McHenry County reports 90 new COVID-19 cases, as positivity rate rises above 8% for first time since Jan. 24

The McHenry County Department of Health reported 90 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday.

This brings the total number of cases in the county to 26,594 confirmed and probable cases, 270 confirmed deaths and 29 deaths in which the cause likely was COVID-19 but could not be confirmed.

The county’s recovery rate remained at 99%.

As of Wednesday, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported a total of 7,482,650 doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered statewide, including 162,674 in McHenry County.

So far, 20.30% (62,628 of 308,570) of county residents have been fully vaccinated, meaning they’ve received all of the doses recommended for the vaccine they received.

In February, Region 9 moved from Tier 1 to Phase 4, allowing for competitive high school sports to be played, loosening capacity limits for retail and personal care businesses, and enabling restaurants to serve parties of up to 10 people.

The state will reach Phase 5 of Gov. JB Pritzker’s reopening plan once 50% of residents age 16 and older have received at least one vaccine dose and stable or declining COVID-19 metrics are recorded during a 28-day monitoring period, Pritzker announced last month.

First, however, the state can move to a bridge phase if 70% of Illinois residents aged 65 and older have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and the state doesn’t see a reversal in the current trends for COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths.

As of Wednesday, 75.57% of those age 65 and older had received at least one dose. In addition, 46.49% of those 16 and older had received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the state’s dashboard. However, hospitalizations and new case counts related to COVID-19 continue to rise.

The region that includes McHenry County also could return to increased mitigations if the region’s positivity rate rises to 8% or higher for three consecutive days or it sees a sustained increase in test positivity rate.

As of Wednesday, McHenry County’s positivity rate rose to 8.8%, the time the metric has surpassed 8% since Jan. 24, and Region 9 increased to 4.7%, marking the region’s 81st day under the threshold but the eighth day of increases over the last 10.

Second, the region must also see either a sustained increase in COVID patients in hospital or staffed intensive care unit bed availability falls below 20% for three consecutive days.

Region 9 had 37% of its ICU beds available as of Wednesday. Region 9 also reported eight days out of the past 10 days where hospital admissions tied to COVID-19 increased.

Statewide, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 1,288,934 cases, 21,570 confirmed deaths and 2,295 probable deaths.

Among McHenry County ZIP codes, Crystal Lake (60014) has the highest number of COVID-19 cases with a total of 4,038 confirmed cases, according to county data. Woodstock (60098) follows with 3,111 cases.

The McHenry County health department reports ZIP code data only for parts located within McHenry County, a department spokeswoman said. Any discrepancies between county and IDPH numbers likely are because of the data’s provisional nature and because each health department finalizes its data at different times, she said.

The following is the rest of the local breakdown of cases by ZIP code: McHenry (60050) 2,802; Lake in the Hills (60156) 2,455; Algonquin (60102) 1,994; Huntley (60142) 1,942; Cary (60013) 1,884; Johnsburg and McHenry (60051) 1,770; Harvard (60033) 1,490; Marengo (60152) 1,062; Crystal Lake, Bull Valley and Prairie Grove (60012) 960; Wonder Lake (60097) 843; Spring Grove (60081) 662; Island Lake (60042) 367; Fox River Grove (60021) 328; Richmond (60071) 290; Hebron (60034) 161; Barrington (60010) 137; Union (60180) 114; and Ringwood and Wonder Lake (60072) 52.