COVID-19 vaccine

Tri-County health officials reported eight new COVID-related fatalities since Friday, pushing January's death total to 132 and exceeding every month over the past two years except December 2020

On Tuesday, the Peoria City/County Health Department reported six new deaths in the past 24 hours, a day after announcing seven deaths over the weekend.

Dr. Ravi Kashyap is an ICU physician and pulmonologist at UnityPoint Health Central Illinois' Methodist hospital.

Figures provided by the Peoria City/County, Tazewell County, and Woodford County health departments indicate a total of 7,992 area residents are now isolating at home with coronavirus infections.

Tri-County public health officials on Wednesday announced 11 more fatalities linked to COVID-19, marking the largest single-day increase in nearly a year.

The active COVID-19 caseload in Peoria County has tripled over the past three weeks, and the entire Tri-County has added more than 10,000 new cases during that span.

The hospital systems serving the Tri-County are battling a massive COVID-19 surge as active cases in the region topped 5,000 this week for the first time in more than a year, with more than 1,800 new infections reported from Tuesday to Thursday.

Peoria-area hospitals are treating 60 patients with COVID-19, while another 3,008 infected Tri-County residents are isolating at home. That’s the highest number of active cases reported in the region since 4,790 on Dec. 30.

One year after COVID-19 vaccines first became available, a little more than half of Tri-County residents are fully vaccinated, and Peoria City/County Health Department Administrator Monica Hendrickson says that is driving the region’s most significant surge in cases since the spring.

Active COVID-19 cases in the Tri-County have topped 2,500 for the first time since mid-April, increasing more than five-fold over the last six weeks.