Three states meet federal criteria to loosen COVID 19 restrictions

Report: Illinois first state to meet White House’s guidelines to loosen restrictions, begin reopening

May 27, 202011:46 am13 WREX NewsroomCORONAVIRUS,ILLINOIS NEWS,TOP STORIES

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(WREX) — As Illinois is on the verge of moving to Phase 3 of the state's plan to reopen, the state now meets all of the federal guidelines to start loosening restrictions and reopening.
According to data from ProPublica, Illinois meets the White House's guidelines to begin reopening.
ProPhblica looked at five different categories:

• Positive tests per 100K people
• Percentage of tests that are positive
• Tests per 100K people per day
• ICU bed availability
• Hospital visits for flu-like illness

In all five categories, Illinois meets the requirements to begin reopening.
On Tuesday, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said the state is at a six week low in regards to hospitalization rates with nearly 1,200 fewer beds in use by COVID-positive patients. Hospital bed and ICU bed availability are above 30%.
Gov. Pritzker also said the rate at which tests are coming back positive in the state is now averaging 9.2% in the past week. The rate was as high as 23% back in April.

Above is from:  https://wrex.com/2020/05/27/report-illinois-first-state-to-meet-white-houses-guidelines-to-loosen-restrictions-begin-reopening/
Gov. Pritzker took to Twitter to acknowledge how the state has come together to in order to reach this point.

All four of regions in Illinois are set to move to Phase 3 of the state's 5-phase plan on Friday, May 29.

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States Are Reopening:
See How Coronavirus Cases Rise or Fall

by Lena V. Groeger and Ash Ngu, May 20, 2020 UPDATED MAY 27, 2020

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Update, May 21, 2020: After The Atlantic reported that states may be inflating test numbers, we changed this map to display positive tests per capita rather than as a percentage of total tests.

Many states are lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions on social and business activity that were put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19. Questions linger, however, about whether some states meet criteria set by public health experts and the federal government for doing so. Experts are keeping a close eye on whether states that have reopened are seeing an uptick in cases or a worsening in other key metrics.

To give people context on state reopenings, and what happens afterward, we are tracking metrics derived from a set of guidelines published by the White House for states to achieve before loosening restrictions. Even if these criteria are met, without a vaccine, reopening may cause an increase in cases. What’s more, some states may meet all of the criteria and still have a high infection rate.

We plan on updating this data daily. Read more about how we chose these metrics.

GO TO SEE WHERE EACH STATE IS:  https://projects.propublica.org/reopening-america/  Last updates 5-27-2020.. Thus far Connecticut, Illinois and New York meet all five criteria.