Illinois reports lowest daily death toll from COVID-19 in 2 weeks

CHICAGO - There was some positive news Monday regarding Illinois' coronavirus battle.

Governor JB Pritzker says the number of COVID-19 patients needing ventilators is down, with only 22 percent of the state's ventilators in use by virus patients.

In addition, Illinois saw the lowest death toll in a single day in about two weeks.

"I'm hopeful, you know, when I saw this number today. I was hopeful that this was the beginning or, you know continuation of a trend that I've been praying for," he said.

The governor announced Monday that 46 people died from the virus in the past 24 hours. In total, 2,662 Illinois residents have died.

He also announced 2,341 new virus cases statewide, bringing the total to 63,840 confirmed cases.

"We're not through this yet. We're not done with this. The virus didn't go away. It's still out there," Pritzker said.

The governor says across the state, there are 933 ICU beds currently not in use. In Chicago, about 17 percent of ICU beds are available.

In the southwest suburbs, about 18 percent of ICU beds are available and that number shrinks to just 12 percent availability in the north suburbs.

Governor Pritzker was asked if he has a target date to reopen the state and says he wants to make sure every part of the state has enough beds and ventilators should there be another surge in COVID-19 cases.

“So what we want to make sure is that we were able to handle a spike, because that's what, you know, potentially could occur if we reopened things too fast and as to the setting a date…I will say that it really needs to be based on data and metrics,” he said.

Governor Pritzker says we will learn more about the "phases" of reopening before May 30, and it appears he is leaning towards a regional reopening in some fashion.