The state has now seen 61,499 total cases of the virus and 2,618 people have died. Now 319,313 people in Illinois have been tested.

Newly reported deaths Sunday include 47 in Cook County. Five people died in Winnebago County, three in DuPage, two in Madison and Lake, and one each in Jefferson, Kane, Monroe and Will counties.

Illinois has surged to the fourth-most cases of any state, according to a New York Times nationwide database. Cook County, in particular, has one of the highest totals of any county in the nation.

Pritzker believes testing has a lot to do with it.

“I would ignore, a little bit, the gross testing numbers, and instead look at the positivity rate,” Pritzker said. “How many people did we test? Among the people we tested, how many tested positive? That is a number that ought to be going down.”

That number has fluctuated between daily 15% and 21% over the past week. Sunday’s reported tests yielded a 15.4% positivity rate. The WHO recommends a 10% positivity rate in order to reopen a country’s economy.

“We want it to go down even further,” Pritzker said of Illinois’ rate. “It’s an indication that there’s a lower infection rate across the state.”

In another positive sign, Illinois’ COVID-19 hospitalizations decreased for the fourth consecutive day, according to IDPH data. The highest single-day total of COVID-19 patients hospitalized was Tuesday, with 5,036 patients. That number decreased to 4,953 on Wednesday, 4,900 on Thursday, 4,717 on Friday and 4,701 on Saturday, which is the most recent day available.

The state’s worst-case scenario has, thus far, not come to pass. Illinois even sent back 100 ventilators that California had provided it.

“As it turns out, our stay at home order and all the other restrictions, the mitigation efforts that we put in place, have worked,” Pritzker said. “And so we do not need all the ventilators that we thought we would.”

As of late Saturday night, Illinois had 4,701 COVID-19 patients in the hospital, of those, 1,232 are in the ICU and 759 are on ventilators. The state has 10,950 open hospital beds.

Right now, the state has well over 3,000 ventilators, and Pritzker believes it could be enough to weather a second wave, if one comes in the fall.

As of Sunday, Chicago has seen 24,864 confirmed cases of COVID-19, while the rest of Cook County has seen 17,460.

Lake County has seen 4,161 confirmed cases, DuPage 3,611, Will 2,868, Kane 1,935, McHenry 742, Kendall 305, Ogle 129, DeKalb 129, Whiteside 92, La Salle 67, Grundy 43, Lee 25, Bureau 12 and Carroll 10.

ODDS AND ENDS

Boating: Pritzker said the boating limit to two people per boat is up to local law enforcement to enforce. He said the two-person limit is because many boats confine people to a small area.

The limit restricts families from boating, even if all members of the family live in the same household.

“If you can’t maintain a six-foot distance between each person in a party, then you shouldn’t be together in that space,” Pritzker said. “Many boats, most boats that people can afford, don’t really make room for more than two people.”

Hair salons and barbers: The new stay-at-home order that began Friday allows pet groomers to open, but keeps hair salons and barber shops closed. Pritzker said it simply comes down to the fact that there’s more person-to-person contact in a hair salon.

“At a hair salon, it would be nearly impossible to perform a haircut on somebody without being very, very close to them,” Pritzker said. “I’m not a doctor – and I do ask the epidemiologists and experts about these things – and that’s what I understand is the difference between why a dog groomer and not a barber [can open].”