* The governor started his press conference by looking at hospitalization history. On April 6, Illinois hospitals had 3680 COVID-19 patients….

On April 10, that number had risen to 4020. On April 14, that number had risen to 4283. And as of April 19, we had 4599 Illinoisans in the hospital with COVID-19. That’s a net increase of 316 from April 14.

For context, early modeling in mid March, showed that without social distancing we would have exceeded our hospital capacity by more than 25,000 beds by April 6.

And to be clear we are still seeing too many Illinoisans hospitalized with this virus, but because Illinoisans have come together by social distancing learning at home and staying at home, we’ve so far prevented our worst case scenarios.

Please pardon all transcription errors.

* ICUs…

On April 6, COVID patients occupied 43% of our 2700 ICU beds. On April 10, that number was 40% of 2900 ICU beds. Remember our institutions have worked to expand their bed capacity, which is why our overall bed number keeps increasing.

On April 14, COVID patients occupied 40% of the nearly 3000 ICU beds. And that brings us to today. Of the 4599 Illinoisans in the hospital with COVID-19 right now, 1239 of them are in the ICU, occupying 40% of our now 3100 beds.

* Ventilators…

Of the 4599 Illinoisans in the hospital now, 757 are on ventilators. That means 23% of our total ventilator inventory is currently in use by COVID-19 patients, continuing a downward trend from 25%.

On April 14, 27%. On April 10, 29%. On April 6, and I’ll add that 23% of our total ventilator supply is about 10 percentage points lower than it would have been had Illinois not acquired about 1000 ventilators since March 23. When we had about 2200 ventilators statewide today. We’re up to 3200 ventilators.

Again, had we not established mitigation measures by now we would have needed thousands more ventilators beyond our existing capacity.
So real progress has been made. And while we never know the exact impacts of the efforts. All of you have made to protect your communities, all the projections indicate that you have saved thousands of lives.

* Peak? No…

But as you’ve seen our case numbers in our hospitalizations are still rising, even if that rise is slower now, our curve is bending the right way.

With the current mitigation strategies in place we may not have reached our peak yet, but your actions are helping to keep that peak as low as possible.

* Nursing homes…

On February 28, in my first public update dedicated specifically to the coronavirus, I highlighted that the data from other countries clearly showed that COVID-19 tends to cause more serious illness in elderly populations. And on March 4, five days before we initiated our disaster Proclamation, we established guidelines to maximize preparations at our nursing homes veterans homes and long term care facilities, long before the first nursing home case appeared in Illinois, the state implemented strict measures around restricting visitors at the long term care facilities that we operate such as the veterans homes at DHS facilities. And we collaborated with [inaudible] associations to have the facilities that we regulate implement similar strict guidelines.

He went on to detail more of the history of what they’d done.

* With increasing supplies of testing supplies, the administration has expanded testing…

First, let’s discuss facilities without known COVID-19 outbreaks. We’re working to test all residents and all staff at those homes. We’re prioritizing testing current long term care facilities that are home to our populations where COVID infection is more likely to lead to higher severity cases, especially among black and brown communities. This testing at non COVID facilities will allow us to identify early the presence of COVID-19 in a facility and isolate those cases before widespread transmission.

With support from the Illinois National Guard and the Illinois Department of Transportation, our teams delivered tests to our first two homes over the weekend. And we’ll do the same for an additional 10 facilities today, with more to come.

Second, in facilities with known COVID-19 cases, we continue to operate under the assumption that our resident displaying symptoms of COVID-19 has COVID-19, and should be isolated accordingly and receive the appropriate care.

One change, however, is that we’ve altered our protocol related to staff. In prior weeks we’ve advised that staff be given pre-shift wellness checks, including taking temperatures. We will now be ramping up testing on all staff who work at these facilities, all staff, allowing us to determine who is coming in and out of an infected home, possibly asymptomatic and should instead be at home in isolation. This will be critical to our work to prevent further spread at these facilities.

* Warns nursing home operators…

I briefly want to address concerns about long term care facilities not adhering to proper COVID-19 response protocols. Thus far facilities seemed to have been responsive to IDPH guidance and compliance with IDPH teams on the ground. Just like our other health care workers staff at these facilities are frontline workers dedicating their days and nights to caring for seniors and doing all that they can to ensure a safe and healthy home for their residents. We as a state are deeply grateful for their service.

That said, we will not hesitate to hold any bad actors at the management level accountable. These private facilities are home to some of our most vulnerable Illinoisans, and we expect owners and managers responsible for their care to take every action at their disposal to keep them safe.

* Dr. Ezike…

Again the testing is just one of the elements of our plan, as the governor explained. Along with the testing we also provide education and stakeholder engagement. Again this is a partnership with the owners and staff at the nursing homes and the long term care facilities.

We’re also working closely with the local health departments, the local health departments are the first public health entities that come in contact and assist at the long term care facilities. IDPH also assists all of those entities by providing weekly webinars, and also twice weekly calls monitoring and surveillance, obviously is very important and that’s the primary role of the state. We have the identification of the positive cases through our electronic lab reports that come to us. And also we have an outbreak reporting system.

The third element is for local health departments and long term care facilities to implement our infection control guidance and as the governor mentioned before we ever had a case, we worked to come up with a very intense set of guidances, including the pre-shift assessments, in signage, making sure that visitors were restricted. And so making sure that local health departments can request technical assistance from IDPH we have that ongoing. And again, as mentioned, we have a team of infection control preventionist, as well as infectious disease doctors that are able to be deployed.

We also have enhanced engagement as another another part of our plan. And this involves identifying when there are persistent problems. This could be dealt with with more on site monitoring and also more visits from our infectious disease doctors or infection control specialists.

And then finally there’s another arm to this, which is resident reengagement. And that just has to deal with how we manage residents that are coming, who were at long term care facilities that went to a hospital, and then are trying to be returned to long term care facilities.

* Dr. Ezike also explained “the challenges with reporting data in real time for these facility outbreaks”…

To start, obviously, data is coming in to our systems hourly. So, the facility is probably the best place to get the most up to date data. But we are pulling data from two different electronic reporting systems, one is the … the national electronic disease surveillance system. And the second is our outbreak reporting system. So the local health departments and hospitals will put data into those into those electronic systems and it’s from there that we can aggregate the data and be able to share the data that’s been put into our system. To help preserve the integrity of the data as much as possible when trying to report in real time, IDPH posts data as was reported from the day before so there would be a lag. And because data is continually being updated, we are going to have the data up on our website, and we will update it once a week. And of course, the information that we pull out had to have been submitted, so lag from from the local health department, we can only report obviously what we’ve been given.

So I know it sounds like a straightforward, but it’s a little complex. We’re dealing with multiple reporting systems and a lot of players who have to put the information in. But we at IDPH are doing all that we can to make sure that we share all the information that we can while also being responsible and trying to protect individuals privacy rights. We know that this is a different time, and some of the requests go further than what we have ever done in the past and so we have to try to navigate that line and not veer too much and not also compromise the privacy of the individuals.

* On to questions for the governor. How accurate are those nursing home numbers?…

Dr. Ezike: They’re as accurate as the information that’s put into it. We’re not in the nursing homes collecting the data, we are receiving the data from outside inputs. And so that’s what we’re putting out. The data is as good as the data that went in.

* Some nursing homes are saying no thank you we can’t have you back, even if you’ve recovered…

We are working through that. That’s been an issue where we’re working to identify the ways that nursing home residents, long term care facility residents can get back to their home, if you will. And so trying to figure out the right time when it’s safe for them to come back, when it’s deemed that they’re no longer infectious. We’re working between the hospitals and the facilities to be able to identify that time and get people safely back to their permanent residence.

* Governor were you on the call today with Vice President Pence. How did that go and what was the main focus of that call?…

The main focus of that call was about testing. The White House’s reiterating … the coronavirus Task Force is reiterating that states have testing capacity. And I’ve said this before, but you know testing capacity is a function of how many machines do you have and if you ran them 24 seven. What output, could you get?

The problem is there’s a big difference between testing capacity and getting testing results, and what’s the big difference all those things in between that you need, like swabs, and viral transport medium and RNA extractor reagent. And then you’ve got to run those machines with lab techs, and if you’re going to run them 24 seven, that’s three shifts.

So, what they really have said is hey you’ve got plenty of machines out there, go to it. And what all … the other governors who spoke, republican and democrats, really said the same thing which is, we all need swabs, we all need VTM. We all need RNA extractor and reagent.

* There was a shipment that didn’t arrive that you had ordered. What about that, are there is some criticism from the White House, that they say you have not been truthful about the resources from the feds. And yet you spent 174 million on getting, and obviously not just that one shipment but did you have to go that far, and that expensive to get what you need…

Yes. And the reason is because the White House has not delivered what it has said it would deliver. Let me explain what they are taking credit for.

You may have heard of this thing that they’re calling the air bridge. It’s really just an airplane that they’re bringing from China on a regular basis. Bringing goods to the United States PPE. Which sounds terrific, except for one thing.

When they land at O’Hare Airport, those goods don’t come to the state, or to the cities. They go to distributors, some of it goes to the White House or the federal government, and they keep it, but some of it, much of it goes to the distributors, the profit making private businesses distributors who are getting the government to deliver to them, their goods from China, because they can’t get them out of China, and then they get to decide where those goods go.

So what they’re taking credit for, the White House, is that the distributors have customers in Illinois that they’re sending goods to, because those customers ordered those items of PPE. So that’s a far cry from delivering to the states so that we can distribute to for example, a nursing home that has an outbreak. That’s not what’s happening. What they’re doing is delivering to for profit businesses that are selling for profit to their prior customers who have ordered things from them.

* Univision: How much testing do we need to say okay it’s time to reopen the economy?…

Look, there’s not an exact number, but I would tell you this, that you need a lot more testing than we have today.

And the reason I say it that way, I’m saying not an exact number because you can debate this question. I would argue that as we start to think about it, remember you need a lot of other preconditions even according to the White House model of how to move into phase one of what they’re calling reopening. You have to get past the peak you know you have to have 14 days of numbers going down right all those conditions.

But on the testing front, I would ask you this question: What would make you feel comfortable going back into your place of work. How much testing [of] other people work with you, near you? How much what would you need to feel comfortable as you go to work every day knowing that everybody in your workplace goes home, and they go to, the grocery store and they go to wherever it is they go visit their grandmother and so on? And then they come back to work the next day. And so I would suggest to you that, no, we don’t need to test everybody every day in every workplace, but it’s a lot more than just one test for each person because you would need to test. I’ll give you an example of a nursing home you would want to test the people who work there every day.

* WGN: We’ve received many calls and emails from viewers concerned about their employment claims haven’t been processed and can’t get through they are also, if they want an update, and where it all stands. Some are concerned about bills getting paid. So what’s the latest on the backlog?…

Well hundreds of thousands more claims have been processed since the last time that we gave you an update and our plan is a little later this week to give everybody a full accounting of where we are, but we’ve got the pace of processing up significantly from where it was, again, easier for people to get processed online than they can on the phone. But again we’ve increased the number of people answering phones, the number of phone lines and brought in outside help to do that. We’ll give you an update on that in just a couple days.

* WCIA: Dozens of grocery store workers have died from coronavirus despite temperature checks, capacity restrictions. So far, supermarkets have resisted banning customers from coming inside. What is your advice?…

Well, I’m not the doctor who can provide the advice. But I will tell you that it is of grave concern to me when people are gathering in close proximity, anywhere, and that is happening, most obviously anyway at grocery stores. And so we have a number of very good actors honestly out there who are doing the right thing, putting markers on the floors about staying six feet apart, they’re asking people to wear masks when they come in even maybe requiring it.

And there are also actors out there who are not doing that. And that has led me to think hard about whether we should require people to wear masks when they go to public places like that, because if you’re not wearing a mask and you’re not keeping socially distance. I mean those two things together, lead to people getting sick.

* You’ve been thinking about that for a while when are you going to decide?…

Well we’re trying to put it together with the other things that we want to change about our stay at home order.

But we also want to make sure that it’s understood properly, that this shouldn’t stop somebody from taking a walk in their local park if it’s open. You know that’s not the idea you know, we don’t want to stop people from going outside and enjoying the outdoors, without a mask if they’re not going to be in a public place with others. But when you’re in a public place with others or you think you are going to be, you should carry a mask wear a mask with you.

* WIND: In Missouri, for instance, the state is slowly opening May 4 with different phases for different counties. Might that be the case here? The governor there is saying okay, the mayors of St. Louis and Kansas City, they’re going to extend their stay at home order. Is that something you and Mayor Lightfoot might consider county by county rather than an entire state order?…

Well, Mayor Lightfoot doesn’t have any do with the other counties or other cities but. But I would say that as we make decisions about changing the stay at home order, or how we can even after the peak, how we might phase in people getting back to work or people reopening things.

I absolutely think that we need to look at where the capacity exists for example, if the hospital capacity in a certain area is quite large and very available. Even with coronavirus in existence, then that might be a place where you could do more, than some other place, but what’s most important though is keeping people safe and healthy. And so we’re trying to get, think about, there’s a lot of distances, you can imagine, between people’s homes in rural areas of Illinois. And so, you know, the idea of people going outside and wearing a mask, you know, on a property of theirs that might be 100 acres or 10 acres you know is much different than the prospect of somebody you know on the north side of the west side of Chicago, or going outside and walking on the sidewalk with hundreds of other people.

* Is a county by county idea something you are considering?…

Or region by region. I think the important thing is that that we want to keep people safe and and also give them the ability to do as much as possible without spreading the virus. And so those are the complications. None of this is done on a whim. All of this is done listening to the people who understand the virus and know how it gets transmitted. Even they’re learning as you know this is so new that some of the guidance that they’ve given to us who are, you know, less informed, right, the experts giving advice, have been learning along the way and giving more and more advice. You’ve seen CDC, for example, evolve the way they advise us. And so we’re trying to follow that advice and look at how best to give people the most freedom, while also making sure people are healthy.

* With 10 days left in that order might be here this week on whether it will be lifted changed altered whatever your plan is?

Again, a lot of this has to do with looking at every aspect of the order and seeing all the things that we might change we’re looking at it working on it every day. I promise you that I will be out here, you know, and tell you as soon as I can.

* The number of test results reported today is a little over 5000. When will we see that number go up permanently as a result of all the testing capacity increases you announced on Thursday? Have all of the Abbott rapid test machines been delivered to health centers, prisons and DHS sites and are they up and running? What about reports that Abbott test results have false negatives?…

[Instead of tests] let’s just use the word specimens, and testing results.

So, as you know you need those other items that I talked about earlier, in order to actually get a test result, you need the machine and all the items that it takes to get the specimen into the machine, and of course to take the specimen. So, my optimism about testing has been that we’ve been able to obtain sufficient or, you know, quantities anyway I wouldn’t call them, you know, abundant, but we’ve been able to obtain more quantities of each of those items and we have those. And then you’ve got to distribute those to everybody who needs them and make sure that they’re running tests. So all of that is a process that really has never before been run by the state of Illinois. That’s usually run by commercial labs or run by individual hospitals […]

My staff knows that I’ve been pushing to make sure that all of these sites are doing as much testing as possible and that we get those tests run. So my hope is again I don’t want to promise any timeframe. But my hope is in the very near future, you will start to see thousands more than you’re seeing now, but you will see that if you’ll do a trend line and I do watch the trend line, every day it’s gonna bounce around, but the trend line has been heading up.

* Rock River Times: Should people who believe they have COVID-19 and recovered be actively seeking to be tested for the coronavirus antibody or should they wait for more widespread testing to become available?…

It is hard even if you wanted to seek it out it is hard to find them. Because, first of all, not all the tests are very accurate. And second of all, it’s not widely available so I would say, you should wait to be tested. If you know someplace that is providing an accurate test, you should certainly try to go get it.

But even on the white house call today with the Vice President Pence, the discussion was had about serology and these antibody tests, and even they admitted that much of it is not yet proven.

* We’re starting to see schools’ specific budget projections from other states about the impact of COVID-19. Is there an estimate yet for what districts could be planning for next school year in terms of funding?…

No.

* WMAY: Have you given any thoughts where you want to see spending cuts in the FYI 21 budget to make up for the revenue shortfall?…

We’re working on the budget for sure and obviously in consultation with legislators budgeteers … so we’ll be coming out with whenever it is that we can organize for the state legislature to meet, we’ll be coming out with some proposals.

* Center Square: For clarity, what specific metric and target, or goal, are you using to determine when the state’s economy can reopen?…

I think there are aspects of the plan that Dr. Fauci and Dr Birx and the White House put out that are worth looking at, for example. The discussion about when does phase one as they refer to it, begin. And that is past the peak, 14 days of numbers going down so I think that’s probably a pretty good metric.

And it gives you an idea if you think you know about. If we haven’t had quite hit the peak yet. And we don’t really know by the way when you hit the peak until you start to go down. And so that I think is the, the marker that everybody should be looking for.

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