Evanston reported 71 new confirmed COVID-19 cases over the last seven days, compared to 67 for the week prior, according to its vaccine dashboard. These cases join a total of 5,219 all-time confirmed positives in the city.

Here’s a breakdown of Evanston’s most recent COVID-19 news:

Positivity Rate:  The city’s COVID-19 positivity rate currently stands at 1.23% — relatively low compared to the peak for the month of around 2.5%. Health workers conducted an unusually high number of COVID-19 tests at the end of the month — over 3,000 on Sept. 30, compared to less than 1,000 on every other day. That could impact the current positivity rate.

In August, the city implemented new masking guidelines after a delta variant-driven spike resulted in a daily average exceeding 73 new COVID cases per 100,000 Evanson residents in the span of one week.

Local Hospitalizations: The city saw on average 40 COVID hospitalizations per day in September.

Northshore Glenbrook had the highest average hospitalization numbers in the past month, followed by Amita St. Francis and Northshore Evanston. Hospitalizations were more common at the beginning of the month and slowly declined during the last few weeks, peaking at 59 in one day with a low of 29 on another day. 

Vaccinations: The city reported administering about 1,700 vaccine doses in September. It has administered just over 106,000 vaccine doses to date, with 81.5% of residents ages 12 and older now fully vaccinated and 96.7% of residents ages 65 and older fully vaccinated.

The city reports that 100% of residents older than 65 have received at least their first dose. Starting in October, the city will administer booster doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to residents who received their second Pfizer vaccine dose at least six months ago.

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Twitter:  @ilana_arougheti

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