Evanston reported just one additional COVID-19 case today while Illinois as a whole set a new daily record with 1,105 new cases.
The total number of confirmed cases in Evanston now stands at 68 the statewide total now is 4,596. There were 18 new deaths reported across the state today.
There were 416 new cases in Chicago today, bringing the total there to 2,026. Chicago had four additional deaths, for a total of 16.
Skokie reported 10 new cases today, for a total of 76, and one additional death, for a total of four.
At his news conference this afternoon, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he hopes to scale up testing for the novel coronavirus to 10,000 test per day in Illinois within the next 10 days.
On the road to that goal, he said the state doubled testing capacity last week from 2,000 per day to 4,000 per day.
Pritzker said experts tell him 10,000 daily tests are needed to get a better handle on the spread of the virus and how well different interventions are working to control it.
He also blamed what he called “a profound failing of the federal government” for not being able to do a sufficient number of tests, and said that as a result Illinois and other states “lost essentially the entire month of February” to build testing capacity.
“The White House has promised millions of tests for weeks now,” he said, “and they’re just not there.”