number of cases statewide to 36,934.
Politicians and health officials have started saying that the curves in the Chicago area are beginning to flatten.
Can someone please show us where those are?
With Thursday's numbers — 1,826 new coronavirus cases in Illinois and 123 newly-reported fatalities — NBC 5 Investigates has discovered that the past week has actually given us some of the highest numbers to date.
Illinois’ three highest one-day reports of new coronavirus cases all occurred in the past week.
So did the five highest one-day death counts in Illinois.
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The same holds true — for both cases and fatalities — in Cook County as well.
We found the curves in many counties are getting steeper, not flatter. Death counts are on steep climbs in Boone, DuPage, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Winnebago counties in Illinois, as well as in Lake County in Indiana.
In fact, NBC 5 Investigates found several counties logged their highest death tolls ever on Thursday: DuPage County with 15 new deaths; Kankakee County with five new deaths; and McHenry County with four — all just in the past 24 hours.
Also over the past week, case counts climbed more steeply in nearly every county in the greater Chicago area: Boone, Kane, Kendall, LaSalle, McHenry, Will and Winnebago counties in Illinois; Jasper, Lake, Newton, Porter and St. Joseph counties in Indiana, and Kenosha, Racine, Rock and Walworth counties in Wisconsin.
And — once again — NBC 5 Investigates found several counties logged their highest count of new cases ever, just on Thursday: Boone and Rock counties with 13 new cases each; Kane with 99 new cases and Lake County, Illinois, with a record-setting 161 new cases.
In fact, it’s easier to point out the few counties where the curve does seem to be flattening.
Take a look specifically at Kankakee County, where each day’s addition of new cases seems to be leveling off. That’s the kind of flattening we’re hoping to see — in more than one Chicago-area county — over the next few weeks.
