* The governor talked about some good news on hospitalization rates and then took questions: The last time we were here was prior to the announcement of your staffer who was diagnosed. Can you give us a quick update on how that person is doing?…

That person is fully recovered, that person is back at work, and doing just fine. So thank you for asking.

Make sure to pardon all transcription errors.

* I have a list of questions here. A lot of them have to do with Allen Skillicorn this morning announcing that he was going to be going out with a recall affidavit for you, claiming you failed to stay with IDES, and you’ve overstepped your authority. Can you respond to that affidavit?…

Well I’m glad to hear that the representative apparently has changed his mind and now believes that we ought to fund state government instead of hollowing out the way that he has voted over the course of his career. Because it is a fact that IDES and other agencies like the Department of Public Health have been frankly left behind after many years of representatives like that one voting to have a budget stalemate for two years in which we had no budget, and no funding for our budget in the state, and has consistently voted against budgets that would fund vital agencies that we now frankly need very badly in this pandemic.

* He said you were late to the ball game to respond and prepare for knowing that your stay at home or was going to cause millions of people to be called not essential and to lose their jobs. He said more should have been done sooner, how much of this problem do you bear responsibility for?…

I think what he forgets is that the stay at home order, which is very much like what’s happened all across the nation, was a vitally important part of slowing down the transmission levels of COVID-19. Many many fewer people have died, many many fewer people have gone into ICU beds or hospital beds than would have had we not acted quickly at the beginning and in the middle of this. Remember what [garbled] the doctor who stood here on the day that we put the stay at home order in place, said, which is, you know, the consequence of all the work that we did is nothing will happen. I understand his point, his point is that now that you see things I assume that he wanted the stay at home order at the beginning, although he never has expressed that

* What he said today was in effect that you should have anticipated. So many people were going to filing for unemployment should have done more with a website sooner should have hired more people sooner to deal with what he says you should have anticipated…

Well, you couldn’t possibly anticipate that we would have a number of unemployment filings that was an enormous multiple of that which occurred during the Great Recession. Nobody expected that, nobody knew in fact, when this pandemic would begin to subside in any way. In fact, the pandemic itself has not, but the reaction of the people of Illinois has really kept people safe. So the IDES website was designed 10 years ago, we’ve talked about this and. And of course, when this became clear that we were going to see a rush of applications. We acted as quickly as we could with a system that frankly you can’t just snap your fingers and replace. You have to be as I have often said, you’re building the plane while trying to fly it and you’re trying to fly it well, putting a million passengers on board, an almost impossible job but one that IDES has handled as best it could. Now, the number of people who man the phones, I have to say that there are federal requirements for the training of somebody who answers the phone because of the privacy considerations. And so we’ve only been able to grow that very modestly. We brought everybody that we could to the front line to answer phones we’ve expanded the number of phone lines, put new systems in. So people are getting their calls answered, and about the clip of 2000 per day. And we continue to work very, very hard to respond to people who could not get their application filed online but again I want to say to anybody out there that has not filed for unemployment that needs to file for unemployment, that your best bet is to go online that system is now handling, many many many multiples of what it could handle at the very beginning of this epidemic. And I want people to make sure that they get the unemployment benefits that they deserve.

* In New York, they got help from Google to get their site up and running. Do more people need to be hired for the phone lines and should another company be brought in to help with the computer system?…

Well as with New York we brought in outside contractors as well. And that’s why our systems are working so much better now than they were at the very beginning. And so I want to compliment the people that IDES working with outside contractors to expand that online capability, as I said just a moment ago. We’re bringing people on as fast as we can, but again with the requirements for the the federal government puts on who can be on those phone lines, really managing incoming filings. What we’ve done is tried to offload the calls that aren’t individual privacy consideration calls and tried to either put them to people who are not trained at taking by the federal government level two, taking those filings. So they can take the kind of helplines sorts of calls or when people go online, they now have the ability to speak with somebody online on a chatbot.

* Over the weekend, first of all, so many people are out and about. My colleague Sarah Sheltie is asking about this memorial day weekend. First of all, were you in Lake Geneva at all and if not, did you at least see the video of all the people that crowded the streets around the lake there as well as the Indiana Dunes and what’s your reaction to so many people, most of these people are probably coming from Illinois just ignoring all the social distancing we’re doing here, going to these other states, and then coming back?…

Well, the answer to the first part of that question is I think you’ve seen me every day on camera with this backdrop, or in Springfield, for the last 75 days or so. I have not been out of the state for, I don’t know since before sometime in very early March before this pandemic hit, before we had a disaster declared in the state.

So that’s the answer to the first part of that question. In terms of people who are going and partying and not wearing masks, leaving the state, doing things that are essentially against the rules here in Illinois. But okay in some other state I think I just want to point out that I just read yesterday that there was a 16% increase in hospitalizations in the state of Wisconsin since the stay at home order was rejected by their Supreme Court, and a 30% increase in Milwaukee in hospitalizations. So I think that’s an example of what can happen if people don’t follow the mitigations that are supposed to be put in place that are supposed to keep people healthy and safe. So I would caution people.

Look, nobody stopped anybody from traveling, that’s never been the case, anybody can travel. What we’ve suggested to Illinois residents because we want Illinois residents to be safe, is to follow the same rules for yourself when you travel that you would have if you were at home. To see these crowds I am terribly dismayed frankly I think that the challenge here is I want every resident of Illinois safe I want them to keep themselves safe. They have the ability to do that. And so people who choose not to either, haven’t been reading the newspaper, aren’t following the rules, don’t seem to understand how dangerous this pandemic is. And I want to be clear to everybody that’s watching and to all the reporters, so that you can report it out, the pandemic is still here. Just because the numbers are moving in the right direction in the state of Illinois, that does not mean that the virus has gone away. It’s still there. The reason that we’re doing so much better here in Illinois than we would otherwise have is because people have worn face coverings, that people are washing their hands, they’re doing the things to keep themselves safe, that they should be doing and following the executive orders that I’ve put in place.

* Some Illinois houses of worship have capacities of hundreds or even thousands California’s letting them reopen with capacity limits this weekend as long as they don’t have more than 100 people at a time. In which phase do you plan to allow houses of worship to be able to do the same. And to that point. Have you asked IDPH to come up with guidelines for churches for when they could open?…

We’ve done even more than that Craig, we’ve asked churches to come with their ideas about how they can do it safely. As you’ve seen, we have allowed drive up services. We are working with churches for outdoor services. We want people to be able to worship. I think it’s vitally important. All we want to make sure is that when they do it that they’re safe and so we’ll work with any churches, or taking plans for churches and trying to work with them you saw that the Catholic Church came up with a very workable plan that I think is, you know, something a model for people to follow. So I encourage anybody that has an interest in putting forward a plan to do it safely because I know the vast majority of faith leaders just want to do it right they want to keep their parishioners safe as IDPH began the process of coming up with its own guidelines, much like they did with the legislature for them.

* Darren Bailey’s case was in court downstate. My colleague Mike Flannery just asked, the US Department of Justice, saying the stay at home order exceeded your legal power under state law, and that a state judge should handle this case rather than transferring to federal court. No decision made on that today but what is your take on that, what’s your response to the offense getting involved last Friday?…

It’ll be made by a federal judge about whether the case should go to federal court, but they’re clearly those cases have as their basis some accusation that a constitutional right is being taken away. And so, that’s a federal matter if it’s a constitutional right. So they’re just wrong. I understand that that the justice department, which is very much under the political thumb of the White House, is encouraging their appointees to weigh in on things like this. It’s a highly political thing to do, very unusual if you ask most people that have served in those capacities in the past. But, that’s what the White House has chosen to do.

* The ban on evictions is set to expire on Friday, along with your stay at home order that you said, that order will be extended to allow the state to enter into phase three. Will a continued ban on evictions be part of that new order?…

Yes.

* What is the state doing to help fund COVID-19 therapies and can you provide any update on antibody testing information that the state has and why is that not being reported?…

Dr. Ezike: It’s a loaded question. So, the state itself is not the one that does research itself to identify, we don’t have labs where we’re trying to come up with the therapies. Once those therapies go through their normal process and then are FDA approved of course they’ll be used throughout the state so it’s not really within the purview of IDPH.

Your second question was regarding antibody testing. So yes, there is antibody testing that has been happening through the state. Again, I think, as we may have discussed in the past, there’s still a lot of questions out there regarding the significance of the antibody tests. We know that we have a way to look and see if people may be developing antibodies. There are different types of antibodies there’s the [garbled] antibody there’s the [garbled] antibody. And so trying to figure out what level of antibody would would then pretend immunity and if it does pretend immunity is it. How long is that immunity for so not being able to answer those questions not having any reference standards that we can use. We can’t do much with it now. We did convene a group of infectious disease epidemiologists immunologist and biologists to review this issue and see if there was a more definitive role for antibody tests in the state of Illinois, to help with the reopening plan and and that team of experts did deliver that report and said, at this time, we can’t do anything with it yet but we are hoping we will get to a point where it can have a more prominent role in decision making and plans and determining herd immunity etc.

* Can you clarify the numbers when we look at the number of positive COVID-19 tests that does that indicate the number of people infected, when people have multiple tests throughout their illness are those tests counted in the total positive test numbers….

Dr. Ezike: We know that certain people may have multiple specimens that were taken and so if you want to have the positivity rate for people over people tested total positive people over people tested total that would give you that would be comparing the same thing and the numerator and the denominator and so we want to give. How many people are actually positive cases over how many people were totally tested and so that is the number that we’re trying to give as the percent positivity and so we’re trying to make sure that that’s what the data represents, and that’s what we’re trying to report going forward.

Pritzker: It appears to be a very small number of people who are getting multiple tests. So it isn’t like there’s some massive overstatement of the number of positives but it’s very unusual to for people to go get multiple tests.

* A southern Illinois winery announced they will not be requiring their staff to wear masks because they can be a quote reservoir for COVID-19 particles and quote create a false sense of security and risk our staff and guests’ health. Are there any kind of special precautions or considerations wineries across the state should be considering as they move into phase three?…

Dr. Ezike: I think an important point to mention there is that if someone is wearing a mask, again, the primary goal was that you were not expelling a virus. So if someone was wearing their mask we were at a place, a place of business and establishment, and they thought that they were spewing out virus that would suggest that you thought you had infection and were not staying home, and were risking spreading that. So I would say, as the first word of caution, I would say, if you think you are ill or you have signs that you are ill, you should be staying home in the first place and probably shouldn’t be at any place of business. But then in general, when people are a symptomatically transmitting the virus, we know that if there are two people. If one person has the virus. If they wore a mask and this individual didn’t, there would be a lower transmission lower risk of spread because this person had a mass. If both of them were wearing a mask there would be an even lower risk of spread. If both of them were wearing a mask and staying socially distance is six feet, even lower. So, we know that each of these measures are additive and help decrease the overall risk of transmission. And so I think all of our goals should be to decrease transmission because in fact, despite even having a negative test yesterday you could be positive today. And since we don’t know when we’re seeing that there’s a growing amount of asymptomatic transmission, we should all be employing every tool at our disposal to decrease the possibility of transmission.

* Do you recommend self quarantining for anyone who visited Lake of the Ozarks over Memorial Day weekend? It’s a popular destination for folks in the metro east and some Missouri counties in Kansas have issued a self quarantine recommendation…

Dr. Ezike: I would just say that that is some of the risk that we all are subject to as things start to open up. You know, things will, I think the whole state is going to evolve into phase three. And as you think about going for that haircut, you don’t really know where, you know, the people helping you or people, other people in the shop you don’t know where they have been. And so yes I would love if everyone around me who thinks they have been in a high risk place could stand down, but it’s probably not going to happen. But the least that we can do is to wear our mask and promote the social distancing so that if someone does have something we can decrease the amount of transmission that would be possible to the best of our abilities with the techniques that we have available to us.

* Since both an administrative rule and proposed statute to tighten enforcement have failed to advance, are there any real teeth to your emergency orders what will the state do to those who violate the orders?…

Yeah, well we’re left with the enforcement mechanisms that we have, or any rules that we may put forward going forward. But as you know, I talked about this. We’ve tried to avoid using those other methods of enforcement and that includes taking away people’s license to do business, and includes the possibility of closing a business. Those are not things that I wanted. In fact, I asked, implored the legislature to give me a tool. Our intention when we put an emergency order forward was to have the ability and emergency rule rather forward was to have the ability to simply to issue a citation which is a much lower level of consequence for people than having their license taken away to do business entirely. So, I then asked the legislature simply to pass something. They were unwilling. I think they abdicated their responsibility and a lot of them talked about, we know that they’re a co equal branch, well then you’ve got to take a co-equal a level of responsibility when you’re asked to and they were unwilling to, so we’re going to have to pursue whatever tools are available to us.

* Governor, when will you sign takeout cocktails are you planning any other measures to help bars and restaurants make it through the pandemic?…

Yeah, I’m so glad that that passed and I’m, I hope to sign that as soon as it’s available to me as you know it needs to be passed over by the clerk of the House and the Senate. And I’ll sign it as soon as it comes to my desk.

* How can people safely expand their quarantine circle in phase three when groups of 10 are allowed, can you hug grandparents, should you only see the same family and friends?…

Dr. Ezike: I can’t give anybody a COVID free pass.

As you expand your circles obviously there’s a additional risk of transmission, because, again, we don’t necessarily know who is harboring the virus and who isn’t so hopefully if people are all being as careful as you are and they have used their mask and social distance to the extent possible, hopefully their risk is low. But again, the more you increase your circle the larger that circle is absolutely the more risks but people have to learn to coexist with COVID and so you know we’ve. I know that people have done a really good job and they’ve stayed at home and now as they’re coming out, they will have to make these calculated decisions and assume a risk that they’re comfortable with, so risk benefit ratio again, there’s no way to know for sure if someone is harboring the virus or not. And that’s a that’s a little bit of a wild card. And so you can do what you feel is appropriate, take all the mitigation strategies that we do have an employee those. Use your mask and keep your distance. And after that, that’s the most I can offer, I can’t promise anything after that.

* Illinois is the only state so far that officially plans to tap the Fed liquidity facility. Is that because Illinois has limited options partly and partly given past financial decisions that led to almost no rainy day fund and resulted in higher borrowing costs?…

Well, what I can tell you is that it was the decision of the legislature to not implement more cuts.

And, you know, in a common belief and hope, I guess that the federal government will in fact offer support to state and local governments all across the nation. But look, I think everybody understands that in the middle of this pandemic we’ve, every state has lost tax revenue and had increased expenditures that are you know related to COVID as well as some that are tangential, but only occurred as a result of COVID. So we’re going to need help. There’s no doubt about that. And I think that was the reason the legislature did what it did. But look they’ve also did not cut as much as I think they probably could and so we’ll be, I’ll have to continue to look at the budget along the way. They gave me the authority to do that here.

* Does the state have a backup plan if President Trump goes through with his plan to pull back National Guard troops who helped with contact tracing and delivering food to nursing homes?…

We’re going to need to make those deliveries, we’re going to need to make the, fill in what we need to if the federal government is not going to help out by supporting our National Guard troops. We obviously have the ability to fund those or choose to fund those if we decide to. But either way, we’re not going to let those services fail.

* Could you explain what happened in the GA with the cannabis bill? There’s some confusion about whether a deal had been made with the governor’s office to move it forward…

No. There was no deal made with the governor’s office, they just could not get it moved forward between the House and the Senate.

In the answer to the next question, the governor said he and Dr. Ezike believe “we seem to have come off the peak.”

* New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that the state will no longer allow COVID-19 patients who are positive to be discharged from hospitals to nursing homes. What is the current policy in Illinois and is there any plan to change it?…

Well, again, it’s the idea here is to keep everybody in nursing homes safe and to make sure that nursing home patients have somewhere to go.

And so, nursing home residents do have the ability to go back to nursing homes. And to the extent that they have not been determined to be entirely COVID free, they would probably not be let out of the hospital. So we’re going to be very careful about that. People have already come out of the hospital and gone home. And we have not seen transmission from somebody who has come out of the hospital and then transmitted it to somebody in their nursing home.

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