With the state of Illinois and the nation ending the Public Health Emergency declarations for COVID-19 on Thursday, the Illinois Department Public Health is shifting its data reporting.
The information will now be released every other week, with the next update coming on May 26.
The end of the health emergency declaration means the CDC has stopped reporting COVID-19 Community Levels for each county in the U.S. and is instead focusing on hospital admission rates by county.
IDPH will continue to report COVID-19 data on the weekly number of people admitted to hospitals from Emergency Departments, deaths and vaccinations.
More than 26-million vaccines have been administered in Illinois.
After nearly six decades of research, experiments and testing, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has officially approved the first RSV vaccine.
Dr. Douglas Kasper is an infectious disease specialist for OSF HealthCare.
He says this vaccine is much different than the COVID-19 vaccine.
“This is not an MRNA vaccine which is something we talked very commonly with COVID. This is more of a traditional vaccine. The person is being exposed to a protein from the virus and then they make an immune response that protects them if they were ever exposed to the virus. It’s much more akin to the influenza vaccine that most people are comfortable with.”
Currently, Dr. Kasper says the vaccine is only approved for individuals 60 and older but the hope is to expand who can receive the RSV vaccine by the end of summer.
He adds the late summer timing would be good to expand the RSV vaccine for other high-risk groups, since most cases are normally seen in the fall through spring.
