* Gov. Pritzker began his remarks by thanking Dr. Ezike…

Thank you for being here with me every day during this difficult time for our state. I really applaud the amazing work that you’ve done communicating with people in Illinois about this very very challenging infection and virus.

Please remember to pardon all transcription errors.

* The governor said he’ll be issuing a new executive order today. From his remarks…

In addition to the extension of necessary legal mechanisms like our disaster proclamation, the state and national economy demand that we take action to protect people as best we can from the financial challenges that COVID-19 has brought on. So I’ll also be extending our ban on residential evictions, moratorium on utility shutoffs and suspension on repossession of vehicles. We will also continue offering the ability to conduct marriages and notarization remotely, as well as the suspension of many in-person licensing and training requirements for the time being, to ensure that workers can keep their professional credentials active.

* More…

The president puts out a lot of tweets encouraging reopening before experts say that we should. But the White House guidelines on reopening developed by Dr. Fauci and the CDC are actually really specific and data driven, focusing on positive tests per capita and positivity rates, overall testing rates, hospitalizations and ICU availability, the same metrics that we track here in Illinois.

Well earlier this week Illinois became the first state in the nation to meet the White House guidelines to move to the next phase of reopening the first in the nation.

The path to this point has been tremendously difficult, no doubt. We have lost over 5000 of our fellow Illinoisan’s to this virus. It’s a harrowing number. And it’s just over a few months. Many of our residents have lost someone they love a family member, a friend to this virus. I have too. If you’re someone who doesn’t know a single person who has died because of COVID-19 or been hospitalized because of COVID-19. That doesn’t mean that pain isn’t real for another mother, another child, another friend. I hope you will take at least a moment to grieve for their loss.

As we take our next step forward. And especially as we begin to safely reopen meaningful swaths of our economy. We have to continue to look out for each other, our number one priority must be the health and safety of workers and families, and all of our state’s residents.

* And…

Finally, let me address this platform from which I’m speaking today. Eighty-two days ago, we held our first of these daily briefings. And aside from the last few weekends, we’ve joined together every afternoon for a public update on our COVID-19 response every day since. Keeping the public informed and our operations transparent has been our top priority over the last two and a half months, as it’s been throughout my administration. And on that front nothing’s going to change.

But as the state moves into phase three of our restoring Illinois plan, our daily update will be replaced by briefings specifically dedicated to COVID-19, only on an as-needed basis. That will start on Monday. Instead, we’ll be bringing back some of our more traditional public events, continue to make myself available to the press as often as possible and of course, COVID-19 questions are welcome at briefings, no matter the topic at hand. Additionally, IDPH will continue to send out our daily COVID-19 press releases, and our restore Illinois regional metrics, will continue updating every 24 hours so the public can track our progress online, and you can find the latest status of your region as we move through phase three at dph.illinois.gov/restore. So thank you.

* On to questions for the governor. Do you have a message for the president following his tweets concerning Minneapolis, your thoughts on Minneapolis, the devastation that’s happened there and the arrest today of the officer?…

Well, I have a lot I’d like to say, but let me begin by saying that from the very moment that I announced my decision to run for governor, three plus years ago, I said that this President was a racist, misogynist, homophobe, a xenophobe, and I was right then and I’m right now. His tweets, his reaction, his failure to address the racism that exists in America is stoking the flames in sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways, is completely unacceptable. It’s reprehensible, in fact, and I’m outraged by what he does in response to these situations. I mean this is, I cannot imagine the rage and the fear that must be felt by a black American watching what happened to George Floyd, the threat that comes to every black American under color of law, that they see in a video like that. We’re lucky that that video was ever taken because that is happening around America, probably every day.

And, unfortunately, time and time again, even when these videos come out. Even when so many of us have the feeling of it’s time for a major change. And we work toward that change somehow for black America never really comes. And that’s unacceptable. And to me, the progress that should have been made has failed. So, we have so much that we need to accomplish in this country but especially we need to address the underlying racism that clearly exists. And I will be a bulwark of change and somebody who believes to my core that we must change. And I want to send my condolences to the family of George Floyd, and also to every African American in this country.

* Churches declaring a big victory today after weeks of you being strong about a number of people not being allowed into churches, why did you lift restrictions, did you cave. And why are you backing down from prohibiting in person services or places of worship?…

Well actually, as you know from the very beginning I have said that the most important thing that houses of worship can do and faith leaders can do is to keep their parishioners safe. And that’s why we put out guidelines even in phase three recommending to people that they have services that are either online or drive up services, or in groups of 10 or less, because that’s the safety guidelines that have been recommended by the experts. And all along I have followed that science, those recommendations, and I would recommend that every faith leader do that. I’ve also said from the very beginning that I would never do anything to go break up a service, to interfere with religion. What I have done is implored leaders to not gather their parishioners because what we want most of all is for people to be healthy and safe.

Are those new guidelines in the pipeline or was it in response to that lawsuit?…

You know, we’ve always as you know I’ve talked from this podium about those guidelines, but we had never put out kind of business by business guidelines before. But in phase three we did that industry by industry and including outdoor activities things that aren’t really industries, and of course for religious activity. And no I mean if it were, wouldn’t be as comprehensive as it was if it was something that was just done on the fly.

* You keep saying the state government has been hollowed out if that’s the case, why is Illinois continuing to spend more year after year with plans to have level spending based on borrowing if there’s been a hollowing out?…

Well I don’t know if Greg has noticed, but if you look at the number of people who have worked at the Department of Public Health and the number of people who work at the Illinois Department of Employment Security or go, one after another, each of the agencies of government and you’ll find that there are many more authorized employees than there are actual employees, and many fewer authorized employees than there were in prior years. So, the hollowing out, I mean just look at the numbers of people working in state government. As you know, Illinois has the fewest number of state employees per capita of any state in the United States. And so talking about hollowing out, look what happened two years in a row with no budget in the state. That’s what hollowed out our state government.

* What is your polling during May indicated about voter support for your COVID-19 response and your stay at home orders? How did it change from pulling results back in April?…

Well, I don’t think it’s our polling results. I’ve read polling results I can say honestly that it’s clear that people supported the stay at home order, that people are deeply concerned to make sure that their fellow Illinoisans are kept safe and healthy. And that people support what we’ve done to keep people safe in Illinois.

It is actually gratifying in a way just to know, you’ve seen how Illinois have stepped up during the state home order. Look at what’s happened to the numbers and it’s because of them. And I think those polls are something of a reflection or at least the numbers as they’ve dropped a reflection of what those polls tell you, which is an overwhelming number of people in Illinois understand why we’ve had to react as we have to COVID-19, and they they’re the ones who their poll numbers the people of Illinois their poll numbers are the ones that I think we had a point to. They’re the ones who’ve done this for us.

* What plans do you have for acting on the bills the legislature sent you including whether there will be any big ceremonies for them?…

I don’t think there are any big ceremonies for anything these days. At least not well we’re in phase three and have gatherings of 10 or fewer people, but certainly I will be signing this number of pieces of legislation that came through.

* According to ABC seven analysis of COVID-19 testing data, why is it testing rank every week for the last two months to now rank 10th overall per capita and second per capita among large states. What will you do to ensure Illinois maintains this level of testing as the state reopens and more people are exposed to the virus?…

Again, we’re going to do what we’ve been doing every week. Those numbers are an indicator of where we’ve been and where we intend to go. So I just had a meeting earlier today, as I do on a regular basis, with our team that is in charge of building up our testing capacity and our testing supplies. All the things that are required for us to keep building that number up. So it’s hard to do I might add that this is not an easy endeavor. Because again, we’re competing against everybody else in the nation for a limited amount of supplies. And because we all need to ramp up testing in a massive way. I think we’ve been more successful than most other states at doing it. And I’ll just credit the people who have led that effort for us, and also our common drive and our goal that we set the mission that we set to make sure that we have testing, but there’s so much more to do. I would like to test much much more than we’re doing now, but right now we have to focus it on the most vulnerable populations and do what we can to keep people safe and healthy, as they’re going back to work. There’s no doubt going to be employers who will need to have their employees tested and we will try to jump on that wherever we need to.

* What does the US lose by having President Trump terminate the country’s membership in the World Health Organization?…

Well, I’m not. What I’ll tell you is the World Health Organization is one of several very important organizations that, I think all of us have looked for guidance from the CDC a national organization here in the United States is yet another one. But it seems as if President Trump is withdrawing us from the rest of the world and I think we saw what happens to a nation when you withdraw from the rest of the world what happens in terms of chaos around the world when the United States is not leading, and unfortunately that’s where President Trump has taken us to where the United States is not leading where it ought to.

* Now that you’ve looked at the stay at home order Do you plan to travel out of state with your family now perhaps as soon as this weekend?…

I don’t have a plan to travel outside of the state right now. But I’ve never said that people couldn’t travel outside the states.

You know people have for their jobs, sometimes people live in Wisconsin or in Indiana and they work in Illinois or vice versa. And there’s nothing wrong with traveling to your, if it was in the last stage and essential business and job. Now as things have opened up more and no doubt there’ll be even more activity, again, I would just encourage people to recognize that traveling is is a safe thing to do, but making sure that when you go to a state that has fewer restrictions that you’re not engaging in an activity that epidemiologists are telling us are relatively unsafe and put you at risk of catching COVID-19.

* It’s been reported Illinois contact tracing program is not near where it ought to be at the stage, can you reiterate what the contact tracing benchmarks are in order for the state to move to the next phases if there are any, are there any public information campaigns about contact tracing planned for the coming months?…

To the latter part, yes, of course we want to make sure that people as it is spinning up all over the state, we want people to understand what contact tracing is. I thought Dr. Ezike had a great message about, there are people who are scammers, who, on the idea of a contact tracing they use that to get your credit card information your Social Security, whatever. No one will ask you for that. You would get a call from someone from contact tracing in your county, typically, and, and that call would never ask you for that kind of private information they will provide you with information that’s all they’re intended to do provide you with information about the fact that you’ve been exposed to somebody.

So the first part of it was how far are we behind what are the two, what are the benchmarks to move forward. Yeah. Well we’ve talked about this before today as you know where we have, we’re covering about 30% of the contact tracing that you can’t, you know that’s of people who are contacts, and we need to get above 60%. And so that we’re trying [garbled] to get there. And again, it’s a large endeavor we have, you know, 97, local health departments that we’re coordinating with, they’re doing a terrific job by the way more than 80 of them are already very active in helping us build up this contact tracing capability. We have grants that are going out to them, allowing them to hire people over the next two weeks those grants in many places will have been given to them. And so there’ll be hiring, that’s ongoing during the month of June. But to the extent of what does it require to get us to the next phase, it’s building up that contact tracing and we’re doing it now.

* Just looking back, I think you said 82 days of these nearly 82 days of these, looking back just your, your emotion to all this, maybe what would have been done differently or something would have been done faster I know there’s lots of things we’ve talked about that would have, you know, been better had they worked faster. But just how are you feeling right now I think there’s a lot of hope right now on the street and it’s going to be a beautiful weekend and people are excited to hit the patios, how are you feeling?…

Well I have two minds about giving you an answer to that. I am happy to I’m very happy that again that people have been so good to each other in the state. And with this enormous challenge, you know, we’re all doing exactly what I would hope that we would and that doesn’t really surprise me. I mean, the people of Illinois are some of the most generous genuinely giving people. So it doesn’t surprise me.

I also, I can’t finish an answer without saying that we have to be careful things as we open up also means that opportunities to get catch COVID-19 open up. And so, wearing your face covering. I came here wearing it. I’m standing here without it, but when I step back, I will wear it again. Wearing your face covering in public, and other people wearing theirs, it’s an enormously important thing to be doing going forward. All of the experts, the true experts have recognized this and that’s why we put in a face covering requirement when you’re in public. Same thing all the things we’ve been saying over and over again. I have to keep reminding people, please wash your hands, please be careful, don’t gather in large groups because all those situations, not washing hands not wearing a face covering gathering in large groups. Those are the situations in which we get an outbreak and those is situation where people go into hospital. And ultimately, some of them die and I just, it’s we’ve worked so hard to get where we are. If we can just follow the rules going forward as we’re opening up. We can do this safely and keep people healthy.

* State lawmakers passed a bill that would offer Medicaid to undocumented seniors. Do you expect to sign this and do you foresee expanding it just beyond seniors?…

I will sign that bill. I think it’s important, especially at this moment in our history, during the middle of this crisis that we expand healthcare.

* Mayor Lightfoot was blunt in her criticism of Donald Trump and saying her message to him was FU. You’ve been outspoken in your criticism of Trump, but in using such a term has a line been crossed? Isn’t it just playing in his sandbox? Your thoughts?…

I’m sorry it’s him playing what ,she said is playing in his sandbox? I don’t know, look, I told you what I think. I’m pretty blunt about this, he’s a racist. I’m not sure what else I need to say. That’s more severe, the [garbled] of that’s precisely everything that I have fought against in my entire life is represented by what he tweets and says.

* There are reports that some testing locations are being scarcely used such as rolling Meadows. What metrics is the state using to determine testing location viability and sustainability?…

So we don’t get to pick every location, just to be clear. We try very hard to pinpoint neighborhoods that we’d like to be in. But then you’ve got to find an actual space to do it in. So, in a drive thru circumstance, those are harder to do than in a building. Just because of the amount of effort to create facilities. And then, when you’re doing it in a building, you’ve got to get the permission of the people in the building and the, you’ve got to be able to get ingress and egress at the hours that you want and so on. So I mean I would say we’re trying very hard to pinpoint the communities that are most vulnerable. Make sure that there’s testing there, but also to make sure it’s available to everyone in the state. Because first responders and healthcare workers and people who have compromised immune systems, that they are there isn’t an easy way to pinpoint a community that each of those people might live in. And so we just need to have it everywhere.

* What has COVID-19 taught you about yourself and what it means to lead Illinois?…

Dr. Ezike: I’m grateful for the support that most of Illinois has shared. I think it’s so evident that leading means having an amazing team of people to work together with and collaborate with and at this level it’s involved working with our various state agencies working with our local health departments working with all community based organizations. So leading just means collaborating on this stage with this COVID pandemic it’s meant collaborating on just the most intense levels across all bandwidth, up and down, all levels. And it’s really the more that’s done, the more successful we can be and I think, Illinois has just been a shining example of what leadership means in terms of collaboration and working together, and just making sure that everyone can have input to make sure we get the best results and I think we’ve done that, as the first state to actually meet the White House metrics, I think that’s a very laudable goal that we really have to celebrate and it also involved. The people of Illinois, being able to trust their leadership and be more wanting to follow the direction that we were trying to lead in so grateful for that opportunity grateful to have so many amazing partners that grateful to have such great teams and grateful, very grateful to be under the leadership of this governor who was so supportive of following the science so that we could do the right thing. And so glad that we could show that science works.

Gov. Pritzker: I don’t know exactly how to describe what it’s taught me about myself. I will say that it has really tested everyone in state government. It has tested everyone.

Think about the the workers that needed to come to work because what they do every day, providing services at our veterans homes or for our developmentally disabled or providing or helping people file their unemployment claims, or the many people at the Department of Public Health who have worked 24 hours a day. We have some unbelievably dedicated public servants. And so I just, I don’t know what to say as somebody who has not held elective office before becoming governor, but I did have some great pride in people who work in government, but I don’t think I had seen it this up close and in this intense environment ever before. And I think the people of Illinois should be just so proud really of the people who work every day. I’m not, sorry that the elected officials, I’m talking about Dr Ezike I’m talking about the people who are answering the phones, people who are actually, one on one serving people as part of state governments serving the people of Illinois, just by their second to none.

* Will the new executive order extend your emergency proclamations related to telehealth or civil liability protections for healthcare facilities?…

Yes that will continue under the under the emergency disaster proclamations. We didn’t talk about every aspect of it I suppose today. But there is, we obviously we’re no longer in a stay at home order. And there’s a lot that has evolved, but much will remain. And we do want to make sure there’s a bill that’s passed on telehealth which I’m very glad it did. And we began that in our executive order but any aspect of it. That isn’t covered by that bill we would extend.

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