* The governor had a couple of announcements today…

As of today, nearly 140,000 more student loan borrowers in Illinois will now get relief. IDFPR has worked tirelessly to secure loan relief options with 20 student loan servicers, allowing borrowers to request a 90 day forbearance, waived late fees, no negative credit reporting, the pause of debt collection lawsuits for 90 days and enrollment in other borrower assistance programs.

* And…

I’m so proud today to share another critical update from another of our agencies and that’s the Department of Human Services. Illinois requested an expansion of benefits to help put additional food on the table for all Illinois SNAP households with school aged children, more than 300,000 in all, and that expansion has now been approved, delivering an additional $112 million in food assistance to children across the state. … This increased assistance will be automatically added to family link cards.

As always, please pardon transcription errors.

* Dr. Ezike…

As of last night, 4776 individuals in Illinois were hospitalized with COVID-19. Of those, 1226 patients are in the ICU and 781 patients were on ventilators. 30% of hospital ICU beds across the state are open and available. Should anyone need intensive care of the ICU beds that are currently in use, 55% of all of them are being used by patients with COVID-19.

It’s also important to note that 60% of all the ventilators in the state are available for use, just over half of the ventilators that are currently being used are being used by patients with COVID-19. […]

As we continue to survey individuals with COVID-19, we have found that 54% of the cases reported to public health less than two weeks ago,report no longer having symptoms and being recovered. For those who reported a positive test four weeks ago, 77% of those reported being recovered.

This is encouraging news and I hope it will strengthen our resolve to continue the very tough sacrifices that we continue to make.

* On to questions for the governor. He was asked about the new modeling showing that the peak may occur in mid-May. He said he will be explaining that in more details in the next couple of days. “So say we don’t hit that peak until mid May… Do we have to be in a, in your belief, do we have to be in a stay at home order until we hit that peak? [Because he’d lift it earlier than the peak? I don’t get it.]…

Well, again, we will be making some changes to the stay at home order as it is. But it is true that it is working. And so to pull it off, he stay at home order, it seems to me you know to remove it, as I see some other governors may want to do, to remove it entirely is to simply open everything back up to infection. We heard Dr. Ezike saying in the last couple of days that the R0, the number of people that are getting infected by a single person who is infected has gone down significantly since we put the stay at home order in place. That will go right back up again if you remove all the restrictions.

* He was asked about the cost of keeping up the McCormick Place facility and said much would be handled by the federal government…

The consequence of being underprepared would be the loss of life and the consequence of being over prepared would be that we built out more than we may have needed and nobody can know exactly where we’ll end up until much after we’ve hit the peak and moved off of it.

* The New York Times has a front page story today reporting could take years before New York City completely recovers from the pandemic, in particular theater, restaurants, tourism related industry. Are we going to see that in Chicago as well?…

Well I don’t know and I don’t think anybody really knows, but I certainly have said to you that I think if we can get a treatment and a vaccine, ultimately that the damage that is suggested by an article like that wouldn’t be visited as dangerously or as difficult on the economies of our state. So I can’t really answer it and we can see what’s happened to the economy already. In this short period of time I’m hoping that we’ll be able to recover, much more quickly.

* We have a number of concerts that were set to take place in the month of May. Is it safe to say that they’re canceled?…

I think I just did read actually that a number of them were canceled in Chicago. So I think that probably answers the question.

* Even as you begin to reopen businesses on May 1, are there enough hand sanitizers, cleansers for a lot of these businesses especially small mom and pop places? You know, large companies can get their hands on enough hand sanitizers and cleanser. Is there enough of that type of material to be able to help businesses reopen?…

Yeah, so I want to caution that there isn’t, I don’t think there’s going to be some mass opening of lots and lots and lots of businesses on May 1.

But to the point, do we have enough hand sanitizer or dispensers? I don’t think anybody has been fully prepared for this and even each industry, and I’ve asked industry CEOs to look at how would you reopen, how would it work.

There’s no doubt that hand sanitizer and the use of PPE is going to be an important part of that. Will businesses provide PPE? That’s a question, will hand sanitizer be available to everybody that walks in the door, you know, should it be required. I agree that right now I don’t think anybody would say that there’s enough of that going on. We’re also going to have to develop some norms that people just understand that as you’re walking into a place you know getting hand sanitizer and making sure that you’ve used it, or making sure your mask is on as you enter someplace. I think those are all things that people are going to have to get used to and businesses are going to have to adjust to to make sure that their customers are protected.

* Last question from me. A lot of people have been asking about this and other states are starting to open, obviously other states are in different, you know, phases when it comes to this. Golf courses. People are so anxious just to get out on the green to be outside. Golf courses. Maybe you could do it in a socially distant kind of way. Is there, is there any talk about opening up those type of sectors when we go into that, does that all kind of come into your decision making?…

Yeah, we’re looking at lots of things. We understand summer is different than what we’ve had up to now, which has been colder weather. So we want to consider all of those things. That’s just one of the many, many things that we’ve tried to take into consideration.

But I do want to remind everybody that once again, we have bent the curve, because we have had a stay at home order. And so the fact of a stay at home order in general, being a very positive thing before we ever have enough testing, because there isn’t enough testing and there won’t be for some time to really open everything up. And the fact [is] that we’re going to need a whole lot more.

* We see Senate President Harmon has asked for financial aid from Congress, to what extent are you asking for financial help lobbying Congress members talking on the phone, how many people are assigned to these tasks?…

I don’t think there’s anything that can be more effective than a governor calling… talking to them about reaching out to their delegations. A Governor does have the ear of members of their delegation. And so I’ve made many many calls like that, on behalf of our common interests in all the 50 states to get the federal government to help us with support for our states and for the industries in our states and so on. I do that quite often and a number of members of my staff have also been on the phone with staff members of those various representatives and senators across the nation.

* How much has the state spent on former vibra Hospital in Springfield?…

I can’t do that for you right here at the podium I don’t have it in front of me. But at this moment there’s been no work done on Bibra so at least that part of any expenditure has not been undertaken.

* For Dr. Ezike: How worried are you for a second wave of COVID-19 this fall?…

I think we should be concerned. Obviously, we’re following information and data that’s coming from all around the world. We know that the Fall is already traditionally an established time for flu outbreaks. So, the flu is is our epidemic that we see on a scheduled basis. so if there was supposed to be any resurgence, we could see why that would be at that time and so if you had COVID, as well as flu. It’s very concerning that there could be a significant second wave or a second surge and so that’s why without treatment without a vaccine for COVID, those two overlaid could be very, very problematic.

* If masks are required in cities like Chicago, how will your administration ensure everyone particularly low income people have access to face coverings and can go into public?…

It was pointed out to me yesterday by one of the elected officials I was talking to that I really should stop using the word mask and I should start using the word face covering.

Because the truth is that you don’t need to have an official mask. That’s not what everybody is suggesting, what doctors are saying. You do need to cover your nose and mouth with a, can be a T shirt. I saw a video of how you can prepare a T shirt for yourself as a mask and there are lots of different things fabric masks that you can create for yourself there. […]

And for people who cannot afford them I agree with you that I would like very much to make face coverings more available. I think that would probably be more in the disposable types. And so we’re looking at that and how we would do that, again industry by industry, and then for people who just want to go outside. I’d like to make it more available so we’ll be thinking and talking about that.

* We were told by the Fulton County Board Chair the five correctional officers from the Illinois River Correctional Center in Canton, were promised a 14 day paid quarantine plus a COVID-19 test after volunteering to work at state Correctional Center. Can the governor confirm this and tell us what conversations he’s had with DOC about this matter?…

That is a subject of labor negotiation so that’s, that’s an ongoing conversation.

* Rock River Times: What would you say to people who feel the shutdown is a punishment, driven largely by the COVID situation in Chicago, one that has no chance of affecting them when they are many many miles from the city?…

Punishment. That is awkward to use.

We are in a global pandemic. When this broke out, nobody, nobody knew how fast this would travel. Nobody knew who was most susceptible to it. Nobody knew how to counter its effects. And much of that information, although we’ve discovered, some is still unknown to experts. And so, in, you know, all due caution to protect all of the people of the state of Illinois we put orders in place that would keep people healthy and safe and, and hopefully prevent people from getting COVID-19 who otherwise might.

So, you know, in terms of the different effects in different parts of the state, you’re, you know it’s correct to, to say that in more rural areas there have been fewer cases. The interesting thing to look at and I there are places you can go online to look at this to the, you know what, number of days. the doubling time is for different counties, you can find that online, and you’ll find different areas of the state, even though they have smaller populations have a higher doubling time than some very urban areas of the state.

So there’s no punishment involved. The goal here is to do the right thing for everybody. And it’s true that in some areas of the state there’s been a lower infection rate, and a lower doubling time. And so, that needs to be taken into consideration as we make changes.

* How do you respond to concerns from nursing home groups that their facilities were not prioritized soon enough by the administration including testing and PPE? They argue that this has led to even worse shortages of PPE and more positive cases and facilities as many cases went undiagnosed for limited access to testing…

Who is it that made the, not the question, but made the statement about PPE not being real? I think it’s an association. So I would just say this, that we have been from very early on and I spoke about this yesterday I hope you’ll go back and look at it because I’m not sure I can repeat it all for you right now but we’re from very early on I mean we started talking about and dealing with the problem in nursing homes in early March. This is before we ever had a disaster proclamation in the state, and long before we ever had a stay at home order. We shut down visitation at nursing homes and begin to do wellness checks of the personnel there. And then, as you know, more was known about how outbreaks in nursing homes occur. We made sure that everybody understood not just that there’s PPE available and by the way your local county Department of Public Health is provided with all of the PPE that they asked for from the state. That’s why we’ve been out acquiring PPE, they provide it to the local nursing home, and then we’ve been training nursing home personnel about how to put on that PPE, where that PPE properly and making sure that you know all precautions are taken to separate out people who are COVID positive from those who are not, and doing testing, and we’re doing even more testing now so there’s quite a lot being done. I don’t think it would be fair to say that we have not provided PPE to nursing homes or to the counties to provide to their nursing homes. But we certainly want to know when there are nursing homes where you believe there is not PPE being made available every day to the people in those nursing homes where there are COVID positive patients, you should let our IDPH know. Dr. Ezike and her staff are all over this and they want to make sure that every one of our seniors is protected.

We’ll have more on this soon.

* Have antibody test been made available to medical practitioners? What are healthcare workers advise to do if they test positive for COVID-19, or if the COVID-19 antibodies is it safe for them to continue practicing medicine?…

So a couple things I want to make sure you understand. The antibody tests are as yet a bit unproven, or at least some are and some are more effective, some are less. It is not widely used by states, or really anywhere, there is a body of researchers who are using antibody tests right now to determine whether people who have the antibodies in fact are immune. So it’s that is not even a proven fact yet. So that’s why we’re not providing antibody tests widely, we don’t provide that right now.

What we want to know is, where are there outbreaks? Where are people getting COVID-19? And then we want to make sure to contact trace all the people that are associated with all those who are tested positive, so that we can keep this from spreading and get that number of people who get infected by a single infected person down.

* Governors in Georgia, Tennessee South Carolina will let most businesses reopen May 1, even as COVID case loads and deaths rise. Have you ruled that out here and would you consider limiting travel to Illinois from the States?…

I have ruled out what they’re doing in Georgia and I’m not sure about all the other states but if they’re all doing the same thing which is essentially opening everything up. Yes, I have ruled that out for the time being. Because, as I have said time and time again, in order for us to truly open things up we need tracing, we need testing we need a treatment available and we need a widespread availability of PPE. And we don’t have those things available to us today. And the treatment of course is something that’s not in our control.

We are working on all the other three of those things to make sure that we are ready. But remember, Illinois is not even close to its peak, I mean we’re weeks away now. And you won’t really know you hit your peak until you’re on the other side of it, and are going down.

* Can you comment on how Illinois is going to close this projected budget deficits, what tools are you considering such as bonds for pension payments, do you expect service cuts or layoffs to state employees…

Well some of that I hope will get answered by the federal government. The Congress is considering a package, as I understand, that would provide more aid to the states and local governments and that will have a big impact on our decision making with regard to our budget.

But of course everything is on the table for consideration in the sense that I’m discussing with members of the House and the Senate how they want to proceed and what ideas we have and they have. This is an all hands on deck challenge, the state of our budget for the state of Illinois and so we’re looking at everything.

* Center Square: How long do you feel comfortable governing by executive order without checks on your authority from the legislature, or any potential legal action in the judicial branch?…

I don’t feel comfortable at all. … We’re in a worldwide pandemic we’re in an emergency situation we’re under disaster proclamation because people are dying and people are getting sick. And so as soon as we can get on the other side of this challenge.

Listen, I want regular order. There’s so many things that you’ve heard me talk about, the things that I want to accomplish for the people of the state of Illinois and those can’t be accomplished in the context of a pandemic.

* Why release convicted killers?…

I think some of you may know and understand that, because I’ve said it many times from this podium, that I want to keep the risk to people across the state of Illinois as low as possible. The risk of catching COVID-19, and the risk that might occur from somebody who has done something wrong in their past.

And so every time I consider a situation of somebody who’s asking for a pardon or commutation of their sentence, I’m taking into account how to make sure that we’re keeping the risk extraordinarily low.

For example, I have granted commutations to people who have been diagnosed with stage four cancer and are likely to die in three months. Hence, and they’re there. They’re confined to a bed. They can’t move around very much. And in the last three months of their life. It seemed to me that it would not be inappropriate for me to let them be with their family.

Again, you know they’re they’re suffering. And it’s also an alleviation of burden upon our prison system. So, you know, I think this is, it’s the right and the constitutional privilege granted to a governor to consider pardons and commutations. And in the context of a pandemic, in the context of what we’re going through now with COVID-19, trying to make sure that we keep our prison officials our officers who are working in the prisons and the people who are in prison who, some of them, are non violent criminals who were going to be led out in the next year anyway. To make sure that we’re making space in those prisons and keeping everybody safe as possible. Those are all some considerations that I give to pardons and commutations in this moment.

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