Coles Co. COVID-19 cases see surge

Corryn Brock, Editor-in-Chief

Coles County saw 56 new cases of COVID-19 Wednesday, following 49 new cases Tuesday and 63 new cases Monday.

The new cases bring the total number of positive tests up to 6,784 new cases.

Since the pandemic, 105 Coles County residents have died from COVID-19 with the most recent death occurring on Aug. 29.

Currently, 36.34% of Coles County residents are vaccinated, a total of 18,497 individuals.

Other vaccination data shows that 36,304 vaccines have been administered in the county.

The majority of all cases and the cases from Wednesday occurred in people 29 and younger.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Coles County has seen 1,424 cases from people ages 20-29, 933 cases from people ages 10-19 and 422 case from people ages 0-9.

Of the cases announced Wednesday, 10.7% of cases were from people ages 20-29, 35.7% of cases were from people ages 10-19 and 14.3% or cases were from people ages 0-9.

Wednesday’s numbers are higher than the number of cases reported in the entire months of  April 2020, June 2020 and June 2021.

There are currently 320 active cases of COVID-19 in Coles County.

As of Wednesday, 26 people are hospitalized at Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center. Of those patients, all but one are unvaccinated.

Eight of the patients in the critical care unit have COVID-19 and all of those individuals are unvaccinated.

Corryn Brock can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].