Gov. JB Pritzker announced Thursday that 125 people died from COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, the single highest number of deaths since the state began tracking and daily reporting on the viral outbreak.

It brings the state’s total death toll to 1,072 lives lost.

The number of positive cases increased by 1,140 to 25,733.

The governor announced a regional partnership with the governors of Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana and Kentucky as part of a joint effort to utilize data and fact-based decision making to decide when to re-open state economies.

Each state will still make its own decisions, Pritzker said, but with shared goals on issues such as reduced hospitalizations.

Wisconsin announced Thursday its stay-at-home order would continue into late May. Pritzker said only that he continued to consult health and medical science experts and would have more to say later.

Gov. Pritzker revealed good news about expanded testing, not only at the state labs but in conjunction with health care partners focused on underserved communities.

Pritzker said problems have been ironed out with new high volume testing machines that had experienced difficulty producing valid results. Those machines are now online.

He also praised universities across Illinois for coming to the state’s assistance and producing lab materials needed for the testing. The universities have produced so much of the materials that they are now supplying other lab facilities in Illinois. The universities partnering to provide these materials include Illinois Tech, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and the University of Illinois at Chicago and at Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. Stephen Weber, chief medical officer and an infection disease specialist at the University of Chicago Medicine, announced efforts to expand testing across Chicago’s South Side and Southland region. He said they are looking to support 1,000 tests a day in the region and the University is making its campus labs available to health care partners.

In addition, the state worked with the Illinois Primary Healthcare Association to survey Federally Qualified Health Centers regarding their interest in expanding testing and specimen collection.

Dozens of such centers across the state are coming on line, including TCA Health in Roseland and Chatham; Howard Brown locations in Chicago’s Englewood, Hyde Park, Austin and Little Village; Heartland Alliance Health in Chicago; Aunt Martha’s in Chicago Heights, Harvey, Joliet, Kankakee, Danville, and Chicago’s South Side; the Erie Family Health Centers in the Evanston-Skokie region, Humboldt Park, and Waukegan; Quorum Health in Waukegan; VNA Healthcare in Aurora, Carol Stream, Romeoville and Elgin; Heartland Health Services in Peoria; and Christopher Greater Area Rural Health, which will have 9-12 sites across Southern Illinois.

Illinois Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike reminded everyone of the vital role testing plays.

“Until we have a vaccine, testing is the key to obtaining the health information necessary to help prevent the spread, as well as to help us safely reopen the state and return to work,” Ezike said.

She explained the different types of specimen collection now being used: A self-administered nasal swab and a more involved nasal-pharyngeal swab administered by medical personnel.

These are both used for virology testing to check for the presence of the virus, but they are point-in-time tests, she explained. If you test negative is simply means you didn’t have it at that moment. Someone could be negative one day and then be exposed and test positive the next day. Testing the entire population of Illinois daily is not possible.

Antibody testing would reveal if someone has had the disease and, hopefully, become immune to it going forward. Ezike said both kinds of testing will ultimately be needed.