Illinois has more COVID-19 patients in the hospital than at any point since Feb. 21, according to new data from the Illinois Department of Public Health.

As of late Wednesday, Illinois had 1,291 COVID-19 patients in the hospital, an increase of 45 patients from Tuesday and the most since February 21. Of those, 149 were in intensive care units, the most since March 3, and 53 were on ventilators.

The increasing hospitalizations come as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest data show the BA.5 variant – a highly transmissible variant in the omicron lineage of variants – now is the dominant COVID-19 variant in the country as well as the region that includes Illinois.

IDPH announced 5,796 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 and six additional deaths Thursday.

For Wednesday, the state administered 11,777 vaccines.

From the IDPH’s data dashboard:

Case rate per 100,000: 29.9 (+1.0 from Wednesday)

Percentage of ICU beds available: 23%

COVID-19 diagnosed hospital admissions (7-day rolling average): 114 (+2 from Wednesday)

Weekly deaths reported: 74

Illinois has seen 3,457,545 total cases of the virus, and 34,183 people have died.

County-by-county update: As of mid-April, the IDPH will provide a county-by-county update focusing on the case rate per 100,000 people, the percentage of ICU beds available, a rolling seven-day average of COVID-19 diagnosed hospital admissions and weekly deaths.

The definition of a COVID-19 diagnosed hospital admission is as follows: The seven-day average of daily number of hospital admissions given a diagnosis of COVID-19 as measured using the Illinois Syndromic Surveillance System.

Illinois collects all emergency department and inpatient visits through syndromic surveillance from all acute care hospitals in Illinois in near-real time. Data is presented with a three-day lag to allow time for diagnosis to be reported.

At the county level, a visit is counted by where the patient resides. A patient with multiple visits will be counted for each visit. Admissions may not be because of COVID-19 as the primary cause. Syndromic surveillance data is not the same source used by CDC to report COVID-19 hospital admissions data.

Vaccine update: As of Thursday, IDPH reported a total of 28,210,245 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed statewide, with 22,720,051 vaccines administered.

As of Thursday, 8,305,336 Illinoisans have been fully vaccinated, or 65.19% of the population. Illinois has a population of 12,741,080 people.

CDC numbers:

Among Illinois residents 5 and older:

Fully Vaccinated: 8,740,431 (73.3%)

At Least 1 Dose: 9,653,840 (81%)

Among Illinois residents 12 and older:

Fully Vaccinated: 8,318,579 (76.8%)

At Least 1 Dose: 9,181,013 (84.7%)

Among Illinois residents 18 and older:

Fully Vaccinated: 7,677,887 (77.9%)

At Least 1 Dose: 8,479,544 (86.1%)

Among Illinois residents 65 and older:

Fully Vaccinated: 1,822,412 (89.2%)

At Least 1 Dose: 1,971,134 (95%)

There can be as much as a 72-hour delay in reporting from health care providers on vaccines administered.

In northern Illinois, here is the percentage of the population fully vaccinated by county:

Chicago: 68.89%

Suburban Cook: 72.71%

Lake: 70.21%

McHenry: 65.76%

DuPage: 75.46%

Kane: 66.36%

Will: 66.67%

Kendall: 69.06%

La Salle: 58.34%

Grundy: 57.71%

DeKalb: 56.59%

Ogle: 56.96%

Lee: 58.92%

Whiteside: 51.86%

Bureau: 56.80%