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IDPH adopts new guidelines for reporting COVID-19 data

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illinois coronavirus
By Travis Sloan

(WSIL) -- The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) is adopting  at the community level. 

The new CDC guidelines emphasize the case rate and hospitalizations in order to better track the prevalence of COVID-19 in communities. 

As a result of these new guidelines, testing providers will no longer be required to report some negative tests and IDPH will therefore no longer report test and case positivity.

In addition to adopting new CDC guidelines, IDPH is bolstering the data on its COVID-19 dashboard to provide additional information to help communities respond to changes in the course of the virus.

Among the new data that has been or will be shared:

  • Updated data on vaccination rates to reflect the full population eligible as eligibility continues to evolve.
  • The number of people admitted to the hospital with a COVID-19 diagnosis.
  • More detailed data on hospitalizations, including information about vaccination status in those who are hospitalized.

The CDC announced in March that is relying on these three metrics to determine the community level of COVID-19 and to classify it as low, medium or high:

  • մdzٲnew COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days.
  • New COVID-19 admissions per 100,000 population in the past 7 days.
  • The percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients.

The federal government recently established a new website that provides an all-purpose toolkit that provides information on how to obtain masks, treatment, vaccines and testing resources for all areas of the country at: .