[The timestamp has been altered to allow for Friday visibility.]

* Gov. Pritzker started his press conference with the number of deaths, moved to his earlier announcement of a regional compact with other governors and then talked about PPE supplies. And then he talked about tests…

Last week I walked you through how our world class researchers and scientists were collaborating with Thermo Fisher to identify and address the efficiency and reliability within the company’s machines, a critical component of our testing expansion plan. I’m pleased to say that Thermo Fisher was not only extremely helpful in working with us to improve these testing procedures, but also committed to prioritizing Illinois as its customer.

Those five machines that we had oncerns about are now up and running with reliable results, So reliable that as we ramp up over the next week, we’re estimating additional capacity of thousands more tests per day at our state labs, alone.

The state has been lagging other states and the national average with its testing capacity.

Remember to pardon all transcription errors.

* More good news…

You’ve heard me talk about the fact that machines and labs are only one part of ramping up testing in our state. We’ve also needed to find adequate supplies of items necessary to take specimens. Over the last month, obtaining the raw materials for specimens, notably viral transport medium called VTM and swabs has been difficult. However, I’m incredibly proud that my team has now managed to virtually eliminate our supply chain problems for VTM and swabs.

Our university partners of Illinois Tech Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and the University of Illinois at Chicago and University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, as well as outside vendors have committed collectively to providing us with enough VTM and swabs, that we can not only stock our own state labs, but support additional labs throughout the state.

This means even more specimens being taken for testing. And I want to invite labs who need our VTM and swabs, because many out there do, they should come and request it through their local emergency management agencies, they’ll be able to obtain it and provide it to you.

* Testing sites…

The next and final piece of this is the need to increase the number of locations available, so that people can give the specimens that then get tested. With our increased capacity of machines and labs and the new supply of raw materials, we now can take more specimens to test. It’s a great place to be at having the ability to expand testing sites.

Now that we can run more tests, I’m pleased to say that the guests here who are with me today, our partners in our statewide efforts to broadly increase participation in testing to reflect our newfound capacities, especially in African American communities, and other communities that face significant structural challenges in accessing health care, we’re utilizing our incredible statewide network of federally qualified health centers to launch new testing locations and communities across Illinois.

These new sites will feed specimens to our network of expanded laboratory capacity in coordination with the Illinois Primary Health Care Association. We asked which of the over 300 centers would be interested in helping us expand testing an overwhelming number of them were eager to help.

We now have sites coming online across Chicago, the collar counties Peoria, and in Southern Illinois with many more centers expressing interest and working to get their operations up and running. An up to date list of these sites will be onlin at coronavirus.illinois.gov.

And I want to remind everyone that if you think you might need a COVID-19 test, and your symptoms are somewhat mild, please call before showing up. And while each independent provider can and will offer tests with their own unique criteria, the state of Illinois has expanded those eligible to get a test to include anyone who has COVID like symptoms, even if you have not been given a doctor’s order. This will apply to our state run drive through testing centers, and it is guidance that we will now be offering to providers, all across the state of Illinois.

Two days ago we opened our third state drive thru site with excellent turnout. The new site in Markham in Chicago South suburbs, took over 600 specimens in its first day of operations. Now, I want to put that in perspective that’s about four times what the federally run sites were doing previously. With this new site, our drive throughs now have the ability to run up to 1800 tests per day. These sites have produced, terrific results for us and in the coming days I’ll be announcing two additional drive thru testing sites as we continue bringing that success to new regions and new areas of Illinois.

Folks, this progress on testing isn’t all the progress that we need to begin on our path back to normal. But this is truly an important step to help us get there. Until that day comes, please take comfort in the fact that you’re helping to make a difference, all of you, your individual efforts to stay home, wash your hands. Keep your distance and wear masks are what is flattening our collective curve. The day we can begin our path back to normal will come sooner because of your actions right now. So I ask you to continue to tap into your courage, your sense of community, your generosity and stay the course. We will get through this together, all of us together. Thank you very much.

* One of the next steps is to deploy antibody tests. Dr. Ezike talked about that…

We are working hard to evaluate the tests for immunity that are coming online so that the very best of these tests will be offered here in our state. We are working with healthcare systems, universities as well as ramping up our capacity at IDPH to run the virologic tests.

* More from Dr. Ezike…

You have heard me say it before. This is a marathon. We have to keep pace. Can’t get ahead of ourselves. You can see that we still have many new cases and unfortunately many lives that continue to be lost, but running together we will still beat this COVID-19. We are on the right track. We are not over this, but please continue to be all in Illinois.

* Dr. Ezike also explained why testing is so important…

New research suggests that people with Coronavirus may be most contagious the day they start symptoms, or even a day or two before. … So that means they identified individuals who were infected by someone before they actually had symptoms. This is why widespread testing is so important. We need to know who may be infected as soon as we can before they come into contact with many other people, especially the most vulnerable.

And that’s going to mean doing a whole lot more tests than we are now.

* On to questions for the governor. The first question right out of the box is if he is planning to extend the stay at home order. He gave the same answer that he’s given every single day. Again, he’s not going to wait for a reporter’s question to make this announcement.

He did, however, say he would be saying more over the next week.

* The partnership that you have with the other governors in the Midwest. I believe the governor of Wisconsin extended his stay at home order. Do you follow suit? Is that, do you take that into consideration when you’re making up your own orders? I know you said that every governor is going to have, you know, there, you’re going to do your own thing with your own state should do you take that into consideration?…

Well I talked to a number of governors and these are the governors that are you know we’re closest with. And so I certainly look at what they’re doing and I listened to them. They listen to me they asked me questions along the way. And each of us have taken ideas from one another.

I think what we’re trying to do with the collaborative effort together is to make sure that we’re using similar criteria. It matters if you’re bordering states if your region has sort of similar criteria. And I’ve talked a lot about these criteria over time and and that you know, some of them have as well, testing, tracing, treating. Those are all important things having widespread availability of PPE. Those are all things that we share in common. And of course, protecting workers and customers. When you ultimately try to loosen things up and make sure that people can do commerce and that we have an economy that starts to work again in the way that we all want it to. You want to make sure that you’re keeping people safe and so that’s the workers and the customers of course the business owners too. You know, we try to take all that into consideration, but we share a lot of common values and you saw it’s a bipartisan group. You know we share I think in common that those those sets of values and criteria. And that’s really why we created that collaborative so that we can share those best ideas

A question was asked if he had a call with President Trump today. He said he did not.

* Illinois spent millions on N95 mass from China. IDPH is out with a new health alert that says those masks may not meet performance standards, and some could be counterfeit. Governor, in a rush to secure PPE did Illinois get scammed? [TV reporters love asking dramatic questions]…

No, I think what the guidance is is that sometimes you can acquire PPE from people right, not from the state, but anywhere that might say N95 mask on it. But you’ve got to know that that’s a real N95 mask. All the PPE. This is true for all of the health departments and everybody that acquires PPE now. You really got to make sure that what arrives is what you paid for, what you thought you were getting. And so we’re doing our best you know and things come in and shipments of a million. You can’t go through one mask at a time. And so you try to take samples from the shipments that come in and make sure that you got what you were paying for.

He then received several similar questions with predictable results.

* Pritzker claimed the unemployment insurance application process was improving…

We are now I think operating on a much more, a higher level, you know doing what amounts to about 10 times, eight to 10 times the number of claims being processed now that were being processed a year ago at the same time

We’ll see. I’m still seeing lots of tweets from frustrated people.

* The governor of Wisconsin has extended their stay at home a month now through May 22 or May 26. The governor of Ohio was saying that they may start to reopen some businesses by May 1. So you guys are all working in collaboration, does that really work if various states are doing their own thing and why are we waiting to extend this stay at home or if that’s what you anticipate doing?…

Well what I would say is that, April 30 is the deadline that we set ,we certainly will be making decisions about it, we look at it every day. Again, and to the several other states are looking at opening certain kinds of businesses on certain dates. Obviously we have different economies across these states, we share a lot in common. However, and so a lot of the ideas that we each have about our state are applicable to one another as to the date that somebody picks. Look, part of it is dependent as I said upon the increase in testing does a state feel comfortable based upon their population that they’re doing enough testing, because you can’t just look at the base number of tests that a state is doing it’s based upon population right. How many out of a million people are getting tested each day. We’re not where we want to be in the state. The other part of it is that as I’ve said we need to do much more tracking and tracing I think that’s very, very important. And we’re spinning up a tracking and tracing capability this contact tracing. But again, what’s what’s important about this collaborative i think is that we share our economy share a lot in common in the Midwest you know traditionally referred to often as the rust belt. But, so the result is the, the industries are similar. The thinking is a little bit similar. And so, and we’ve all developed a pretty good relationship with one another. And that makes it a very worthwhile collaborative to have because collectively I think we’re making good decisions, importantly, we are saying things that are different than the things that are coming out of the CDC in the White House

* Do you anticipate any businesses in Illinois reopening on May 1?…

Again, I’m looking at the executive orders. Remember in the executive order, there is a list of essential businesses and this is a base starting. We started out with the base of the Homeland Security list, the Department of Homeland Security in Washington of what’s an essential business and then we expanded upon that to include things that we thought were either unique to Illinois or where we might have disagreed with the Department of Homeland Security and wanted more open.

And so we’re constantly looking at and adjusting we indeed have adjusted, since the very beginning right as people have come to us and said, well here’s how we would operate as an industry. If we had the opportunity to open then based upon that you know we’ve been able to do that so we’re constantly looking at it we will, you know, if we extended the stay at home and kept the essential business list in place, we would continue to evaluate where we could make adjustments,

* Iowa is not on the list. Why is it not in the list and don’t you need Iowa if you’re going to make this work with all bordering states?…

We would love to have as many states as want to join as a part of it Iowa chose not to be part of this. I know they have, they don’t have a stay at home rule yet in place. They’ve made a lot of different decisions than we have. And yes, I would like it if every state, frankly fought. We were as you know one of the very first states, the second state in the United States put a stay in order in. I think ours has been copied by a number of others which is terrific, imitation is the greatest form of flattery. And so I would like it if everybody adopted similar rules because we’re bending the curve, not everywhere is bending the curve. So, yeah, there’s nothing I can do with the federal government chose, the White House chose not to take the lead here. And so the states have had to make decisions on our own

* There is some concern around the nation that states are in short supply of medications needed for patients on ventilators is Illinois seeing that shortage of medications and if not, what can we do to make sure that doesn’t happen? [Finally, an original question and of course it was from Sfondeles]…

Dr. Ezike: So as we increase the number of patients that are on ventilators,
there are medicines that we use for sedation and even paralytics to paralyze patients that are being used more than as usual. So, there are, if you go from hospital to hospital they are different drugs, they’re on a shortage list. So, the FDA is aware, IDPH, the state doesn’t have any role in procuring, the medicines, but we are aware that they’re, you know there are drugs that are being used more than they have been because of this COVID-19 pandemic. And so we’re keeping you know we’re keeping an eye but we don’t have a direct role in terms of securing those drugs.

* Have third shifts at state labs all been fully implemented?…

Dr. Ezike: Chicago is running two shifts every single day, Springfield is also running two shifts a day and in our Carbondale lab is running 24/seven.

Gov. Pritzker: Lab technicians are in short supply. And so to even get a second shift at three different labs across the state. And in some areas where it’s more difficult to hire lab technicians is really quite an amazing lift. Now think about having a third shift you know 24 seven so that we’ve done that at one lab. The doctor has been amazing. And now we’re going to have a third shift at two other labs soon enough.

* Why hasn’t Illinois released the names of nursing homes or patients or staff have tested positive as well as the number of cases and deaths as other states are, and what specifically is the state doing to address clusters mushrooming in nursing homes?…

We’re working on getting information out regarding the nursing homes. I think there might be some delays in keeping up with that but working on that in terms of our approach to dealing with really one of our most vulnerable populations.

Again we’ve talked many times from here about how difficult it is to control outbreaks in these congregate settings any of these settings where the people reside sleep live play eat all in the same place. It’s a little bit hard to distance and segregate and isolate when you’re in a confined space, but we have been talking we have some aggressive measures that we are employing where we want to identify people who are the carriers and of course right now in congregate settings with visitation being essentially nil, it’s it’s staff that probably are bringing in the virus. And so we have an aggressive campaign for our congregate settings to try to test all of the staff that work in these settings. We think that if we can identify staff members who are positive maybe they don’t know they’re positive, then we can get ahead of them potentially infecting the people that they’re there, that they’re charged to work with.

* A House Republican released the names and convictions of individuals who have commuted sentences for during this pandemic. How do you pick the individuals that have been released?…

Well let me point out that there are two methods that we’re following for thinking about release. One is the the director of the IDOC, the Department of Corrections has the ability on his own to determine that someone can be released and it’s the criteria that he’s using is non violent convictions. And people who are who have already served a substantial portion of their term or have a comorbidity or something that makes them, especially vulnerable and would not pose a risk to the community. That last part, not posing a risk to the community is incredibly important criteria that gets reviewed very closely.

The second way is that there are appeals to the governor to me for clemency, and those often are the more difficult cases, these are often people who may have committed a violent crime but it may have occurred many many years ago they may have served for example, decades of a term. I can recall a couple of situations where someone was convicted, at the age of 16 of being part of a situation where somebody died and they were essentially convicted of the same crime, even though they didn’t commit the crime themselves they may have been driving the getaway car they may have been standing nearby and part of the same group, but not been part of the violence itself. But they got convicted of a murder and were sentenced sometimes with some old laws in place. They had their normal sentence doubled because of the existing laws at the time. Someone might have gotten 80 years for something that someone doing the exact same thing a few years later, would have only gotten 40 years.

So those are examples anyway of the decisions are made in consultation for me. I often speak with the lieutenant governor and speak with my internal legal counsel, but ultimately it is those things are charged to me and to the Department of Corrections director.

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