Citing a roughly 30% uptick in infections in Wilmette the past two weeks, village officials on Friday urged residents to remain vigilant about following COVID-19 guidelines.
“Confirmed COVID-19 cases in Wilmette are up by 27.8% over the past two weeks compared to the preceding two week period,” officials said in a Friday statement on the village of Wilmette website.
“While Wilmette’s COVID-19 infection rate remains lower than suburban Cook County, our community has recently followed a similar trend of increasing infection rates,” officials said.
The village is part of Suburban Cook County, Region 10, which has seen four consecutive days of positive test rate increases, and is currently at 6.4% positive test rate, officials said.
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The threshold that may trigger a region to return to more restrictions is 8%, officials said.
Wilmette Assistant Village Manager Erik Hallgren said Monday that the village had 23 reported cases of the virus in the period ending Aug. 21, and 18 reported cases in the previous period.
“We don’t want to use this data to scare anyone, but our ultimate goal behind is to let residents know they need to continue to take preventive measures, and this is not a problem that’s just going to go away,” Hallgren said.
“Preventative measures like physical distancing, mask-wearing and frequent hand-washing remain as important as ever,” officials said, adding: “These simple and effective tools are necessary to keep our community on track toward recovery.”
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