* The governor made a bit of news at his news media briefing today…

I also want to provide an update for our residents who are at risk of losing their housing. Because of this pandemic. Since March we’ve protected millions of Illinoisans by banning residential evictions. Today I’m extending that moratorium through August 22.

I take this step today because I want to ensure that we have support in places in place so that we have support in place for those who are most vulnerable. As many of you know, we worked with the General Assembly to put in place two programs to help those whose housing is insecure, one for renters, and one for homeowners. Each distributing $150 million.

Starting the week of August 10, applications will open for renters. And then the week of August 28 for homeowners. Through the fall recipients will be awarded grants of $5,000 for renters, and up to $15,000 for homeowners. And meanwhile we continue to explore partnerships and ways that we can provide additional support for many people their ability to weather this crisis hinges on their ability to keep a roof over their family’s heads. It’s not enough to say that we want to build a more just and equitable state on the other side of this pandemic. We have to take tangible action to get there. Today marks another step forward, though, frankly, our work is not done.

I’ll be back with the Q&A in a bit. Please pardon all transcription errors.

* Before taking questions, Pritzker said this…

Before I take questions I also want to take a moment to address the violence that too many residents are experiencing in their communities. As Governor I have and will continue to invest in communities that have been neglected for far too long.

Earlier today, I also spoke to the head of the Chicago office of the FBI to convey my long standing position I welcome legitimate resources from the federal government to reduce violence and help our residents stay safe. That can mean getting illegal guns off the street or investigating criminal enterprises, and I welcome the support for our local and state efforts to reduce crime.

But let’s be clear. That also means we must invest in our schools, in our physical and mental health services in workforce development programs that build up opportunity where years of disinvestment have hollowed it out. If you want to fix a problem, you start with the roots of the problem.

But what I will not stand for are efforts that undermine civil rights and civil liberties, like what’s happening in Portland, conducted anonymously under the cover of darkness and with no transparency. Any effort from the federal government to undermine the basic freedoms this nation has in its best moment aspired to protect will be met with resistance from this state government.

* He was then asked about the Portland issue and his conversation with DHS…

The Acting Secretary of Homeland Security did not return my phone call and said that he would not over the next 48 hours. So that’s what happened in that call ytesterday. I have worked tirelessly over the last few days, speaking with not only the mayor but the Attorney General to coordinate activities that we might engage in, if we need to push back on some force of the Federal Protective Services that might arrive, the kinds of issues that are on the ground in Portland. And so we’re, you know, we’re talking about that working that out. We are hopeful that that will not be the case. We know that the ATF the FBI, the DEA are coming to and are in Chicago, engaged in activities to help our local law enforcement, the state police are engaged in that, Chicago police departments, police departments across the state, in fact, are engaged in that and that seems legitimate activity to go after criminal enterprises, and I encourage that. We need to get violence and criminal enterprises shut down.

* What about imposing a quarantine on visits from people in surrounding states?…

So ,let me begin by by doubling down on what you just said, which is every state around us has either double or triple our positivity rate. So this is challenging for us right. And we don’t live in a country where you close the borders between states. And we’re not going to stop people who live in Illinois and work in Wisconsin from doing so.

And you can’t ask somebody who crosses the border every day to go to work, who’s following all the mitigations that we’ve asked, you know, wear a mask, wash your hands all the things we’ve asked them to do. They’re not gathering in large groups, but they go to work every day. You can’t ask them to quarantine for 14 days at a time. So that’s not something that we really can do. We have a lot of border counties in Illinois, where people on one side or the other of the border regularly cross because they have family, or because they work on the other side of the border.

So instead what we need is for Illinoisans to do, frankly, what most people have been doing. But we just need everybody to pay close close attention to this. If you’re not wearing a mask you’re doing it wrong. You have to wear a mask if I told you you could take a pill that would reduce the likelihood of you getting COVID-19 by 80%, you would do it. And that’s what happens when people wear masks, we reduce the likelihood of transmission by 80%.

* He also said this…

We’re encouraging local officials to shut down things, for example like we’re aware of a party bus company in Metro East where people get on and they go from bar to bar to bar. Well guess what happened? Somebody on one of those party buses either contracted it along the way or had it when they went to on a party bus and spread it to the locations that they went to. So the local officials have to be asking themselves, how do we cut down on the spread? Well one way to do that might be to first of all completely disinfect all the buses. Second of all, make sure you’ve got social distancing and third possibly shutting down those party buses.

Pritzker was asked about contact tracing and said tracers were currently reaching about 61 percent of people identified “within a reasonable period of time.”

* There is clearly not a flattening now, right?…

Dr. Ezike: We have seen an increase in cases and I know some people say, oh it’s just because there’s more testing. There’s a way to look at that, actually, if you do more testing your positivity should actually go down the more testing you do. So for it to even stay about flat suggests that there’s increased transmission. So yes we’re seeing increased transmission. Some of it was predictable, as we opened up more we have you know places at 25% capacity 50% capacity places that were completely closed, you know, personal services all the kind of movies and going from groups of 10 to groups of 50, of course, we can imagine that there’s more opportunity for the virus to be spread and in fact, that has been the case. And so, we needed to have the opening and the increased ability to do more things we needed that to be coupled with like 100% masking and distancing. And so I think our rates are probably high, but we really need like full hundred percent compliance to really try to keep our rates, where they were or keep them lowering so we’re in, you know, in treating or asking for the public to continue supporting us with that encourage people who aren’t doing it, why they should we need everybody to be on the same page for this.

* The governor also stepped in to warn bar owners…

There’s no doubt about it, we need to increasing masking not decrease, and we’re never going to get to 100% but that’s our goal anyway we want everybody to wear a mask, everybody who’s medically able and an old enough to be able to keep a mask on. But the other thing I’d point out is that as you open things up, what happens is some bar owners, for example, go beyond the capacity limits that we’ve allowed. And that is when you really run into trouble because it’s already difficult enough in bars. … Guess what your you know your droplets are greater because you’re drinking. And people tend to be yelling or shouting or speaking louder than they normally do because there’s music playing. And so there’s greater risk. And that’s why we’ve kept the capacity limits where they are. But when people don’t abide by those when bars don’t abide by those, it really creates a problem and that isn’t the only place I’m not just calling them out but I just want to be clear that just opening up doesn’t mean that we’re going to have a problem. It’s opening up and then having people not abide by the rules, and understand that opening up means having a greater attention to wearing a mask.

* IDPH is now reporting probable cases, not just confirmed cases. Why?…

Dr. Ezike: Yeah, the CDC started putting those metrics out there, probable cases. I lose track of dates in COVID world, but I think it’s been, I think it’s, it’s been more than three or four weeks that they were going to put up probable cases. And so they’re asking us to put forth the problem cases probable cases are people who were contacts of confirmed case that then develops similar symptoms in the timeframe that would suggest that, in fact, you know this person had covid you lived with them. We didn’t test you but you had all the symptoms and you know you had this direct epidemiologic link, you probably had it too. So those are the probable cases so if the lab wasn’t done for that second individual, but all signs point to being. This was COVID, then that’s a probable case and so the CDC has been asking us to put probable cases we’re trying to put that to be with them. We don’t have, you know, in the beginning when we didn’t have all the testing, right, we know that there were many cases where we would say yeah don’t even try to get a test, you know this person had it, you probably have it just stand out if you get sick go to the hospital, but just stay sequestered you know stay isolated. So there’s lots of probable cases that are not in our total, you are correct.

* Thoughts on President Trump encouraging the wearing of masks?…

It’s never too late to learn more, you know what the right thing to do is. And so I’m very glad that the President did that. I think there are probably a lot of people who follow his every word and now understand that this is the right thing for them to do. We want everybody safe. I don’t care what their politics are. Everybody in Illinois, I want them to wear a mask and if the president comes out in favor of wearing masks which he seemed to yesterday, then I think that can only be a good thing.

* IDES debit card fraud scheme…

So it appears and I’m just giving you what my understanding is now. It appears that in past breaches, we’ve all heard about these massive breaches of systems of corporations, and then they warn you, go get your credit report, and so on. Many people don’t do that. Many people don’t respond properly to that.

So all of that information is being held by somebody, some hacker right, who wants to use it at some point in the future, and waits a long enough period of time until they can find the right thing to do without you paying a lot of attention. And so they hold on to the information and this apparently this program the federal government set up was something that was attractive to those hackers. And so that’s the, the fraud has been engaged in by them with information that they obtained in some other capacity, and they you know that it’s not that they’re breaching our systems is they’re applying in the normal way that people apply to get these programs and payments to them. Using the names that they’ve gotten now how they would obtain them from somebody’s mailbox if it were sent to somebody. I’m not sure. There’s a lot of federal investigation going on and I’m hopeful that they’ll get to the bottom of it as soon as possible. We want to warn everybody.