* After briefing reporters on hospitalizations, ICU and ventilator use, Gov. Pritzker praised and thanked educators and then took questions from reporters.

Please pardon all transcription errors.

* Yesterday the pastor at the church in Lena Illinois had services with dozens of people attending. Will the Illinois State Police enforce the court ruling next weekend or will you request the county do something to enforce that order?…

We have always asked local law enforcement, local officials to enforce these orders. And the best way to do that of course is a reminder to the pastor and to the parishioners that they’re putting themselves and others in danger by holding a service like this. The pastor filed suit, that suit failed. And it’s because people do have the ability to worship, and we’re trying to simply to keep people safe during this time of a global pandemic.

* So will you urge, I’m sorry if I missed it, will you urge local officials both in Chicago, which was going to bring me to my next question, and in any other county that is defying the gathering the stay at home and the gathering order of no more than 10 people. Will you urge authorities to step in and do something more than disperse?…

We’re asking them to disperse, so that’s the most important thing. We just don’t want people getting sick. Nobody, it’s not an intention that people will go to jail. I will say, however, that if people are persistently defiant, they can be put in jail. And I’m not suggesting that that’s the best answer or the first answer, but it is something that’s an option for local law enforcement.

* There were nearly 1000 CPD dispersals over the weekend, but zero citations and you of course as you just said you defer to local authorities but what are your, what’s your reaction to that number of dispersals in Chicago and what do you feel needs to happen, and does it concern you that this could lead to a resurgence?…

It does concern me and people should really understand that if our numbers flatten and get better, and that’s where we seem to be at right now, it’s because people have followed the rules. And to the extent people are not following them and gathering in groups they’re going to spread the virus and they’re going to cause us to go back into a previous executive order, or more stringent lockdown than what we’ve had, if in fact there’s a spike of cases as a result of people not following the rules. So again we want to encourage people to do the right thing. I’m sorry that the police have had to break people up like that, I know that there’s, it’s attractive when the sun is out for people to go out and gather in groups, but I want to remind everybody that it’s a mistake. Right now, the only way that we can defeat this virus because we have no vaccine. And we have no treatment that keeps people out of the hospital. And so the result is the only way we can fight this virus is really by obeying social distancing obeying the orders that have been put in place.

* Would you like to see more citations issued as a deterrent?…

That is not something that I prefer. But as I say when if people are being persistently defiant I do think that local law enforcement needs to step in. But it’s up to the mayor and it’s up to the local law enforcement to make those decisions.

* We’re receiving, as I feel I say to you every time I’m here, we’re receiving literally dozens of complaints almost every day about people who can’t get onto the [unemployment] system, they get kicked off the system, no one answers the phone, have debit card problems, and you’ve said well we’re updating the system, we’re updating the system, but these folks, continue to tell us well it doesn’t seem like it. So what specifically is being done right now to make sure that the director the acting director of IDES is doing what he is supposed to do to help these people who are desperate?…

So let me begin by saying that we, we obviously are deeply concerned about anybody that is owed unemployment and somehow can’t file their claim, that is not something that’s intended and we’re certainly trying to work through any problems for people that have been persistently having difficulty. I will say that, that the system is you know I get the numbers of processed claims every day and the numbers of people who are being processed every day are very frequently in the 10s of thousands, which is vastly more than ever before. In fact, it’s a multiple of what even was occurring on a weekly basis and daily basis during the Great Recession of 08-09. So there’s an awful lot that’s being processed.

There’s also a multiple of phone lines that are being answered for people who are calling in. It’s still not enough, there are some people that call in persistently have to wait for some time on the phone before they can get ahold of anybody or because there’s a limit to the number of people can answer phones, they may not get ahold of somebody on a given day, I would encourage everybody to go online, that is how most people are multiple so people are actually getting through and filing their claims. So that’s what I would say when we’re doing that. I will say that the acting director and everybody that’s working in IDES is working overtime to make sure that it’s working as best it can, and they are working through there really isn’t a backlog at this point. So people who are having trouble there’s something there’s typically an issue with their claim which I understand, they need to use we have online tools that they can use, even if they can’t sign up online. There’s a chat function there’s an ability to message to IDES to let them know what your issue is and have somebody get back to you about it.

And I would just say one more thing, sorry Dana, just that later this week we’re going to review where we are with unemployment so you’ll have a much better a more holistic view of how we’re doing and what we’re doing, what we’ve done to address these issues.

* Have you ever thought of having the acting director come here so we could ask him questions directly?…

I haven’t but you know I’ve been focused as you know here for the most part on the directly addressing the virus.

* Thoughts on people who have been going into Indiana over the past few days for services they can’t get here?…

I think, to the extent that people are not social distancing, and accessing services in Indiana may have decided that they want to open those things up, I understand that there are risks associated with that and I would discourage people from doing it. But understand that people are free to to do what they want, as they may leave the state. I don’t control the state of Indiana, and they don’t control Illinois, but I’d rather be from here than there.

* Governor Cuomo today says he’s looking at opening regions of New York State on May 15, will you consider reopening regions, and if so, what is the criteria?…

We’ll be talking more about that. But suffice to say that I absolutely think of the state as you know it’s, we have a lot of different areas of the state, different population densities and so on. The most important thing though that I have pointed out to people is to think of the state not in the typical way that you think about regions, but rather about healthcare regions to think about how many hospital beds and that’s why I talk today about how many hospital beds.

Does a certain percentage availability mean because a spike in one area that happens to have 25 hospital beds available or 25 ICU beds available. If there’s a significant spike in that area 25 is not a big number. And so what we want to make sure is that we are able to handle a spike, because that’s what potentially could occur if we reopen things too fast.

And as to the setting a date, it sounds like another governor set a date for, I will say that it really needs to be based on data and metrics. My guess is knowing that Governor, that he was really talking about hoping that that might be a date in which they could do it but you really need to do this based on the data. And that’s what we’re following very closely and I want to open it as fast as anybody does. I just want to make sure that we’re doing in a safe fashion.

* With that and the data in mind, do we have to wait till May 30 to hear what your phased-in reopening plan is? And could you disclose some of the details before May 30 or do you plan to…

You don’t have to wait till May 30. We’ve been thinking about this and working on it for some time now to, to make sure that we’re going to give people a view into how the phases might work and how many phases there are and what would work in each phase.

He was asked a question about McCormick Place and where people can apply for contact tracing jobs. Mostly repeats of what he’s already said.

* Are there any regions of the state, where R Naught, the figure I guess you calculate rate of spread, Okay, where the R Naught is below one, and if so, what are those areas? And again, as I’ve asked, might those areas begin to open before May 30 but what are those areas?…

Yeah so we aren’t doing enough testing across the state now, we’re again I want to remind everybody we’re the second most amount of testing among the top most populous states, the top 10 most populous states, so we’re doing a lot of testing, but no state is doing enough testing. We need to vastly increase the amount of testing that we’re doing again even though we’re, you know, doing a lot, but it takes a lot of testing in order for us to get to an R naught number. But we do have a statewide number because of the number of tests we’re doing statewide. That number is down to about 1.2. We’re certainly trying to keep track of the you know what’s happening in each and every region. So, as things are coming down more things can be opened up.

* Is reopening the state’s economy conditional on the implementation of a mandatory tracing program, or for the mandatory tracing program to be completed and if so how long is that anticipated to take?…

I’m not sure what Greg [Bishop] means by a mandatory tracing program, but the tracing program, the contact tracing program is being worked on and built up, its completion is not a precondition to, you know, two phases. But, contact tracing is critically important for certain industries especially to make sure that if people can’t maintain social distance in some circumstance, then it’s a situation in which we would need a lot more contact tracing for that kind of an industry to make sure that people aren’t spreading it a symptomatically. So it’s, I understand the question, it’s not a mandatory contact tracing program but it is a program that will help us to diminish the spread. And we are trying to work spin it up as fast as possible.

* Another question from Greg, what’s your recommendation for local governments on revenue losses should they be laying off staff and cutting budgets now, or should they follow the state’s example of no furloughs, and no immediate cuts?…

Well I think a lot of assumptions in there. I’m not going to tell local governments what they should do to meet their budget requirements but what I am doing is working hard to make sure that in Washington that they understand the damage that’s been done to all the states, and to all of the local governments, and particularly smaller local governments which really didn’t get very much out of a previous cares act. We need to make sure that we’re helping them so that they don’t remember you know it’s easy to say well gee, you should furlough a lot of people in order to deal with their budget problem, but remember what happens in a pandemic like this. We have a decreasing amount of revenue coming in and increasing need by people for the services that states and local governments offer, and that’s why we need help from the federal government to preserve those services.

* One of the plans being floated to reopen the country is to pivot our focus on protecting everyone to focusing on the most vulnerable. Is that something that you are considering as we continue to proceed throughout the month of May?…

Well we are protecting everybody everybody’s life is valuable. But I will say that we already are making extra effort for those communities that are most vulnerable you’ve heard a lot about what we’re trying to do to protect people in congregate settings which are often the most vulnerable right these are people who are physically or developmentally disabled, they’re people who are elderly, and may have other existing underlying conditions. You’ve seen that we’ve spun up more testing in areas where there are large African American populations or large Latino populations, which have a propensity to have comorbidities or a higher rate of positivity so. So we’re working on those populations that are most vulnerable even now, and we’ll continue to do that as we begin to open things up, and I think what you meant was might there be a shift, as we move forward from stay at home for all to making sure we focus on the most vulnerable only as a part of a reopening. Well, sure I mean I think we’re shifting, I mean that shift when you say shift I mean, I’m not going to shift away from protecting everybody but this idea of shifting the stay at home and saying only these people have to stay home. I guess that’s, everything is evolving. That’s what I would say and obviously at some point we’re not going to have the same order in place that we have now and we’re gonna be loosening things up. But as we do that, we’re going to be still paying extraordinary attention to those who are elderly and in these congregate settings. I didn’t mention of course the staffs in those settings, and even in our prisons the staffs in our prisons as well.

* Regarding McCormick Place was it too much too soon or a necessary precaution?…

You know it’s interesting if you go back to the day that we talked about the stay at home order on March 20 and Dr. Emily Landon stood here. She said the most remarkable thing and about the success of a stay at home order is that nothing happens, and that’s really this is a function of, guess what, a lot of people didn’t get sick and a lot of people didn’t die. And so that’s what it means that we spun it up because at the time we didn’t know whether we’d be bending the curve properly, and it turns out, we have. And so, thank goodness we and I said early on, my prayer is that we won’t have to use a corporate place or any of the alternate care facility and it’s still my prayer, people I want everybody understand. We’re not through this yet. We’re not done with this, the virus didn’t go away it’s still out there.

* Where is Dr. Ezike today?…

She had a family matter

* According to movement tracking data from Google, most of the stay at home behavior changes asked of Illinois like that going into workplaces avoiding public transit going to grocery stores as little as possible already happened in early March. If social behavior is now on the rise because of warmer weather and loosened restrictions and the new stay at home order and Illinois R naught value is still about one. How can we be sure we will ever get to an R naught value below one? Other places that have put in a stay at home order have gotten to an R naught value under one…

We’re headed in the right direction, we’re moving in the right direction. Still. And as to the point about the R Naught starting to move or people are being less mobile let’s say in early March, I just pointed out that the news about coronavirus was out there, remember that some of the first moves that we made in the state of Illinois occurred in the early March in the first week a week and a half of March. And so people began to see that this virus is out there, that people are getting sick and I think they they reacted naturally to that. And then, I think that’s evidenced by the way of how smart people are in our state. And the fact that people have followed the stay at home orders, other evidence of how terrific the people of Illinois are.

* There’s legislation being introduced in the General Assembly that would cancel rent for those who cannot pay it subject to the establishment of a housing relief fund that would in theory mostly be paid for by a second federal stimulus bill. is this something you would think it is this something you think would be wise to count on from Congress. Is there anything that they can do proactively either through state police or the Attorney General to prevent landlords, or ignoring the moratorium on evictions and evicting tenants?…

I’m not aware of the specific piece of legislation that’s being referenced here but I am very much in favor of alleviating the burden on renters across the state. It is true that Illinois, you know the budget situation for Illinois makes it extraordinarily difficult to provide a lot of relief, but we do have rent relief programs at the Department of Human Services, and we do want to do as much as we can with the federal dollars that we received to alleviate the burden particularly on working class families.

* Rich Miller is asking for your reaction to the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association warning that municipalities and businesses that reopen in defiance of the EO could face litigation? And also your reaction to the Illinois Department of Insurance statement that says businesses run the risk that an insurer could find reason within the policy language to deny COVID-19 related claims? What could potentially happen to state licensed businesses if they reopened in defiance of the EO?…

Well I was a businessman before I became governor and I have to tell you that I would not want to defy the executive order because I believe that I would be taking on liability If I did that.

[Sigh. He skipped two of my questions.]

* The mayor of East Peoria announced today that he is opening the city in phases starting this Friday, it will include salons. This goes against the stay at home order and the recommendations of IDPH. Is there concern that this could cause more cases? Will the state step in and prevent this? What about people traveling from nearby communities and then returning home?…

I think they’re running the risk that they’re going to infect people who work there, people who patronize their stores. And in defiance of this stay at home order it strikes me the point that we were just talking about insurance not covering you when you may have in business insurance but you will be subject to liability because it would not surprise me if insurance companies are found to not be required to cover you when you are defying essentially state law or state executive order.

[OK, so he did answer another question.]

* Illinois companies like Apple and Google have volunteered their tech to help with contact tracing. Has your office been in contact with any reps, do you have any privacy concerns and enlisting their help?…

So I’m very much aware, I think some of you know when I was in business I was in the technology business so I’ve followed it pretty closely and I’ll just say we’re looking at the technology that’s being proposed. It poses some questions about privacy. It’s not something that we’re currently looking at as part of the program that we’re building for contact tracing. But I’ll want to see more as the technology is presented and developed.

* Some small businesses have told us they may not survive the economic flow COVID-19 has delivered. Do you foresee any industries in Illinois that will no longer exist because of this crisis?…

I don’t know and I’m hopeful that that’s not what’s happening, but I can see that so many people are suffering. It’s why I’m so such an advocate of the, not just the PPP program but so many supports for small businesses because we want people to come back and reopen their doors. We’re going to do everything we can in the state to have that happen. Small business people are the bedrock of business bedrock of job creation in our state so they deserve our support.

* We know the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate call sessions. But you have the power to call a special session. What have you thought about doing that? Why or why not?…

I think the most important thing is that the legislature gets together safely. And like I’ve said before 177 members of the General Assembly plus staff. That’s an awful lot of people. That’s more than 10 getting together. And so the epidemiologists would express concerns about a group that large.

Having said that, there are ways to do it. We hope to provide support to the legislature as they have asked, how could they do it safely and we’ll continue to do that. We want the legislature to get together and they have the ability to get together and we’re providing again, epidemiological advice about how to do their best to keep everybody safe.

* Tennessee announced last week that it will begin mass testing of staff and inmates that state prisons, it appears Illinois has only tested about one to 2% of inmates. Is this adequate? Will you follow Tennessee’s lead and begin widespread testing in prisons and jails?…

The more testing we have available to us, the more we will be testing in all those congregate settings. But, you know, remember we also have nursing homes, we also have these developmentally disabled homes, and so many other areas that also need testing. So, again, it takes a lot more testing than we have today.

* Can you address the significance of today’s death total being the lowest since April 19? Also what reaction do you have to Saturday night’s federal court ruling in the beloved church case?…

As to the number of fatalities today, I would just encourage everybody to look at these things on a multi day basis, taking maybe a three, five or seven day average. I’m hopeful, when I saw this number today, I was hopeful that this was the beginning or a continuation of a trend that I’ve been praying for. But I think one day is not a helpful number to look at.

As to the ruling in the case of the church, I want to remind everybody that it’s important to get together with your fellow parishioners and your pastor, but we’ve asked people to do that in groups of 10. We’ve asked pastors to reach out to their parishioners and try to do that online or get it in small groups. Bible study in a small group, again socially distant, and you know we’ve provided other suggestions of ways that people could get together to have services. But getting together in groups of more than 10, I don’t think, I read that there were 60 or 80 people that got together at that one church in defiance of even the US Federal Court ruling. It’s an enormous mistake and I am very hopeful that we aren’t going to need to send teams in to do mass testing among the people who may be spreading the virus in their communities.

* We heard today the mayor is still advocating for a Chicago casino. Do you think that’s still a possibility and what are some options you and the state legislators are considering and making that happen?…

I’ve favored, getting that done, I think it’s the right thing to do. It may be difficult to do in the next month I don’t know, in the next few weeks. it depends on when the legislature gets together and how I will say that, you know, we have a whole year here, for the legislature to get together to handle legislation and I think as we again see more treatments available and as we have testing and tracing and PPE available, it will make it a lot easier for the legislature to get together throughout the year. Maybe in one day increments just to keep everybody safe, not needing to stay overnight and room together and all of that. But there’s a lot of the year here with which to address something like that and as I understand it, the Republican leaders are in favor, at least I’m aware that the House Republican leader is in favor of that casino, that Chicago casino bill, and I know there are a number of Democrats who are too so I would hope that we’d be able to get that done in, you know, sometime during the year here.

* How are the occupancy limits at stores being enforced and how well do you think people are complying with the new face covering requirement after the first few days?…

It’s really just a visual survey about face covering and and occupancy of stores. So I don’t have a report, an official report of that. But I will say just you know as I look outside as I see people walking on the street or in small parks or whatever around Chicago. I have seen that, I think the numbers seem to me to be about 70 to 80% of people are wearing masks or they’ve got a mask with them that they don’t have on their face, because they’re not around somebody else. So I think that’s pretty good adherence although I’d love it if everybody would do it.

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