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 “In a pandemic, widely available testing and
faster results mean our people are safer,” said Governor JB Pritzker.
“Here in Illinois, we’ve steadily added new in-state commercial labs
and greater hospital and university lab capacity utilization to get
to an average of more than 50,000 tests per day. We do three and a
half times the testing the average state does. And we’re one of the
fastest states in delivering tests back to our residents. I intend
for Illinois to remain a leader in the fight against COVID-19, in
part by making sure we are on the leading edge of technology and its
proliferation throughout the state.”
“Testing is a critical step in reducing the spread of the virus,
because a positive test result begins the contact tracing process,
which identifies who was exposed and needs to be quarantined to
prevent further spread,” said Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Director of the
Illinois Department of Public Health. “Currently IDPH has 11
community-based testing sites around the state, as well as mobile
testing teams that are deployed each week to various locations
throughout Illinois. Anyone can go there to get tested, or at any
state testing site. You don’t have to have symptoms, or a doctor’s
referral or order, and there is no cost to you for testing.”
ILLINOIS SETS TESTING RECORDS
On Saturday, Illinois surpassed more than 5 million tests since the
beginning of this pandemic – making ours one of the first states in
the nation to do so. This benchmark was reached as the state has
expanded testing capacity to over 52,000 tests a day on average and
as Illinois labs reported more than 74,000 tests in a one-day period
over the past weekend – two new highs.
Compared to the rest of the country, Illinois ranks third in the
number of daily tests over the last week, behind only California and
New York, and currently does 3.5 times the amount of testing than
the average state. Illinois tops the Midwest by a large margin,
doing 50 percent more testing than the second highest state, even
while those states are among the top ten in the nation.
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Illinois Department of Public Health labs have been a
key part of this effort. The state’s three labs alone have done over
615,000 COVID-19 tests, more than 12 percent of all tests done in
the state since the pandemic began. Beginning with a single-day
capacity of 219 in March, IDPH labs have been running over 5,000 a
day since June, a 23-fold increase in three months’ time.
TESTING OPERATION SPANS EVERY CORNER OF ILLINOIS
As the first in the nation to run its own tests in state, Illinois’
testing operation spans approximately 300 locations, including more
than 100 Federally Qualified Health Centers which serve the most
vulnerable in our communities and 25 state testing sites and teams.
In order to respond to outbreaks, the state has mobile testing
capacity to reach areas in every corner of the state, including
places like meatpacking plants, nursing homes, migrant worker
housing and other communities less able to access traditional
testing clinics or in areas facing high levels of community spread –
like the Metro East where mobile teams are currently deployed.
To continue building on this progress, the state is looking to new
methods of testing including more fast-acting antigen testing like
Illinois’ own Abbott's BinaxNOW, saliva testing like that developed
at Illinois’ own flagship University campus and continuing to grow
our testing targeted at vulnerable communities. As has been the case
since the beginning of the pandemic, all state-run testing sites are
available to residents free of charge, with no insurance required.
[Office of the Governor JB Pritzker] |
