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Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Allison Arwady reported during a Saturday morning online question-and-answer session that the city’s share of COVID-19 cases continues to decline.

Arwady said the latest numbers show that Chicago has about 40% of the confirmed coronavirus cases in the state.

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“They were half or more than half,” Arwady said. “In Chicago, that’s a sign that the measures we’ve put in place have been working.”

The same trend has been true for COVID-19 deaths, she said.

Dr. Allison Arwady, director of the Chicago Department of Public Health, during a press conference on March 26, 2020.
Dr. Allison Arwady, director of the Chicago Department of Public Health, during a press conference on March 26, 2020.

“The deaths in Chicago residents are about 35% of the deaths we’re seeing across Illinois, again a sign of — where we were half — some improvement although there is a long way to go, and we do expect those deaths to continue to increase,” Arwady said.

The pandemic continues to hit the city’s oldest residents the hardest, with 120 of the 212 deaths in people over the age of 70. That’s 57% of the deaths from a group that makes up just 8% of the city’s population, Arwady said.

“That really highlights that risk for people who are older, and 95% of our deaths remain with people with these underlying health conditions,” Arwady said. “Those will often go along with people being older, but that’s diabetes, cardiovascular disease, including hypertension, lung disease, other things that can put people at risk.”

Arwady also reported that men have accounted for a higher share of the city’s deaths – 61%. And she again reinforced the trend of the city’s African-American population accounting for 70% of the city’s deaths despite making up roughly one-third of the city’s population.

Arwady said the city had an additional 659 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 16 deaths from the coronavirus in the last 24 hours.

Overall, the city has 7,278 lab confirmed cases of the virus and the pandemic has claimed 212 lives in the city, Arwady said. The city’s top health official, however, also said the city was seeing progress in flattening the curve when it comes to the increase in new cases and deaths.

“We are seeing some relative good news, both in terms of the flattening – we continue to see improvement there,” Arwady said. “The most important thing that drives our data, drives our biggest campaign here – ‘Stay home, save lives’ – is about limiting any new infections. Any opportunity, especially in the month of April, to limit new infections is really, really important.”

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