* From the governor’s press conference…

In February, we were among the first states to bring our own state laboratories online, providing us with critical early capacity. At the time we were able to run around 50 tests per day. Today we could do nearly 2000 tests per day from all sources with our state labs now running 600 tests per day in all three locations, Chicago, Springfield, and Carbondale. A lot of work has gone into building up our testing capacity and there’s still a lot more work to be done. On Sunday and Monday we began drive through testing at for state and federal facilities. The Illinois National Guard opened our first entirely state-run drive-through testing facility in northwest Chicago. The Harwood heights community based testing site. This site is designed especially to collect specimens from our healthcare workers and first responders and at current capacity. They can collect 250 specimens per day. Senior members of the US Department of Health and Human Services were out to survey that site this last weekend and they called our setup a national model that they hope to replicate in other states. […]

Over the last few days federal HHS has also set up sites in Bolingbroke North Lake and Joliet with private partners Walgreens and Walmart. These sites can run close to 100 tests per day as is and up to 250 each with expanded staffing here in Illinois. Our residents also have access to four commercial labs and 15 hospital labs that in total average about 1500 tests per day on top of our state lab output. That’s of course on top of the 600 per day that we run at our state labs. IDPH is working with some hospitals to stand up their own new labs, providing positive specimens to hospitals for validation, so they can come online faster. As we speak labs at places like North Shore hospital and Southern Illinois University are expanding their capacity with additional equipment and supplies, with an expected additional capacity of 2805 daily tests in two weeks. That will bring our in state testing to more than 4300 per day.

Now, even with this rapid expansion, we still need 10s of thousands more tests to get an accurate picture of our state, that’s within our reach. Though standing up additional hospital lab sites will be required and mobile testing sites will be required across the state. And we’re doing that with a continued consistent delivery of necessary supplies such as reagent and viral transport media we can get this job done.

Of course, nationally and here in Illinois, we are beyond the moment where testing alone can be our primary weapon against this virus. We can’t just test, we have to treat. It’s true that the vast majority of people will recover from COVID 19 on their own without hospitalization, and without a specific therapy.

One aspect of that is our healthcare workforce, those on the frontlines fighting COVID 19 every day. And I’m very proud to say that since my call to action this weekend for those qualified to join the fight. We have had hundreds of nurses and doctors and other health care workers reach out to us and let us know that they are interested in helping the application went live yesterday and in just 24 hours, we’ve already received 180 applications from individuals ready and willing to rejoin the healthcare workforce.

…Adding… From a press release…

Hospitals across the state are meeting the current need, and the state is building additional capacity to treat patients that may need care in the future.

As of March 23, data reported to the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) showed 12,588 non-ICU beds, 1,106 ICU beds and 1,595 ventilators available in hospitals across the state. The current capacity of the state’s health care system as of is shown in the table below.

* Impact of stay at home order…

I want to take a moment now to provide you with a fuller picture of what we could be dealing with in the near future. As I’ve said, You deserve honesty and transparency on the gravity of our situation, and the reasoning behind the aggressive measures, like the stay at home order that I’ve put in place in our worst case scenario projections. That is without the stay at home order, in one week we would need over 2500 more non ICU beds and 800 ICU beds, than we have in existence in the entire state today. Further still in two weeks, we would need over 28,000, additional non ICU beds and over 9400 additional ICU beds. That’s untenable.

Again, I’m using Otter for transcription, so expect typos.

* Triage tents and closed hospitals…

IEMA has deployed 49 triage tents, 40 outside of Cook County to set up triage units outside of hospitals to safely and efficiently evaluate potential COVID 19 patients. In total, 66 of our over 200 hospitals statewide have set up triage tents with IEMA, or on their own. IEMA is currently working with 26 additional hospitals to set up triage centers, and my team and I will make sure that each and every one of those hospitals, has what they need to get a triage center going. […]

IDPH, IEMA, the Illinois National Guard and the US Army Corps of Engineers are in the process of investigating closed hospitals that could temporarily reopen to support our COVID 19 response. In a worst case scenario surge the state would turn existing hospitals into almost entirely COVID 19 response hospitals, moving non COVID patients to other hospitals including these re-outfitted locations.

* Ventilators…

The number one difference between a standard bed, and a COVID equipped bed is a ventilator. Right now in Illinois we have about 2200 ventilators all across the state of which 1600 are currently available. I n the worst case scenario projections that I discussed earlier, we would need over 4100 more ventilators to outfit our ICU beds within two weeks. Again, that’s a projection based on no protective interventions. My team and I are pursuing every option to increase our state’s supply of ventilators including working with scientists and experts in Illinois and beyond to pursue innovative new equipment options.

* White House…

Yesterday I spoke with President Trump to walk him through Illinois’ immediate needs, millions of N 95 masks, and hundreds of ventilators just in the near term. President Trump promised assistance and yesterday afternoon. The White House notified us that we will be receiving 300 more ventilators and 300,095 masks from FEMA in the coming days. On that call I also urged the president to invoke the defense production act. I know I sound like a broken record, but if I have to stand here every single day until I’m blue in the face and advocate that the federal government fully utilize this act, then I will.

This is the reality, there is a finite supply of critical resources available around the world right now. There is an enormous supply of governors and countries trying to get those resources. We need the full might of the federal government to obtain and allocate things like ventilators and PPE. I know there are businesses out there right now working on turning production toward these critical needs and I’ve been vocal about how grateful I am to the manufacturing community for the most part, which is stepping up to try and help, but there is no way that these companies can ramp up fast enough to get us everything that we need in the time that we need it

* Reopen the country?…

Finally, there has been some talk over the last 24 hours by some about who this nation might be willing to sacrifice to COBID 19, for the sake of our economic interests. Well, in case there’s any doubt in your minds, I’m not willing to sacrifice anyone.

There is no life in this state that is more or less precious than any other no person more or less worthy of saving. I want grandparents around to help raise their grandchildren. I want people to spend years after this is over, celebrating birthdays and wedding anniversaries and healthy retirements. I want Illinois to continue to be enriched by its young and old residents alike. Our economic strength comes from our diversity in this state, and the hard won experiences of our citizens without that we are nothing with it. There is nothing that we cannot overcome.

* It’s now the IDPH director’s turn…

In terms of the data that we’ve collected, 54% of our confirmed cases are white, 33% are black, 5% are categorized as Asian, we have 11% of Latino or Hispanic ethnicity.

In terms of severity of illness, our data shows that 16% of COVID cases have resulted in hospitalization, 4% have resulted in ICU admission. Of the lives lost, we see that 92% of those lives lost are in those older than 60.

* The National Guard’s Adjutant General again tried to counter rumors…

The National Guard has been the subject of recent rumors that we were performing some type of policing action to enforce a quarantine. Well let me repeat again today that the Illinois National Guard is not bringing weapons, and not enforcing quarantines. What we are doing is bringing approximately 115 personnel of the medical profession, as the governor spoke of earlier, to support things like drive through testing.

He continued by outlining the rest of the things the Guard is doing. It’s a lot.

* Now on to questions for the governor. First responders, healthcare workers are exhausted. Any potential to help relieve them?…

Healthcare workers are being overworked there’s no doubt about it. They’re doing heroic amazing work every day. And they do deserve a break as best we can give them. They’re so dedicated, they’re dedicated in non-crisis times I must say, and now they’re working, you know even harder. So as you know we expanded the eligibility to work in the healthcare field to people who had recently retired, we can give them back their licenses. Nearly immediately and those who may have left the profession for some other profession, we need them back we’re encouraging them to come back and we’ve seen hundreds already talking to us about coming back filling out forms and so on.

And so in that way we’re trying to fill up the need for more health care workers so we can alleviate some of the work on the front lines. We’re also, at the edges at the borders of the state, we’re allowing people who may work as healthcare workers in other states but may live in Illinois, or they may live on the other side of the border, and may be willing to work in Illinois, we want to make sure they get licensed in Illinois and so reciprocity, for those folks. We want to be able to move healthcare workers to where they’re most needed so we’re doing our best to try to alleviate the congestion let’s say that that is weighing upon the healthcare industry the healthcare workforce today and we’ll keep looking for ways to do that.

* Asked about President Trump’s stated desire to get the economy going again by April…

My concern with the President’s remarks is I don’t think he’s listening to the science. I think that he is, you know, operating, he’s looking at the stock market, which I know he’s essentially judges himself by, and making decisions in that way. Look, I understand that. What’s happening now is very, very difficult for families all across this nation.

Everybody is suffering financially from this and some more than others, and so this is something that weighs on all of us. And I think about how we can support people across the state of Illinois. We’ve done many things like expanding unemployment benefits and providing meals for kids and making sure that we’re looking at shelter for those who are homeless. There’s a, there’s an awful lot and of course we stopped evictions in the state and we stopped, we put a moratorium on on shut offs of utilities and so on, we’re doing many other things like that to protect people from the economic downturn that seems to be upon us.

But I think the President is not taking into account the true damage that this will do to our country. If we see truly millions of people die, and that’s what I think would happen that’s what the scientists and the doctors tell us what will happen. And you heard me say a little bit earlier, if you don’t have these restrictions on the damage that would be done that the lives that would be lost the overriding of our healthcare system would lead to real devastation so I’m very very concerned about what the President is saying.

* Will he be extending the stay at home order beyond April 7…

Again, I’m trying to follow the science here and I am concerned that we may have to extend that deadline.

You know we have to start to see some movement in the numbers in the right direction or at least a shaping of the curve that looks like we’re hitting you know a good spot in that curve.

* Budget adjustments?…

Well that is an excellent question I mean there’s no doubt that any estimates that were made even two months ago would be, you know, not useful. At this point I don’t think anybody expected where we would be today.

So we are working with our budget experts, with our Office of Management budget, with my deputy governor for budget and economy and our entire team to try to figure out what direction, what’s the steepness of the downturn in revenues and of course there are expenditures that we’re needing to make to save people’s lives to protect people across the state. We’re going to do what we need to do there’s no question about that. But yes, of course behind that we’ve got to look at our budget situation and do whatever we need to do to address it and then you know we’ve got to also consult with the General Assembly on what we will do for next year’s budget.

* Would he spend part of his own personal fortune to acquire PPE…

Well I’ve reached out to an awful lot of people in the business community that I know, to help them, to get them to help us acquire PPE from around the world. Many of them have offered their resources. I, of course, have been charitable as you know over the years and intend to be in this situation as well. And so we’ll be doing, I’m gonna be doing everything that I can. I’m certainly working more morning noon and night and I’ll put my resources to bear on it too.

-30-