* Gov. Pritzker today talked about tomorrow’s Phase 3 reopening, including this…
We will also be posting recommendations for houses of worship, providing more guidance for houses of worship in phase three. Having received many plans and ideas from responsible faith leaders, IDPH has reviewed many detailed proposals and has provided guidance, not mandatory restrictions for all faith leaders to use in their efforts to ensure the health and safety of their congregants. This includes suggestions on capacity limits, new cleaning protocols indoor gatherings of 10 persons or less a reduction of activities like sharing food, and the safe conduct of outdoor congregating. The safest options remain remote and driving services, but for those that want to conduct in person activities, IDPH is offering best practices.
That’s an interesting development, considering the US Supreme Court now has a case before it.
* Back to Pritzker…
Additionally with phase three, horse racing will be returning to Illinois tracks, boosting the industry in a key season, especially for thoroughbred and harness racing. The Department of Agriculture has worked with the IDPH with the Illinois racing board and industry leaders to develop guidelines for racing, allowing those whose livelihoods depend on these races to get back to work and allowing spectators to watch from home and place wagers online and over the phone.
And while it’s still at least a few weeks off, I want to affirm that the three metrics that have brought us from phase two to phase three will be the same as those that will move us into phase four. Just as this 28 day period of tracking started when we move from phase one to phase two on May 1, our next health metrics calendar will restart tomorrow and run for the same period, meaning that regions that meet the metrics could move into phase four possibly as early as Friday, June 26. That’s the earliest possible date and we will be watching the metrics closely in hopes that we will move forward expeditiously, but our goal is and always has been to keep people safe from this coronavirus while we restore more of our normal activities.
So it’s important that we remain careful about continuing to wear face coverings washing hands, maintain six feet of distance, wiping down surfaces using hand sanitizer and other mitigations. Let’s not move backward, but instead, let’s move forward together.
Please remember to pardon all transcription errors.
* Nursing homes…
Some long term care facilities opt out of the free assistance of IDPH response teams, sometimes because they choose to take their own specimens using IDPH swabs, or because they choose to work with their county or city health department instead. Others work with their local hospitals and health centers to source and conduct tests.
To date, we’ve sent about 45,000 test kits out in 200 shipments, up from 18,000 swabs to 68 facilities back in late April. Still others have declined the free visits, and even the free testing supplies from IDPH entirely.
As I’ve explained, these are largely private entities. And even as we work to ramp up regular testing of all our long term care residents and staff, my administration has received some pushback from owners and industry representatives, making it difficult to secure compliance across the board. […]
(L)ong term care residents are some of our most vulnerable Illinoisans. That’s why strong compliance from many isn’t good enough to counteract any heel dragging at any privately held nursing homes.
The Illinois Department of Public Health is today filing a rule requiring each facility to develop its own individualized testing plan and document an established relationship with a testing lab, whether it’s a commercial lab, a local hospital lab or our state labs. This new rule will require nursing homes to conduct testing, when experiencing an outbreak, when an outbreak is suspected. Periodic testing even when there is no sign of an outbreak in line with new federal guidance issued this week, or when directed by IDPH or their local health department to do testing. The rule also mandates compliance with infection control recommendations, at large test results should be used to identify asymptomatic cases to confirm infection in symptomatic cases to re evaluate quality indicators to follow up on infection control programs, and to support decision making.
To be clear, this rule doesn’t deviate from our existing priorities. But it gives IDPH, a regulatory agency, additional teeth in securing buy-in from these private entities administrators who declined to provide a testing plan will be found in violation of the rule. The challenge of protecting elderly Illinoisans who live in congregate settings, many of whom have underlying conditions is evident in the heartbreaking percentage of illness and death that have been seen nationally in LTC facilities. COVID-19 is unrelenting. And it has visited its worst effects on older Americans. But our state will continue to use every resource at our disposal, and the collective medical experience from across the nation to protect our seniors throughout this crisis.
In response to a question, the governor said violations would typically be a fine, but could involve licensure issues.
* Will you file another IDPH rule like the one you withdrew under pressure from JCAR?…
We’re continuing to look at that, but I will say that what we’ve been left with because of the inaction by the legislature is the removal of licenses, which is something we didn’t want to have to pursue.
* So as of right now if they don’t follow they could have their licenses revoked…
They could
* Is there any sort of metric of nursing home residents that have died of unrelated unrelated to COVID maybe from other illnesses that kind of were exacerbated by maybe lack of visitors or something like that?…
Dr. Ezike: When you’re dealing with this population that obviously has the major risk factor of being elderly and has the additional risk factors of having multiple comorbidities. It’s really hard. I don’t think there are any individuals in that group that don’t have 123 multiple of those high risk factors so I think all of those fatalities as unfortunate as they are would absolutely be COVID deaths. In terms of someone die of a broken heart. I don’t know how to assess that so I don’t really think there’s a metric that I could give that could really get to that. I just mean it’s being counted as it’s a separate subset of people who have died in nursing homes during this time of unrelated illnesses. I don’t think there are any that would satisfy that criteria where they had no other medical problem that they were completely healthy, and that, you know, this infection was just a coincidence and that there was not something related to the COVID I think all every one of these deaths had a direct tie to the COVID infection and that spurred on again, they had other conditions definitely but this COVID absolutely had some kind of contributory role.
* A Chicago Church has asked the Supreme Court to overrule your stay at home order, do you have any concerns about this action or the fact that churches continue to hold services with millionaires like Willie Wilson paying their fines?…
Well, multiple federal judges have reviewed and upheld the approach that we’ve taken with our executive orders with regard to houses of worship. So you know these courts have recognized that there’s a public health crisis that’s ongoing, and the need to take steps to protect public health, as we have, including as related to religious services I think we all are aware of circumstances in which there have been infections that have been spread during religious services that were held with many people packed together, the attorney general’s office will be filing a response as required in the case that you’re referencing.
* How will you protect and provide relief to workers who don’t feel safe returning to work next week in phase three?…
Well the first thing we’re doing is imploring and providing guidance to employers that the employees should look at to all of that is available again on our DCEO website and employees that find that employers are not following that guidance should report that their employers are not following it. And of course that should be reported either to the Attorney General’s workplace enforcement office or the Department of Labor, both of which had the ability to enforce it.
* For employees who just might not feel safe going to an office yet next week. What do you advise those? I know you said private businesses should use their discretion…
Private businesses need to use their discretion in fact, especially when it comes to the most vulnerable people who have pre-existing conditions employee should make those, you know, to the extent they are able to make those known to their employers so that their forbearance can be given to them for that. But you know it obviously what we’re looking for here is a common decency. That should come from employers, and then of course we’ll rely on enforcement wherever we need to.
* Some other states including somewhat Democratic governors are making deep budget cuts rather than counting on federal help. Why are you plotting a different course? Are you prepared to make more cuts in this budget if the only help you get is Federal Reserve loans that have to be repaid?…
So, you know, as I’ve said all along this is not a time for governments state governments particularly to be cutting services, especially a government like ours where agencies have been hollowed out over a number of years. As you saw, I’ve attempted heartily to try to build back up some of those agencies, but I’ve known and I think everybody else is known, it would be a multi year process to do that because it took many years to slash and burn those agencies. So, look I also recognize that if the federal government does not step up to the plate. Then we’re going to have massive cuts. Everybody understands that we will have to revisit this right, but the legislature will meet for sure in November for a veto session, and perhaps some time in between, and we’ll be evaluating whether or not the federal government did do what I think everybody hopes and expects that they will do. Again, we’re not in a unique position, and what other states have done, certainly is. Some states have put forward cuts that they might put into place. If they’re unable to get support from the federal government, what we’ve said is look we’ll be working very hard to do that. But our sincere hope is that making cuts now would be so bad for working families and for people who’ve been out of work now as a result of COVID-19 that what we’d like to do is maintain state government as it is. Again, still hollowed out to some degree, as it has been over the years and. And then we’ll manage through as the next month or so reveals whether the federal government will step up.
* The Restore Illinois website today says the central region is not meeting one specific metric for phase three reopening, which is the hospital admission change. Is that one metric alone enough to delay moving to a new phase does the state have flexibility in determining how to use those metrics?…
Actually the updated numbers from today’s numbers when those got added in I think in the last hour, you’ll find that as it happens, central region is now meeting all those requirements. But even if it had been the number from yesterday, it’s very, again that the idea here is stable, and you know when you talk about 2%, that’s stable.
* With the start of phase three coming tomorrow, how long will it take to gauge whether loosen restrictions lead to any increase in infections hospitalizations or deaths. How is IDPH prepared to respond if that occurs?…
Once again, the whole purpose of each phase and the reason there’s a 28 day period involved in each phase is to monitor when you make the changes. Yes, we all have to watch in one day, two days seven days even 14 days isn’t enough. We see that in other states it sometimes takes three weeks even more before you really start to see the effects of an opening up. So that’s why we have a 28 day period for each phase and a monitoring period of 14 days or seven days depending on which metric you’re looking at.
It’s possible that if we have a surge a spike, and we need to quell that spike, we might potentially have to move backwards in the phases. That’s not something any of us wants to do, but certainly wouldn’t allow a region of the state to move forward, if it wasn’t meeting the metrics.
* Could restrictions be loosened in between that next phase just as the restaurants and bars you offered up last week?…
That’s not our intention, but it always is true that more information becomes known and it allows us perhaps to make adjustments, and as we learned for example about outdoor dining, you know that if you maintain the social distance, and again this is from experience, also the advice of epidemiologists that as we’ve learned more, I’ve always said that we can change the playbook as we go. But it’s not our intention and when we think that the science is pretty good. That’s dictated where we have gotten to and where we’re going. And I would remind everybody that Illinois was just named as the only state in the United States that was meeting the guidelines that were set by the Federal plan for reopening that was put together by Dr. Fauci and presented as the federal government’s plan.
* Do you plan on eating outside at a restaurant this weekend, why or why not. And once again, are you going to be cutting your hair and going to a barber shop?…
You can tell I need to have my hair cut, that’s for sure. I don’t have any plans to dine outside over the weekend, although I did, my wife’s birthday was this last week and we have a little patio in our house so we did dine outside just our family together. I’m gonna get my hair cut at some point. I just, I don’t have an appointment yet and I understand that appointments are hard to come by at this point, so I’ll get to it as fast as I can.
* Is Friday going to be the last of the daily press conferences and are we moving to weekly next week?…
I don’t think we’ve made any decisions about that. I mean, our intention is to make sure that you are regularly updated and as you’ve seen I’ve been here every day. I think we’ve made one adjustment. And that was to allow all of you and all of my staff to have weekend days off, but we’re still providing the information that you’re seeking over the weekend. And again, we’ll always have press conferences when there’s a need to make sure that we get information out but right now the plan is to continue as we are.
* Today five churches in Lake County filed a lawsuit against your administration. [garbled] Christian Assembly of God says they run a food pantry out there, which gets state funding, 30 volunteers feeding 1200 people a week, but they can’t have more than 10 people on Sunday for phase three. How do you respond to that discrepancy which they say, just frankly is not fair to them?…
Well as regards of food pantry you know I was in East St. Louis yesterday at a food pantry and like many nonprofit organizations they’ve had to make adjustments in order to keep their patrons safe you know to keep the people who use the food pantry safe. I know that lots of organizations have made those adjustments, it isn’t. Nothing is directed here at at a religious organization that happens to have a food pantry it’s really the idea here for everybody for everything and food pantry specifically is just to make sure that those who get served are served in a safe environment so you know we provide guidelines for different kinds of food service, and organizations, you know in grocery stores and so on. So I think those would apply here too.
I’m sorry maybe the pastor is saying they have 30 people in working the food pantry. If they can have 30 people to work a food pantry, you’re going to find so they can only have 10 people in a service. Yeah, and the discrepancy there has frustrated the pastor…
Well, again, we have guidelines that are now available for the afternoon on the or will be this afternoon on the dceo website. And those are our best recommendations. We’re not providing restrictions. We’re simply providing the best recommendations that we can for keeping people safe. So we hope that the pastor will follow that guidance and those recommendations for his services his or her services
But if there’s no restrictions then you’re not going to be asking for any law enforcement?…
As you know, I have never encouraged any police enforcement or any other kind of breaking up of gatherings. What I have said is that pastors should use their judgment and the science and data, and should follow the recommendations that have been made, but I realized that some have ignored that.
* A couple of questions on IDES, Republicans, held a news conference today calling for an audit, the Auditor General to audit, what went wrong, your response to that?…
Well I think I’ve been very transparent about what the challenges have been and, indeed, if you look at virtually every state in the United States, you can look in the Midwest, Michigan and Missouri and Indiana and Wisconsin. I mean all have had the same challenges. T their challenges of staffing their challenges of the systems that were put in place. Nobody expected to have 10 or 20 times the number of filings that have been made, as have been made over the last two months. And again, we’ve been trying to build that ship and float that boat at the same time. And we’re doing the best we came in 1.2 million applications have been filed and. And those filings have gone through so there are people who remain there’s some people that need arbitrations there’s some people who have challenges because they put something wrong into the system they need to take out of the system. And you can’t make easy alterations once you’ve applied, you may have changed your name for some reason from the last time that you were receiving unemployment to this time. And so those are some specific circumstances that people have to talk to somebody about or use the chat bot that exists online.
You throw an audit though I mean is that a political move by there, I think, I mean I look I, of course that’s the right of anybody but I will just say that we’ve been very transparent about what the challenges are. If their goal is to figure out what didn’t work right. I have stood here, I don’t know how many times over the last two plus months and told people what hasn’t worked right and how we’ve been trying to address it. And again we brought in some of the biggest, most robust companies in America, to help us rebuild those systems, so that we could on the fly, make sure that we’re meeting the needs of people across Illinois, but there’s no doubt about it like many other states. Some people have. It has taken longer to file and get claims delivered upon than any of us would like
* What might reopening schools look like, what do you tell juniors who are going to enter the senior year and Greg Bishop wanted to know, how do you ensure parents that their kids are going to get a quality education?…
I have a junior in my own home and so this is a relevant question to to those of us who have a junior.
It’s unfortunate that we can’t see that far into the future with this virus. What we are trying to do is to set the foundation for any outcome. My hope and desire is for us to be to have all of our kids back in school in the fall and I know some schools have already chosen across the nation. Some states have chosen to do that, some are in the position that we are still considering you know whether it is safe for our kids. But the most important thing is the kids and the people who work with the teachers and the administrators and the paraprofessionals, we have to keep all of them safe and so to make sure that we have the right conditions for that is what we’re looking to do.
* A study by the University of Chicago [garbled] found that uninsured and undocumented residents are most likely to be in need of COVID-19 testing and yet there’s still a lag in testing in areas where they live. What is the state doing to remove testing ability for them, and your message to the undocumented people still fearful to be tested?…
I can’t speak to all undocumented communities, I mean I absolutely agree that we need to make sure that testing is available to everybody. First I would say all testing that we are involved with and I think we have over 260 sites across the state. All that testing is free.
So anybody who needs a test that meets the criteria can go get a test and then those criteria have expanded vastly, to be clear, an undocumented resident of our state has the ability to get a test there’s no citizenship requirement and you’re not required to fill out a form that reveals your citizenship. There may be some federally qualified health centers that have a form with that question on it, you’re not required to fill that out in order to get a test. So that’s one thing and then providing the health care that’s needed by undocumented residents is also something that we are doing in the state, making sure that people have the ability to get cared for if they get COVID-19
* There’s a huge gap in information about the types of workers getting sick with COVID-19 throughout Illinois. As public figures trying to contain the spread of the virus, how is this impacting the state’s ability to track and prevent more of the outbreaks. And does the state plan to do anything about this. Also, why is more information not made public?…
Is this a question about, I’m sorry about the careers of the people who are identified? Sounds like types of workers getting sick, types of workers? And we have a very good idea because we know that some outbreaks are taking place in certain work settings. For example, and you all have heard about, for example pork processing or other meat processing plants is one example.
Dr. Ezike: IDPH is a master collector of information. We have millions of pieces of data that come in to us every day from all different sources. In terms of the actual data regarding people who are being tested and people you know obviously some of those tested will then be positive. Again, whatever is put into our, our databases is what we have. And so I think it is imperative that everyone hears that those forms, whether there’s a form that an individual has to fill out whether it’s a healthcare professional that’s assisting with papers being filled out whether it’s in a doctor’s office, whether it’s in the drive thru sites like everything that’s put in there. And that’s what we have so if people just say I’m just going to write my name, and I’m going to leave off the date of birth or I’m going to leave off the address. Then when we’re trying to figure out who this positive case belongs to. We put it in this bucket that has no address until we’re able to chase down that information and we don’t know if this is belongs to one of the riffs, which of the Restore regions it belongs to or, you know, which county had this positive. So, again, all of that information is essential, the more information, we have, the more information that’s given to us, the more that we have to be able to put out in terms of identifying types of occupation, a location. We do know from some of our outbreak investigations that you know you have a specific location when you’ve gone through the, the contact tracing and the interviewing where you’ve tried to go back and think of all the places, work with the person to identify all the places that they’ve been. And then, you know, you would say maybe oh I went to, you know, I went to the grocery store on this day I went to a place of worship on this day I went to this health club, this place to get you know hair, nails massage. So when we get all that information. And then if you get a cluster of people that in that same timeframe all identify like a specific locale. That’s how we then can put things together like an like an investigator to say, Wow, there were around the same time, we have all these people that frequented this one location, and then you try to hone in, then you try to go to that location find other people who may have been there at the same time. So again, once we get the critical information that allows us to do further investigation to have more and then we have more data fields populated in our database and then we can put out summaries of more more intense information. So again, the data that we get is what we can give out and so we want to implore everybody to be very comprehensive in all the forms they’re filling in that involves individuals that involves local health departments that involves hospital personnel lab personnel everyone to work together so we can have as much data so we can answer all these questions.
Gov. Pritzker: The most important data, though, that we we nearly always get is, of course, how to contact the person with their test results
* Large office buildings, reopened after weeks standing by mostly idle, researchers are worried about the potential for bacteria that causes Legionnaires disease being in the pipes. So what guidance do you have for building managers and for people who are returning to work in those buildings?…
Well there are lots of buildings that you know that are in areas that have had legionnaires or Legionella detected in their pipes. You know, there’s one obviously terrible circumstance in Illinois of the Quincy Veterans Home where there are staff at that home too, so workplace where there’s Legionella. But in terms of dealing with Legionella, I mean this is a problem that the state has dealt with for many years. It’s not like we need new guidance about how to deal with legionnaires or Legionella. So it’s not really a new endeavor.
* Two very important metrics to get the state to phase four, even more widespread testing available to everyone regardless of symptoms and contact tracing on more than 90% of cases. To that end, she has two questions. What’s the next big testing metric? How will the state get there with federal support of the National Guard sites going away. Does the State have a large order of testing supplies or test machines coming in?…
We have, there are many testing machines that exist in the state and of course, as I’ve talked about before, contracting with the existing owners of those, they may be hospitals, they may be doctors or others, or commercial Labs is part of our effort to scale up, obtaining swabs. You’ve heard me say this over and over, how will we scale up. These are all the same things that we’ve been doing. But more and more and more in terms of what our goals are. We need to do many more than we are. I would point out that we’re currently as I’ve said many times we’re among the large states, second highest in terms of per capita testing. We’re the third highest in overall testing among the big states and so we’re gonna you know and again. The goal is to get to a much higher number and you’ve seen us do that. I mean, back when, at the, near early on when I talked about us needing to get to 10,000.
It took us a couple of weeks a few weeks before we were able to get from where we were to that 10,000 number, but we moved pretty quickly from 10,000 to 20,000, we’re averaging out about 23,000, a day but you’ve seen [garbled] hit 27 and 29,000 so you know we’re going to keep ratcheting that up. And the goal here is to make sure that everybody, whether it’s nursing homes at our priority locations gets tested on a regular basis, but also as we are reopening many businesses across the state that the businesses where there are more at risk, individuals that they also have the testing available to them, and then the doctors.
OK, how many people have been hired for contact tracing. How long will it take for them to be trained, will the state have enough people by the time by the end of June to move into phase four. So, just a clarification when we think about the metrics to move into phase four, they are the same metrics that we needed to graduate, if you will, into phase three. So, the information regarding the metrics around contact contact tracing. Those are, I guess, internal goals that we all know that we need to the more contact tracing the more aggressively we can identify cases and identify potential cases and have people stand down before they have the chance to infect others so that’s not what’s going to hold other people back. We’re working aggressively to get that online and to get people hired and to get the curriculum. We have some pilot, local, local health departments that we’re starting with first, and then we’re going to expand. So, we will not have the contact tracers in every part of the state next week, but we will branch out and keep growing until we get the full capacity that we need. But again, that is not going to hold the state back, but we know that that is an important part of the master plan in order to keep our state safe to be able to quickly rapidly identify people who are positive, and be able to identify their context so that they can stand down before they potentially infect someone else.
* An emergency rule filed May 22 suspends the 30 day time frame for an IDPH inspection that arises from a nursing home complaint, except for allegations of abuse and neglect. Why was this rule needed does it apply to inspections by local health officials?…
So at the state level, I think the feds understood that, in the midst of this pandemic that we were going to be focusing on COVID response and trying to address the nursing homes as they are clearly the highest risk setting for the entire state for the whole country for the whole world. And so they wanted us to focus on the COVID response, but of course made that exception for things that would be considered an immediate jeopardy. So for things, essentially it means some offensive so egregious that you could immediately have to suspend a license. So, other things have been put on the back burner. As we progress that that might be loosen but again we’re following the federal, the federal guidelines.
* Governor we’ve heard from people who say they’re not going to return to restaurant or bar jobs but stay on employment until something else comes along. Well, those who make that decision run the risk of losing their unemployment benefits…
Well that’s a decision the federal government would make. There are regulations around that. You know it’s able and available I think is the standard here. That’s not really a decision that will make at the local level.
* Churches gyms theaters, they all seem to think they can operate in a way that’s safe. To what extent are you rethinking one to let them open to more people and customers instead of just 10 people?…
Theaters and gyms you’re throwing those together, well those are a bit different, gyms tend to be smaller. Although I know there are some that are quite large. And we have provided guidance for certain activities at gyms and fitness centers. But theaters, I think there’s a common belief that the experts seem to tell us anyway that it would be difficult for us to open theaters in the near future in phase three.
* How are malls moving forward during phase three and will business in malls operate differently than other businesses?…
Dr. Ezike: So most of the guidance, were thinking of businesses as solitary individual businesses. And so the the rules that applied in terms of capacity. How many people could be in the store how many people per 1000, square feet? So those I think would continue to apply for individual stores.
And then if they happen to be within the context of a law I don’t think the rules change. So I think it’s still the rules that are prescribed in the guidance, I should say, the guidance that is prescribed for individual businesses, whether it’s a personal care facility, the same rules would apply in terms of what services can be done. I think some of the things that might be hard to implement would be some of the recommendations surrounding like extending the hours so that you have lower population density, if you will, in any one establishment at the time. Your ability maybe to flex the hours might be limited by the by the hours of the mall in general, but otherwise I think the individual facilities and businesses follow the same rules that are prescribed on our website.
* Governor there’s been a growing COVID-19 outbreak at the Pulaski County Jail which also serves as an immigration detention center in rural Southern Illinois. Recent reports from ICE state now 29 detainees have tested positive for the virus. This is in a county with multiple challenges in regards to access to health care. In response, there have been calls from advocates and public health professionals for IDPH to inspect detention centers and ensure the health of those who are held by ICE, how do you respond?…
Dr. Ezike: That is a federally run facility but in Pulaski County, the local health department has been involved with that. We have offered consultation. We have reviewed the methods that have been employed surrounding that outbreak. We actually did see that they have taken the appropriate measures to mitigate the outbreak, so we are partnering with our local health department. Obviously anything that happens within our state affects all the residents of the state in terms of the employees that work there and go home every returning to their communities. And so we have been partnering again with the local health department’s. We feel that a lot of the measures and steps in the mitigation strategies that have been employed have been appropriate. And so we continue to follow that outbreak.
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1,527 new cases, 104 additional deaths
Thursday, May 28, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Press release…
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today announced 1,527 new cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 104 additional deaths.
Coles County: 1 male 80s
Cook County: 2 males 40s, 2 females 50s, 3 females 60s, 7 males 60s, 1 unknown 60s, 8 females 70s, 10 males 70s, 7 females 80s, 7 males 80s, 9 females 90s, 6 males 90s, 2 unknown 90s
DeKalb County: 1 female 70s
DuPage County: 1 male 60s, 1 male 70s, 1 female 90s, 1 male 90s
Kane County: 1 male 60s, 1 female 70s, 1 male 70s, 1 male 80s, 1 female 90s, 1 male 100+
Kankakee County: 1 male 90s
Lake County: 2 females 60s, 2 males 60s, 1 male 70s, 4 females 80s, 1 male 80s, 1 female 90s
Macoupin County: 1 male 80s
McHenry County: 1 female 80s
Sangamon County: 1 female 80s
St. Clair County: 1 male 60s, 1 male 70s, 1 male 80s, 1 female 90s
Tazewell County: 1 male 90s
Union County: 2 males 70s
Whiteside County: 2 females 90s
Will County: 1 male 50s, 1 female 70s, 1 female 80s
Winnebago County: 1 female 90s
Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 115,833 cases, including 5,186 deaths, in 100 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years. Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 25,993 specimens for a total of 829,966. The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total test from May 21–May 27 is 8.3%
*All data are provisional and will change. In order to rapidly report COVID-19 information to the public, data are being reported in real-time. Information is constantly being entered into an electronic system and the number of cases and deaths can change as additional information is gathered. Information for a death previously reported has changed, therefore, today’s numbers have been adjusted.
* Dr. Ezike…
As of midnight, 3649 individuals were hospitalized with COVID-19 and of those 1,009 patients were in the ICU and 576 patients were on ventilators
…Adding… Dr. Ezike…
Among those that have passed associated with COVID, almost 44% of those were in long term care facilities.
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Question of the day
Thursday, May 28, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* I asked yesterday if you were planning to eat at a restaurant soon. Are there any other public activities you plan to do when the state moves into Phase 3 tomorrow?
By the way, I checked with the governor’s office today and all regions are still on track.
…Adding… The governor just confirmed that all regions are on track.
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* AP…
Roughly 2.1 million people applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week, a sign that companies are still slashing jobs in the face of a deep recession even as more businesses reopen and rehire some laid-off employees.
About 41 million people have now applied for aid since the virus outbreak intensified in March, though not all of them are still unemployed. The Labor Department’s report Thursday includes a count of all the people now receiving unemployment aid: 21 million. That is a rough measure of the number of unemployed Americans. […]
In Illinois, 58,359 people filed for first-time claims for unemployment benefits last week, down from the 72,780 filings a week earlier. Since mid-March, nearly 1.1 million Illinoisans have filed for jobless benefits.
First-time applications for unemployment aid, though still high by historical standards, have now fallen for eight straight weeks. In addition to those who applied last week, an additional 1.2 million applied under a new program for self-employed and gig workers, who are eligible for jobless aid for the first time. These figures aren’t adjusted for seasonal variations, so the government doesn’t include them in the overall data.
*** UPDATE *** IDES…
The Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) today released new statewide data showing the department processed 58,263 new initial claims for regular unemployment benefits during the week ending May 23. The department has now processed 1,302,154 claims for unemployment benefits from March 1 through May 23. This amount is nearly 12 times the number of claims the department processed over the same period last year, when IDES processed just 102,000 claims for regular unemployment benefits.
The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program has processed 88,965 initial claims in its two weeks. PUA provides 100% federally-funded unemployment benefits for individuals who are unemployed for specified COVID-19-related reasons and are not eligible for the state’s regular unemployment insurance program, the extended benefit (EB) program under Illinois law, or the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program (PEUC), including independent contractors and sole-proprietors. Up to 39 weeks’ worth of benefits are potentially available under the program for COVID-19-related unemployment claims.
IDES processed 39,414 Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation claims (PEUC), which provides up to 13 weeks’ worth of 100% federally funded benefits to individuals who have exhausted their regular state unemployment benefits. PEUC is potentially available for weeks beginning on or after March 29, 2020 and continuing through the week ending December 26, 2020.
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* Fox News…
An Illinois church has filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court, challenging Gov. Jay Pritzker’s closure of houses of worship during the coronavirus crisis a day after another congregation in California made a similar move.
The case will be handled by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, based on geography, and he has asked the opposing state officials to respond by Thursday evening, just as Justice Elena Kagan asked of the California church that filed an emergency request on Tuesday.
Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church and the Logos Baptist Ministries filed the emergency order citing precedent in a 1947 Supreme Court case “Everson v. Board of Education.” In that case, the Court wrote that “Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church… Neither can force nor influence a person to go or remain away from a church against his will.” […]
Both Kagan and Kavanaugh alone can decide these cases, or refer them to the full court.
* From the church’s request…
Three decisions,from the Fifth and Sixth Circuits,have enjoined such orders as unconstitutional, see First Pentecostal Church of Holly Springsv. City of Holly Springs, Mississippi, No. 20-60399, 2020 WL 2616687 (5th Cir. May 22, 2020); Roberts v. Neace, No. 20-5465, 2020 WL 2316679 (6th Cir. May 9, 2020); Maryville Baptist Church, Inc. v. Beshear, No. 20-5427, 2020 WL 2111316 (6th Cir. May 2, 2020), and two decisions,from the Seventh and Ninth Circuits, have denied injunctive relief, see Order, Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church v. Pritzker, No. 20-1811 (7th Cir. May 16, 2020) (“Circuit IPA Order,” attached hereto as Exhibit A); South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, No. 20-55533, 2020 WL 2687079 (9th Cir. May 22, 2020).1Thesedecisions also differ as to whether such orders trigger strict scrutiny under Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah,508 U.S. 520 (1993), and Emp’t Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990). These contradictory decisions demonstrate serious confusion exists within the federal courts as to the correct constitutional standards to apply to emergency executive orders restricting religious worship. Thus,this application presents important questions of federal law which have divided the circuits and should be settled by this Court.
*** UPDATE *** With a big hat tip to a commenter…
As southern Illinois prepares for Phase 3 of the state’s reopening plan, COVID-19 cases in Jackson County are on the rise.
Bart Hagston, administrator of the Jackson county health department, said most of the cases are connected to a local church that has been holding in-person services in defiance of public health orders.
“We have seen an uptick in the number of cases over the last several days. Most of those cases are tied to an outbreak associated with a church in Jackson County,” he said.
The name of the church is not being released to the public.
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* Gov. Pritzker is in East St. Louis today and he and local officials talked about the challenges they’ve faced and what they’ve done. Dr. Ezike is not in ESL with the governor today. The audio/video connections aren’t great, so there could be some transcription issues. Your pardons will be more appreciated today.
The governor then spoke about George Floyd in Minneapolis, Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, Brianna Taylor in Kentucky and Christian Cooper in New York City…
…and countless others whose memories we cannot allow time to erase events that echo what we have seen happen to too many people, too many times in too many places. And yet we as a people have not yet found the humanity to stop these vile horrid acts from happening. To truly contend with the racism that permeates our society, and then to root it out as a white elected official, I feel a special responsibility to speak out today and to own the obligation that I have to shape public policy in a more equitable direction. Being black in America cannot be a death sentence. But it is in some ways it is. And it’s dangerous to pretend otherwise.
We must actually do something to change that reality, to make it so that men like George Floyd are not killed on a street corner gasping for air in broad daylight. One moment alive, and the next moment, gone. People deserve to breathe. They deserve to live. George Floyd’s family should not have woken up today in a world without him in it. This investigation requires all possible accountability and transparency to deliver the closest thing [garbled] but it will never bring George Floyd back.
I’m especially saddened that amidst all the other challenges that we are facing right now, people of color have this extra burden to bear. As they have for too long. This moment must become a call to action for Illinoisans, for Americans to see the humanity in every person no matter their race, their religion, their socioeconomic status or their sexual orientation. To George Floyd to his family, may his memory be for a blessing.
On to questions for the governor: The first question has been asked at least half a dozen times and always answered the same way. Federal guidance strongly warns against allowing visitors in nursing homes.
* There still are nursing homes that still haven’t tested their residents or staff yet for COVID-19 …Where are the tests and shouldn’t nursing homes be a priority for test to protect the most vulnerable in our society?…
They are a priority and I think actually there’s an article today about the challenges [click here]. There are more than 1200 nursing homes in the state. If you think about the numbers of people that are represented in those nursing homes, you’re talking about more than 20,000 people. Indeed, it’s actually many more than that staff and others. And so in order to be able to test all of those people we’re only doing about averaging about 23,000 a day. And that’s statewide in every capacity. So that includes all the other congregate settings in which we’re testing. So in order to do it, you know, we’ve got it set aside tests which we’ve done, and then go and get to every single one of those facilities. … We’re also starting with the facilities that don’t have COVID-19 in them so that we can keep it out. If you find one or two people have it you can you can segregate them, get them to isolate and save the facility from having an outbreak. In the facilities where there are outbreaks, we are testing staff first and separating the residents in those, and ask the private owners of those nursing homes to do that to separate the residents so we’re getting to it. And again, I’d like to do it all at once. If we had the national leadership on this subject, if we had the supplies available we could do this much more quickly, but we’re getting to it as fast as we can.
* The CDC says that the current antibody test is wrong half the time [not quite, but close enough I suppose]. What is the status of antibody tests in Illinois. How many have been done. And just the fact that up to half of them could be wrong does this affect any of the day’s policy decisions?…
So, from very early on what we’ve said is, although we receive the serology information, in other words, the results of those tests, we set those tests aside. We actually have a committee at IDPH that has reviewed and come up with their own view of what to do with those serology tests. John O’Connor is correct, half of those tests seem to be inaccurate. So what does one do. Well if we could segregate the ones that we think are inaccurate. In other words, there are different types of serology tests and know which ones are accurate, we’re trying to go through and figure that out. We could then take the accurate ones and determine some things. But I must tell you it’s something I said several weeks ago in one of my press conferences serology tests, tell you, perhaps whether somebody had COVID-19 but it doesn’t tell you whether they’re immune from COVID-19. Even though, originally that was the hope and thought, it’s still not proven that if you have the antibodies that you can’t get it again. And so that’s the challenge here so we’ve put those aside, we’re looking at trying to keep keep people from getting COVID-19 in the first place. We’re certainly looking at all of the studies that are being done of serology tests around the world, not to mention around the United States, and we’ll make some decisions based upon the results of those in those research projects.
* What are you doing for communities like East St Louis? Are you getting them enough testing. How about economic health and what are you doing to clear the gap that exists. This is a second part of the question. What are you doing to clear the gap that exists in downstate Illinois as far as lower case counsel or death counts and and you know what are you doing to help those communities that are frustrated by being having the same rules applied to them at not getting as much aid as cities like Chicago?…
Hopefully I’ll remember all, I think there were three questions.
Let’s start with East St. Louis. East St. Louis is very important to me. From the earliest moments that I came here I was just saying this to some folks earlier from the National Guard that East St. Louis is a community that’s been forgotten, frankly. And so when I think about what we need to do to assist East St. Louis I think about trying to first create economic activity and have it put aside the moment, the moment we’re in which is COVID-19 in which we need to secure people’s lives and their health. But if you, and you’ve seen we have a facility here at the Jackie Joyner kersee Center, where people can get tested, and we provide free treatment and so on. So there’s the and and we’ve worked together with St Clair County and other other facilities other hospitals.
But I’m thinking about the economics of this area. From the beginning my thought has been that we’ve got to make sure that people are able to start businesses that there are people that are able to get on their feet and actually get economic activity going in the communities of East St. Louis. So we’ve been trying to, we’ve had, we have low interest loans we have loans for communities of color, that are dedicated to communities like he’s St Louis, that’s one thing from an economic activity perspective. In this moment when so many people have lost jobs. So many people are struggling, you know, we’ve banned evictions across the state of Illinois. We’ve provided rent assistance for people. We’ve made sure that people have health care whatever they need available to them. We’re trying to build up the resources of healthcare within communities of color in particular here, and so many I mean you really we could go through a whole big long list and I’ve got it to about the economic supports that we’re providing for people, and particularly those who are most impacted financially by COVID-19 and those happen to be, guess what the same as the communities that have the highest rates of death, or the highest rates of COVID positive tests, and those are communities of color. So this has been a focus from early on, I think the minute that we heard and saw statistics that showed that in particular the black community had a higher incidence of death on a per capita basis than any other. That was the moment we began to put in testing sites everywhere that we could in black communities, and making sure that that we were educating people about the importance of washing your hands of putting a mask on, and so on, and focusing that on communities of color in particular. There were a lot of people who had been told and you can actually read articles about this where those [in] the foreign countries that run bots to convince Americans to fight each other. That one of the things they were promoting was with the black community was immune from COVID-19. And so there were many people who had heard this, that the black community was immune and then had not heard that no actually the black community is most susceptible in some ways, at least to the terrible consequences of COVID-19. So there’s so much that we’re dealing with at the same time to try to address this challenge and you St Louis and for communities of color across the state.
* Can you be a little bit more specific about where we’re at with the contact tracing program, you know, how many people have been hired. When will the program be fully up and running. And also, can you address, people who are concerned about their privacy, and people who are unwilling to share sensitive information, what kind of questions can they be expected to answer?…
Sure. So let’s start with, I did a press conference talking specifically about contact tracing I think about a week ago so I would refer you back since they’re recorded online you can see everything that I said in my prepared remarks and answers to questions there.
Having said that, the goal with the contact tracers that we have in the state today, we already have contact tracing, just for people who don’t understand because we were doing contact tracing before COVID-19 our contact tracing for HIV, for example, is one thing that was done for contact tracing. But we have across the state hundreds of people who are in contact tracing. We start with that as a base, these are community health workers that are in St Clair, SIUE, they’re also all over in counties across the state.
So we start with that as a base. But when you need to do something as big as we need to do for COVID-19, what we need is technology so that we’re all connected to the same database. That is everybody’s got the same app, the contact tracers that there’s privacy built into that, meaning that if someone tests positive and they have five contacts in the last 48 hours, that the five contact names and phone numbers which come from this person who was COVID positive, right, that those five contacts are contacted, but not told where they may have come in contact with somebody who’s COVID positive. So the privacy is maintained for the patient. And then the contacts are made directly to the people who need to be contacted. It’s an enormous endeavor, think about it today we had 1100 reported positive cases, in prior days we’ve had 2500 even 3000 on one day. Think about that, multiply that by three or four or five contacts over the prior 48 hours remember 2000 every day, times three or four or five, you know that’s a lot of contacts to make. So you need more than the hundreds of contact tracers that we have. So what we’re doing is working with local departments of public health, to make sure that they get contact tracing dollars, so that they can higher contact tracers and a few other community resource workers and so on, to make sure that we’re contacting everybody. And then that we’re providing those people with resources in the local community. Because if you have to isolate for 14 days, that may not be an easy thing for many people. And so if you need a hotel room, motel room to separate from your family for 14 days. We want to make sure you get fed, we have wraparound services, everything is taken care of for you. If you’re going to remain in your own home and you live alone. We need somebody to deliver groceries and you know other services pharmaceuticals and so on that you may need. So that’s all the case one last thing.
How big is it and how long is it gonna take? We’re at about 30% of the contact tracing that we need today. We’re doing about 30% of the contacts. We need to get above 60%. You might say why not 100%? Because there are many people who don’t want to be contacted who never will answer the phone, you know, lots of reasons some, some people who are COVID positive, who won’t give you names.
So we’re going to get to hopefully about 60 plus percent, it’s going to take us weeks and weeks I can’t tell you how long I mean some people think it will take through August to do it. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to do it much faster than that. But as we fast as we can. We’re getting the dollars out to the counties, so that they can do the hiring that they need.
Sorry. It was a three parter or something and I wanted to make sure I gave you a full answer.
* Over the weekend, IDPH began posting a statistic called the recovery rate was 92% as of Tuesday. Can you explain that figure and what does it tell us about the nature of the virus?…
What we’re trying to do is to make sure that people understand that when you get COVID-19. It is not a death sentence. When you get COVID-19. In fact about 80% of people who get COVID-19 are experiencing mild symptoms to moderate symptoms, and then recover. It’s really 20%, or so, get it and have something more serious. That doesn’t mean they’re going to a hospital necessarily, but I think all of us at this point knows somebody who has had COVID-19 who has been sick at home, and had a hard time and then recovered.
Also, some of us know people who have had to go in the hospital, and then have passed away. And so, about 1% little less than 1% of people get COVID-19 passed away that’s the international statistic anyway. So what we’re talking about is, you know, trying to report a number that shows how many people have already had COVID-19 that have recovered. Now what I just gave you is a statistic of, if you took a snapshot at somebody of a bunch of people who got at the same time, you’d have 1% 18% and 80% roughly speaking, so the 92% is a reflection of many people who’ve recovered and have gone about their lives and haven’t gotten COVID-19 again. So that’s what we’re trying to give a number we had not before provided a recovery number. But people have asked us to try to put that number out so we are.
* Would it be feasible for Chicago to serve as a hub city for NHL whenever it returns?…
So actually, as you know the state is the one that sets the parameters for any play that might exist in the state. And then the city of Chicago, of course has the ability to be more stringent than the state’s parameters. So we’ve gotten contact by all of the major leagues right by NHL as well as MLB and NFL and so on. And, look, I am as anxious as I think many people are to get our sports up and running again. The problem is we can’t put spectators in the stands today, there’s just no way to do that safely. According to the doctors, what the leagues have asked is not for that, what they’ve asked is for the ability to run games. You know whether we’re talking about hockey or baseball or football at this moment they’re asking for the ability to run games televised with no spectators. Even that as you can imagine, think about two teams. You know all of the surrounding people that work for the team involved. It’s a lot of people. So we’ve worked with them they’ve actually come up with reasonably good plans each one of the leaks. And I’m anxious, starting with baseball. To get baseball up and running again and I’m hopeful that we will be able to do that. Going into July, but NHL I can’t answer what the timing will be when the Blackhawks will be added. But again, we’re working with every League, NBA NHL included.
* Earlier this month, Las Vegas casino started offering sports book betting [garbled]…
So customers will ask, well how big it is and we’re working on them. And we’re also working on the ability for people to do it in person somewhere to sign up for the app to allow them to [bet].
* Personal care guidelines for massage therapy to last 30 minutes or less. Many massage therapists are commissioned by the hour…
[Paraphrase: The guidance may be more about keeping a therapist safe.] I’ll bring that to the doctors I’m not making those individual specific decisions about massage therapy for example. But, but as it’s raised here and I’m sure that people have communicated with IDPH on the subject or dceo as a hotline that you can call if you’re in the industry. So I’ll bring that back to the experts and raise the issue to them.
* What is the earliest point that you think a Chicago casino can be up and running? Do you have any thoughts for the mayor to consider about what the best location in the city would be? Also, can you provide an update about when Illinois existing casinos will reopen, and what specific social distancing requirements?…
I’m not going to dictate to the Chicago City Council, or the mayor when they would start. They have to contract with a lot of people before they could even begin to, they have to choose a site and then start building, but they also have to have a partnership with casino operator. So I can’t tell you when that’ll happen. But I would certainly encourage them to do it as soon as they can.
Now, Let me say that I’m not going to dictate the location of that either or try to discourage or encourage you know I’m very interested in making sure that that we create the most number of jobs, the sooner that they’re able to get it up and running by the way, the better off the people of Illinois will be the people of Chicago to, because there’s a benefit not just to the city of Chicago, but a lot of revenue that will come to the state of Illinois, some of which will come here to St. Clair County. As a result of its funding of infrastructure, because that’s where a lot of those dollars will go.
And the last part of that question was, keep providing an update about what’s specific. No, I mean I honestly, it’s not something in phase three. There certainly are casino owners in the state of Illinois who have presented their ideas for that, but it does, it’s not going to be happening in the next phase. So I have to admit I have not focused specifically on it and in the end. I don’t know what the doctors will say or how long it will take them to kind of agree on something I know that we’re everybody’s looking at Las Vegas and wondering how they’re going to be able to do it, they’ve got rules in place. And, you know, I have to say it looks difficult to me but I am anxious to see what the plans are that the casinos will present.
* Will live horse racing restart on June one, if so what might that look like?…
I don’t think it’ll restart on June one. I think live horse racing will restart. I can’t tell you what date, but again it will be like other spectator sports where you would have to run without spectators at least to begin with.
* Today, Dr Willie Wilson sent a letter to President Trump and Attorney General William Barr asking them to intervene on behalf of churches to help those that desire to worship consistent with the recommendations or guidelines issued by the CDC. Your reaction?…
Well, we’ve done a lot to open churches to provide guidelines for churches and indeed we’ve asked churches to bring us their plans for how to open safely. I want as much as anybody to make sure that people who want to worship in church or a mosque or a synagogue, to be able to do that. I think it’s an extraordinarily personal important thing to so many people across the state of Illinois. I also want to make sure that people people don’t get sick doing it. And so we’ve [provided] guidance for drive up services. We are working with churches on outdoor services. And then the question is, what’s the population that you could get inside? What’s the capacity that you could have inside a church on any given Sunday, as they say any given day? One is having a service, and we just want to make sure that people are safe so you know we’re doing that, the doctors are working on that. As you have heard Dr Ezike say she would like very much for services to go back to some sort of indoor services. So, I am hopeful that we will be able to accomplish something even more than we’re already doing but we’re working very hard to get there.
* The john deere classic is scheduled to begin July 6 in the Quad Cities. The PGA Tour has yet to announce that fans will be allowed to attend the event. Are conversations of any type you and your staff had with the PGA Tour about the event? And is there any scenario in which fans would be allowed?…
I can’t answer that question. I know the PGA has been in touch with my staff the Illinois PGA has anyway. And I just don’t know what the status of those discussions are.
* What does it mean for the future of health healthcare that a hospital Transformation Program [did not pass in the legislature], particularly for hospitals on Chicago’s South Side that say they can no longer move forward but applying pressure now to the legislature. What can or should be done to help residents in these areas?…
This is extremely difficult because I want that transformation to take place as soon as possible. Four hospitals that were looking to merge for in total, a billion dollars in order to make that transformation, take place at this moment with so many things in flux about our state budget. It was nearly impossible for the General Assembly to go forward with a billion dollar program. And I know that that timing makes it very very difficult for those hospitals. We have a real challenge in the state simultaneously with the introduction of Obamacare, which has been so tremendous for expanding health care in our state. We also have had challenges for hospitals that now are doing much more outpatient and not inpatient, and so the result of that is the hospitals don’t have as much business revenue coming in the door, as they were before Obamacare became the law. Now, so you’d have hospitals transforming trying to figure out how to operate with more outpatient procedures to specialize a little more and so on. And then along comes COVID-19, where now that some hospitals have closed. Here we have COVID-19 where we need more healthcare providers. And we have an outbreak and a pandemic and something that’s really affecting much of the population. And so these things are kind of cross currents occurring with a budget that is, you know, has been very, very difficult, revenues dropping off and so on. So I just say there’s a situation none of us wanted to be in. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to get to hospital transformation with the assistance again with federal government help to replace revenues that are lost. We want to get back to Transforming Health Care across the state so that everybody gets it, and that we have enough facilities.
* Question about movie theaters being reopening soon…
Yes, but not for phase three. It’s something that we’ve contemplated for phase four, lower capacity and so on but not in phase three. And I know that the theater owners would like it to be in phase three it’s just, it’s very difficult to imagine it happening. Having said that, as we look at how we might do things in churches, you know, the kind of the seating, the way that seating works out in a church looks very much acts very much like it would in a theater, for example, and so we’ll be looking at how we can work these out churches, and then move to the question of theaters.
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1,111 new cases, 160 additional deaths
Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Press release…
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today announced 1,111 new cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 160 additional deaths.
Clinton County: 1 male 60s
Coles County: 1 female 80s, 1 male 80s, 1 female 100+
Cook County: 1 female 30s, 2 males 40s, 3 females 50s, 4 males 50s, 8 females 60s, 14 males 60s, 7 females 70s, 20 males 70s, 17 females 80s, 13 males 80s, 8 females 90s, 4 males 90s, 1 unknown 90s
DuPage County: 1 male 40s, 1 male 50s, 1 female 60s, 1 female 70s, 1 male 80s, 1 female 90s
Kane County: 1 female 60s, 3 females 70s, 3 males 70s, 1 female 80s, 1 male 90s
Kankakee County: 1 female 80s
Lake County: 1 male 40s, 1 male 50s, 1 male 60s, 4 females 70s, 1 male 70s, 2 females 80s, 1 male 80s, 7 females 90s, 2 males 90s
Madison County: 1 unknown 70s
McDonough County: 1 male 80s, 1 female 90s
McHenry County: 1 male 80s
McLean County: 1 female 50s, 1 female 70s, 1 female 90s
Randolph County: 1 female 80s
Rock Island County: 1 female 80s
Sangamon County: 1 female 80s
Will County: 1 female 50s, 1 female 60s, 1 male 60s, 1 female 70s, 1 female 80s, 1 male 80s
Williamson County: 1 male 50s
Winnebago County: 1 female 50s
Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 114,306 cases, including 5,083 deaths, in 100 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years. Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 17,179 specimens for a total of 803,973. The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity from May 20-26 is 8.6%.
*All data are provisional and will change. In order to rapidly report COVID-19 information to the public, data are being reported in real-time. Information is constantly being entered into an electronic system and the number of cases and deaths can change as additional information is gathered.
I’ll post hospitalization numbers when I get them.
…Adding… The governor said that, as of midnight last night, 3,826 are in the hospital with COVID-19, of those 1,031 are in the ICU and 592 are on a ventilator.
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COVID-19 roundup
Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* CNN…
Antibody tests used to determine if people have been infected in the past with Covid-19 might be wrong up to half the time, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in new guidance posted on its website.
Antibody tests, often called serologic tests, look for evidence of an immune response to infection. “Antibodies in some persons can be detected within the first week of illness onset,” the CDC says.
They are not accurate enough to use to make important policy decisions, the CDC said.
“Serologic test results should not be used to make decisions about grouping persons residing in or being admitted to congregate settings, such as schools, dormitories, or correctional facilities,” the CDC says.
The guidance is here.
* Hannah Meisel…
Of the $4.9 billion Illinois received under the CARES Act, the state took $2.7 billion and local governments were to receive $2.2 billion. Of that, Illinois’ five largest counties — Cook, DuPage, Lake, Will and Kane — received $1.4 billion.
But before lawmakers gathered last week in Springfield, there had been a fight brewing over whether those five counties would be required to pass their funds onto their local governments, or whether those municipalities would be on their own to fight for a share that went to the state.
The budget implementation bill passed by the General Assembly over the weekend ended that debate. It stipulates that municipalities from those five counties are not, in fact, directly eligible for state CARES Act money, and will have to get their share of federal money through distributed from the counties.
Deputy Gov. Dan Hynes said the administration agreed.
“I don’t believe it was the intent of the federal government to just give counties $300 or $400 million to spend,” Hynes said.
The City of Chicago’s federal distribution was included in that $1.4 billion, by the way.
* WAND…
The National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) of Illinois is submitting a plan to Gov. JB Pritzker that would allow movie theaters to reopen sooner than in Phase 4 of his Restore Illinois plan.
Under the governor’s plan, theaters cannot open until June 26th at the earliest, with a strict limit of 50 people per auditorium, something NATO says is an arbitrary number, since some theaters can hold 1,000 people.
The proposed plan would call for theaters to be allowed to reopen with 50 percent of their seating capacity, which NATO says is the standard proposed by the governor for restaurants and bars.
…Adding… From the governor’s office…
Indoor movie theatres are slated to reopen with public health guidance in phase four. Theatres are higher risk environments because people spend significant amounts of time in close proximity. Every phase of the Restore Illinois program is guided by the public health experts and listening to the experts has proven successful thus far. The administration looks forward to working with industry to ensure a safe reopening in a few weeks if health metrics indicate the state is ready.
* CBS 2…
Gov. JB Pritzker is asking the Illinois Appellate Court to vacate a temporary restraining order granted to a Clay County business owner and his tanning salon, essentially exempting them from the statewide stay-at-home order.
James Mainer and HCL Deluxe Tan had filed a new lawsuit on Thursday, seeking to have the governor’s executive order declared null and void. At a hearing on Friday, Mainer and HCL Deluxe sought a temporary restraining order barring the governor from enforcing the order statewide, but instead Clay County Judge Michael McHaney granted an order only for Mainer and his business.
Mainer is challenging the governor’s authority to extend his stay-at-home order beyond the first 30 days of his original disaster proclamation.
* From the filing…
As support for their theory, plaintiffs cite a 2001 informal letter drafted by a member of former Attorney General Jim Ryan’s staff. But this letter— which applied to an outbreak of foot and mouth disease affecting livestock in Illinois —has no binding effect and was superseded by a formal Attorney General opinion.
That new AG opinion is here.
* On to Tribune live blog headlines…
Cook County courts will remain in shutdown mode until July 6
Large majority of CPS students participate in remote learning, but more than 2,200 have had no contact with teachers
Jury trials again put off at federal court in Chicago
AP poll: Only about half of Americans would get a COVID-19 vaccine
CBOE to reopen trading floor, but with far fewer traders and a lot more rules
Congress shifts focus to overhauling Paycheck Protection Program
Deaths of more than two dozen residents of Far North Side nursing home tied to COVID-19: ‘It seemed like there was nothing we could do’
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle vetoes ‘extraordinarily bad’ plan to share coronavirus-positive addresses with first responders
The General Assembly adjourned its special pandemic session in the wee hours of a holiday weekend. Here’s what you might have missed.
More space at restaurants, masks at daycares: Here’s a closer look at Lightfoot’s guidelines for phase 3 of Chicago’s reopening plan
Chicago releases rules for restaurants to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic — but no date yet
Lightfoot announces plans to train hundreds of people to track the spread of the coronavirus
Summer camps are canceling and parents are scrambling: The search for sitters who embrace social distancing
* Sun-Times live blog headlines…
39 more die in Illinois of COVID-19 as all regions of state set to move to Phase 3 on Friday
Radiologists scrap fall event at McCormick Place
Pritzker ready to toast ‘cocktails-to-go’ — but Lightfoot wants a chaser
Nurse fired from Norwood Park senior home for pointing out COVID-19 safety issues: lawsuit
CPD Supt.: Stay-at-home order contributed to most violent Memorial Day weekend since 2015
Temperature checks on deck: Reopening guidelines usher in new normal
Isn’t it time everyone had enough?
As doctors, we are taught ‘First, do no harm.’ That becomes harder during a pandemic
Nobody should ever liken a stay-at-home order to Anne Frank’s hiding in an attic or a Japanese American internment camp
What we leave behind and what we welcome as city moves toward reopening
Cook County’s death toll in less than five months surpasses last year’s entire tally: ‘We do not believe that these deaths had to occur’
Museum of Science and Industry cuts 84 jobs
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* 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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* Press release…
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today announced 1,178 new cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 39 additional deaths.
Cook County: 1 male 30s, 2 females 40s, 1 female 50s, 3 males 50s, 1 female 60s, 4 males 60s, 4 females 70s, 11 males 70s, 1 female 80s, 1 female 90s, 1 male 90s
DuPage County: 1 male 70s
Fayette County: 1 male 70s
Kane County: 1 male 80s
LaSalle County: 1 female 90s
Madison County: 1 female 70s, 1 female 80s
McHenry County: 1 female 60s
Peoria County: 1 female 70s
St. Clair County: 1 male 70s
Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 113,195 cases, including 4,923 deaths, in 100 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years. Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 17,230 specimens for a total of 786,794.
Since this crisis began, there have been 22 positive staff and 47 positive residents at the Illinois Veterans’ Home at Manteno. Sadly, ten of those who tested positive for COVID-19 have passed away. The Veterans’ home in Anna has seen five residents test positive, one resident in LaSalle, and no positive cases at the Veterans’ Home in Quincy.
*All data are provisional and will change. In order to rapidly report COVID-19 information to the public, data are being reported in real-time. Information is constantly being entered into an electronic system and the number of cases and deaths can change as additional information is gathered.
* Dr. Ezike said today at the media briefing that the above numbers today are lower because of weekend reporting, but the hospitalization numbers are believed to be accurate…
3788 people were hospitalized with COVID-19. And of those 3788, 1035 patients were in the ICU and 590 individuals were on ventilators.
She added…
And I do want to share that for the week ending May 16, we reported a total of 780 deaths. While 780 deaths of course represents 780 individuals who lost their lives, and families and loved ones and communities who are mourning those deaths, it still signals the first week that there have been fewer deaths than the previous week. And so I am hopeful that this fact is the beginning of a downward trend. But of course, that also depends on all of us, and making sure that we’re doing all that we can to decrease the transmission of this virus.
She also said the state received its third shipment of remdesivir last week.
…Adding… Gov. Pritzker…
COVID related hospitalizations, which had been holding steady a couple of weeks ago, have now dropped to a six week low, with nearly 1200 fewer beds in use by COVID positive patients. And hospital beds and ICU Bed Availability are both above 30%.
* Monday’s press release…
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today announced 1,713 new cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 31 additional deaths.
Cook County: 1 female 30, 1 male 30, 1 male 40s, 1 male 50s, 2 females 60s, 1 male 60s, 4 females 70s, 3 males 70s, 2 females 80s, 2 males 80s, 1 female 90s, 3 males 90s
La Salle County: 2 male 60s
Madison County: 1 male 70s
McDonough County: 1 female 60s
St. Clair County: 1 male 80s
Union County: 1 female 50s, 1 female 90s
Will County: 1 male 70s
Winnebago County: 1 female 70s
Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 112,017 cases, including 4,884 deaths, in 100 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years. Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 21,643 specimens for a total of 769,564. The statewide 7-day rolling positivity rate, May16 – May 22 is 12%.
* Sunday’s…
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today announced 2,508 new cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 67 additional deaths
Coles County – 1 female 60s, 1 female 90s
Cook County – 1 female 20s, 2 males 30s, 1 female 50s, 5 males 50s, 1 female 60s, 9 males 60s, 4 females 70s, 9 males 70s, 11 females 80s, 6 males 80s, 7 females 90s, 3 males 90s
DuPage County – 1 female 60s
Macon County – 1 male 60s
Madison County – 1 unknown 80s
McLean County – 1 male 80s
St. Clair County - 1 female 80s
Winnebago County – 1 female 90s
Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 110,304 cases, including 4,856 deaths, in 100 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years. Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 25,674 specimens for a total of 747,921. The statewide 7-day rolling positivity rate, May15th – May 21st is 12%.
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* After the remote legislating bill went down in the House, the Senate unanimously passed a new rule…
The President, in consultation with the Minority Leader, may establish a process by which Senators and members of the public may participate remotely in hearings for standing committees, special committees, subcommittees or special subcommittees, and service committees. […]
In times of pestilence or public danger, the Senate may adopt a motion to allow a member to remotely participate and vote in the regular and special sessions of the Senate, provided that at all times a quorum of members is physically present at the location of session.
If a bill clears the Senate with the bare minimum majority and one of those votes is a remote vote, you gotta wonder if someone will sue.
Thoughts on this?
By the way, the new rule also created a new Pensions committee, which doesn’t yet have any members. It also changed the Government Accountability and Pensions Committee’s name to the Government Accountability and Ethics Committee.
*** UPDATE *** Rep. Ann Williams…
Hi Rich, hope you are well and survived an interesting end of session. Wow. I agree it was not ideal and difficult to really get the work we need done. However, I am introducing a standalone remote meeting bill using the same or similar language that went down in the house. I certainly hope we never get to the point we have to use it, and it’s far from an ideal way to legislate, but I think the current crisis has taught us we need to be prepared for the unexpected and the unthinkable. If the pandemic were to get worse or a second wave were to hit to a degree we simply could not meet safely in person, we need to be prepared. By not doing so, we risk our ability to serve our communities in times of extreme crisis.
* Sen. Rob Martwick…
The past four days of special session were an incredible success. The GA came together, worked in the most collaborative and bi-partisan manner, passed legislation that is crucial to the response to and recovery from the pandemic, and provided for the continuity of essential government services. As wonderful as it was, there was one epic failure: remote operation of the General Assembly. I have underlying health conditions. If I contract Covid-19, I am at high risk of serious complications and death. So, I followed the IDPH guidelines and stayed home. When President Harmon told me the Chicago Casino bill was at risk of failing, I drove down to Springfield to do my part to ensure the bill’s passage. The revenue from the Chicago casino is crucial to stabilizing Chicago’s finances, securing pensions for our police and firefighters, and protecting our homeowners from huge property tax increases. Honestly, I was terrified, but I had to go. No one should be required to risk their lives to participate in democracy. However, put my personal case aside and consider what this means: While this “special session” was a huge success, there was NO regular session. There are thousands of bills and initiatives that did not get their due process. People in Chicago have been waiting a dozen years for an Elected Representative School Board, yet that, like so many thousands of other important measures, was not deemed “essential” legislation. We did not do the work of the people, and until there is a vaccine or effective treatment, we probably will not. Every legislative body in this state and in many other states have recognized that they must get back to work and have adopted virtual operations to allow them to do so. The technology supports it and it is working well. I am grateful for the leadership of President Harmon and Leader Brady in adopting rules that will allow the Senate to convene committees, take testimony, and vote to advance legislation. This is good for me, but we need to do more to ensure that there is seamless operation for every member of the GA to advance the interests of their constituents and I am committed to working with Ann Williams and my former colleagues in the House to ensure they, like the Senate, join this movement so that they can get back to work too.
* But check this out from the NRCC…
Hey –
Fake Nurse Lauren Underwood recently voted along partisan lines to allow Members of Congress to collect their taxpayer-funded paychecks by sitting at home and phoning in their vote to the US Capitol instead.
Quite a few of Nancy Pelosi’s minions are already taking advantage of their proxy voting scheme.
So while nurses are on the frontlines risking their lives to treat COVID-19 patients, Fake Nurse Lauren and her Democratic colleagues can’t even show up to work.
–
Carly Atchison
NRCC
Regional Press Secretary
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* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…
Last winter, a buddy of mine asked me if I thought I could cover state legislative sessions from a remote, perhaps warmer, location.
I’ve been writing about Illinois politics and government for 30 years. Like many of my more experienced colleagues, I’ve developed an extensive list of sources and contacts that I can reach out to. I can also watch General Assembly floor debates and many committee hearings on the Internet.
So, after pondering the question for a bit, I said I might be able to do it for three years.
You may not believe this because House Speaker Michael Madigan has been in office since 1971, but there is a huge and regular turnover of legislators.
As of January, the median number of years served by House and Senate Republicans was four. The median was six years for House and Senate Democrats, according to data compiled by my pal John Amdor.
Because of that turnover, I’d eventually become too unfamiliar with the players and couldn’t effectively do my job.
And then came COVID-19. The spring legislative session was canceled for two months. I, like everyone who covers this stuff, became focused almost solely on the pandemic’s impact on Illinois and the state’s response and wound up working longer hours than during normal sessions, which usually keep me busy night and day.
The legislative leaders eventually decided to reconvene for a few days in late May and as I write this the General Assembly is on its third day in Springfield.
The leaders announced that reporters would be corralled into tiny spaces and, as a result, have no direct, ethical access to legislators and other Statehouse players beyond maybe catching up with them as they walk or drive to their Springfield isolation residences.
So, I figured this would be a good time to test my theory about remote reporting. I decided not to go to the Statehouse (where the Senate met) or to Springfield’s convention center (where the House met) and work from my Springfield home instead.
It’s been a weird experience.
After a while, you develop a sense of the Statehouse. You can, for instance, learn to spot a relevant group of people talking outside the legislative chambers or the governor’s office and then try to peel off one or more of them to find out what’s going on.
You can watch who is entering or leaving the governor’s office, or the House speaker’s office or some other important place and follow up.
You can stake people out who won’t return your calls or texts. You can hang outside of meeting rooms or in areas where interesting and knowledgeable people tend to gather (I call them “watering holes”).
You can roam the halls and wander into offices and hope you hear something useful. You can also get totally lucky by literally bumping into people as you walk around a corner or after popping into some random hearing.
After session ends for the day, you can buy drinks and dinner to maybe loosen lips or build working relationships, or pull other folks aside in restaurants and taverns.
You can make your own luck, but you have to be there.
None of that has been possible during this special session. If legislators are wandering around, reporters and lobbyists aren’t allowed into the area to chat with them. Members are also advised not to meet with anyone and the restaurants and taverns are all closed.
It hasn’t been easy, but I think I’ve done OK. I’ve been constantly worried that I’m missing something, but come to think of it, I’m always like that.
Still, I have not enjoyed the experience. I like my privacy, but I’m also a very social person. I need to be around people and the session has been driving me a little nuts. No more remote reporting during crunch time for me.
The session also has allowed me to think about the concept of remote legislating. When the pandemic began, I was for it. Why risk bringing in folks from literally every corner of the state to one centralized location? The Statehouse is a virus petri dish on a good day. But a deadly virus circulating through the state wasn’t worth the risk.
I’ve since had a change of heart.
I completely understand that we’re in an international crisis right now and I’ll give them this session without further complaint. But this cannot continue. My experience is showing me that a representative democracy is impossible to maintain without including the public. It should be used only in rare and limited circumstances.
*** UPDATE *** Hannah Meisel at the Daily Line has some of the debate on the remote legislating bill that failed to pass…
State Rep. Tim Butler (R-Springfield), who represents the capital city, defended the Illinois constitution’s contention that the General Assembly’s meetings be held in the “seat of state government” and doubted the efficacy of virtual meetings.
“I know for a fact that gaming bill that we passed earlier today would not have passed if we weren’t in this setting right now because all the conversations we had back and forth allowed that bill to happen,” Butler said.
Others backed him up, including State Rep. Mary Flowers (D-Chicago) who said virtual meetings were not nearly as effective and denied the public the right to be part of the process.
“This is the people’s house, it’s not the people’s Zoom,” Flowers said.
But State Rep. Ann Williams (D-Chicago) said remote voting was about protecting the health and safety of lawmakers, staff and the public.
“It seems like some of this body forget that we are in the midst of a global pandemic,” Williams said.
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