* Gov. Pritzker began his press conference by urging people to fill out their census forms and then turned to healthcare. Here’s some actual news…

I also want to provide an update on our search for new or renewing healthcare workers. We have now received over 1100 applications from both former health care workers looking to rejoin the fight and from out of state professionals who want to help Illinois, many of whom are Illinois residents who happen to practice in a border city in another state. Right now, those numbers are running about half and half, with more applications coming in every day. It’s really incredible to watch the people of this state are truly so deeply genuinely caring. […]

We’re also hard at work, exploring options to allow some of our fourth year medical students and nursing students at the end of their programs to join the fight against Cova 19.

As always, please pardon all typos.

* On to questions for the governor. It sounded like the question was yet another “when will we be there” query…

It is very hard to know to be honest with you. I mean I think you’ve seen that as I put in a stay at home order and when we started with the closing of schools and so on. You know, we were relying upon what we knew at that time which seemed like it was just weeks perhaps that were necessary. We’re continuing to follow the science to know what date we ought to be extending to there are states who have chosen different dates for their stay at home order. And so, we’re looking at all of that if there was a definitive answer I would hope that the CDC would put that forward to everyone. It’s unclear, to be frank with you. And so we’re listening to the best minds that we can get the right answer, right now we’ve extended our stay at home and all of the other orders to April 30, but as I have said, we’re going to continue to evaluate every day whether we’ll need to extend that at any point. But right now I think that that seems like the right period of time. Again, not knowing exactly when we might peak income off of that peak, which is a very important point at which will be making new evaluations.

* IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike was asked about the rise of deaths…

I have said every day that we knew we would see more cases and we knew we would see more deaths. So as we develop more cases, we are going to have more deaths. I can’t tell you, I can’t predict exactly the number that it will be obviously each day, but we know generally from following data that we have from around the world unfortunately we have a lot of information from all the situations all the cases from around the world. We know that approximately 20% end up requiring hospitalization and more severe care, and that about five 5% require ICU care. We know that the mortality rate is somewhere between, maybe one and 3%. So I think our numbers are unfortunately, going to bear that out, and we will see growth in the number of decimals, most, unfortunately, until we get to that peak and hopefully we have done all that we’ve can all that we can in terms of staying home and doing all these mitigation efforts so that the peak is lower than what was originally anticipated.

* Dr. Ezike was also asked about the public wearing masks…

So, of course, the best way to not get ill is to stay at home … wash your hands twice a day. You’re doing a great job if you wash your hands five times, 10 times a day. You’re doing an even better job if you clean frequently touched surfaces. So all of these measures, obviously, are helpful.

When we say cover your cough, the point of covering your cough is that you’re not letting those droplets go on to the person standing in front of you, go on to the person that you’re in front of you so the covering your cough covering your sneeze and the social distancing are essentially similar to the advice of wearing the mask. The idea of wearing the mask as you said would be to keep those droplets potentially from spraying on others so I understand what you’re saying that that is logical. And so we want everybody to do the most that they can to prevent potentially infecting others before they know it. And we know that covering your cough staying away from people, and potentially some kind of covering of your mouth and nose would also potentially be helpful as well.

* Gov. Pritzker on masks…

I want to add to something that Dr Ezike said that while the question about is it effective to wear a mask. I’m sure it’s more effective than not wearing a mask. But it does not replace staying at home. Staying at home is the best mitigation strategy, please stay home. […]

In fact, I think that there’s some evidence to show that it can be effective. A are we thinking about changing policy again, we’re evaluating these things every day.

* Are you considering taking action to delay the deadline for the second installment for property tax payments currently around August 1, or do you think that is one deadline the state cannot afford to push back?…

That is not a state function to, just to be clear. … These are functions of local governments and county government, the state does not collect property taxes and those decisions have been made by local governments county governments.

* Director Ezike, can you please explain the numbers in a more clear fashion for people on the cases at Stateville…

We have tested 127 individuals, 80 of those samples were sent to a university lab, another 47 were sent out elsewhere, of the 80 that we were able to get back, we had 36 were positive, which gave us about a 45% positivity rate. We have 19 individuals who are hospitalized and at multiple different hospitals throughout the state. And we’re continuing to monitor other individuals that are still in the facility

* 12 of the cases in Kankakee County are from the Shapiro Developmental Center. What do you say to the families…

Not only do we have a very strong PPE policy, but we also provide significant amounts of PPE. Look, there is no doubt and you’ve heard this from our medical experts that sometimes congregate facilities are difficult because of the very nature of people living in the same facility. And who have felt like you know we are actually running it reasonably well, doing the right things at the right time sometimes you know that this virus is so it’s an invisible virus you know you just don’t know where it’s going to come from we’re doing everything we can to try to separate people out, who may have contracted the virus to detect it. You just heard, General Neely talk about, you know, taking temperatures and checking people’s medical situation before they enter a facility we’re trying to do that in as many places as we can.

So you know we’re doing the best we can. We’re certainly trying our best to take care of our, our seniors our children, people who are you know in our care as prisoners too. So we’re addressing it as best we can and again. In each of these situations, our number one concern is the welfare of the people who are in our care.

* We may not have as many confirmed cases downstate, but already clusters of cases at a senior home and Taylorville outnumber the available number of ICU beds at the hospital in town. What is your administration doing to coordinate the response in rural areas with critical access hospitals and should county officials make those numbers of available ICU beds public?…

As we move towards the peak of this, we are going to be filling up ICU beds across the state. It isn’t the same in every area, there are critical access hospitals that may have fewer ICU beds. There are other hospitals and other areas of the state that may have more availability just as a percentage of what they’ve got. […]

We’re trying to make sure that we’re either offloading the non acute people who are in the hospital, the patients in the hospital or we’re providing additional facilities for people to have ICU capability.

* Are you considering calling the General Assembly to meet someplace else, or to meet virtually?…

The General Assembly leaders are talking about how they might be able to accomplish a general assembly legislative session.

It is something that I think may be very important to do. It’s hard to do, there are 177 members of the General Assembly and we’re asking people to stay home and not congregate in groups of more than 10. So some Governor’s might think this is a dream that you can’t get your legislature together, but we have things that we need to get done in the state of Illinois. So I’m hoping that we’ll be able to figure out how we might be able to get them meeting. And I know that the leaders are thinking about that as well.

* How would you recommend churches handle Easter Sunday services?…

Well, I would suggest that many people need to attend services online, that the churches should try their best to provide a connection on the internet. It may be the best way in order to make sure that you’re abiding by the stay at home rule, which is so vitally important. I understand how important worship is and especially in these moments, but it can be done virtually, and I would suggest that people should never, you know, despite the desire on Easter to get together to celebrate together to worship together. I would still tell people, please stay home please stay home and contact your pastor to find out if they have services online that you can participate in or at least view it.

* Have you been in contact with the legislative leader leaders and budget committee chairs to talk about a revised FY21 budget, and what if any major changes from your original budget proposal, do you think the state will need?…

Well, I don’t think I could list all the changes that would need to be made to the original budget. Our budget proposal was put together in January, presented in February, weeks and weeks before the coven crisis came upon us, or at least we were all aware of how serious it was.

I have had conversations with various members of the General Assembly and leaders, just to begin, we are obviously working to figure out what is the revenue shortfall, what are the challenges that we’re going to go through, when do we think that we’ll begin to see revenue return. And trying to make estimates of that as you can imagine, at this moment are very difficult when I couldn’t tell you two days ago that we were going to extend the stay at home rule that we put in place. So, we’re still working on it. There’s no doubt that it will be a vastly different budget.

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