State health officials today reported 1,683 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized throughout Illinois, down 32.6% from a week ago.

Of those hospitalized, 313 are in intensive care, according to Illinois Department of Public Health officials. That’s down 30.3% from a week ago.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a series of new initiatives today in an effort to boost the state’s number of front-line health care workers.

Illinois hospitals are reporting 1,335 fewer staffed beds than a year ago, a 4.1% drop. IDPH officials reported 32,604 staffed hospital beds this time last year. Today, there are 31,269.

The state’s Pipeline for the Advancement of the Healthcare Workforce program opens up state financial resources to entice people to a career in nursing and other health care service jobs.

IDPH officials also reported 104 more deaths from the virus, as well as 3,323 new cases of the respiratory disease.

That brings the state’s death toll from COVID-19 to 32,176, while 3,007,987 infections have been diagnosed since the outset of the pandemic.

The state’s seven-day case positivity rate is at 2.8%, down from 4.9% a week ago. Case positivity is the percentage of test results that yield a new case of the disease. A seven-day average is used to account for any anomalies in the daily reporting of those figures.

IDPH officials are also reporting 19,766 more doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered statewide as well.

Vaccine providers have now administered 20,929,507 doses of the vaccine since they became available in December 2020.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting 66.9% of the state’s roughly 12.7 million residents are now fully vaccinated. Of those fully vaccinated, 48.6% have received a booster dose.