[This post’s timestamp has been altered for Saturday visibility.]
* As expected, the governor is keeping the schools closed…
Folks I’ve said time and time again my decisions are hard ones, but they will follow the science and the science says, our students can’t go back to their normal routine. Therefore I am suspending in person learning in schools for the remainder of the 2019 2020 school year.
We know that there are many school districts with unique challenges, and we will work with them on any issues that may arise. I know that many have felt that this was inevitable. But trust me when I say this was not a decision that I made lightly.
The importance of our schools and our in-person school days is not just a question of tradition and sentimentality. As essential as those things are, the shutting of in-person classroom time also risks a drop in instructional time, an extended window in which students can potentially experience summer learning loss and an educational landscape in which some districts have more experience with remote learning than others. These challenges weighed heavily on me as we came to this decision, but my priority remains unchanged. How do we save the most lives during this very difficult time?
The answer to that question leaves us with only one path forward. Over the last month, Illinois schools have stepped up and faced the many challenges of COVID-19 with generosity and creativity, and a resolute focus on caring for students and parents and communities. And I’m confident that our schools will manage and expand the learning opportunities for all of our children, who will be working from home over the coming weeks.
Remember to pardon all transcription errors.
* Announces a new EO…
And to begin the work of preparing our classrooms for students eventual return, I will be signing an executive order to modify licensing requirements for future educators who are nearly finished with their studies, like our student teachers, to ensure that this situation does not impact school’s ability to hire the qualified teachers that they need when students come back.
* Federal money…
There is $569 million to support our K-12 schools from the federal CARES act in response to COVID-19, dollars that can help equip students with technology and internet access to enhance remote learning support teachers and developing their remote instruction skills and assist schools and continuing to provide meals to children and communities. Public school districts will receive a portion of this funding proportional to the number of low income students that they serve, and ISBE will direct the remaining funds towards supporting our districts that need those resources most.
* Grades…
My office and the Illinois State Board of Education is recommending that any grades given during this pandemic reflect the unprecedented circumstances in which students are attempting to continue their studies. That is, grades should deliver feedback, and not be used as a tool for compliance. COVID-19 is forcing far too many of our students to deal firsthand with concepts that even adults find nerve wracking. Let’s recognize that and be supportive of all of our students.
* To teachers…
I want to offer a few thoughts to some of the people impacted by this decision. To the teachers who feel like they didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to their students. My heart is with you. Know that your efforts reach your classrooms through new creative ways, and that that means the world to your students and to me. To the special education instructors who might be facing particular challenges and making meaningful remote connections with their kids. I know you’re working to build a unique response to a unique situation, and I’m so grateful for that. We must continue to reach all of our students in any way that we can to the administrators who have dedicated themselves to transforming their districts overnight and doing everything that it takes to implement look remote learning, whatever it looks like in your community. Thank you, every minute of instructional time that you can keep running will make a real difference for our children to the parents who find themselves experiencing a world of emotions because, because of this pandemic, along with some extra stress with your kids at home all day. I promise you, you will get through this.
* To students…
To our high school seniors who are leaving this phase of their teen years behind in a way that they never expected. I know you’re feeling sad about missing the rituals of senior prom, and senior pranks, senior nights and of course graduation. Hearing from me as your governor, there’s room for you to feel all those things, big and small, you will get through this too. You will talk about this for the rest of your lives. And you will go on to do amazing things. I am very, very proud of you.
And to children of all ages. This is a very strange moment that you’re living in. Your parents and I didn’t experience something like this when we were kids. But I can tell you for sure that the hard things we did live through, we learned from. And you’re going to learn from this.
You’re going to see what it looks like when the world comes together. When it looks what it looks like to put your faith in science and research. And the teams of people here in Illinois and beyond, we’re working on treatments and vaccines to save lives. We will get to the other side of this and that other side will be a place that appreciates the best of the before, but with a greater sense of compassion and connection.
And the best part is that you are going to be the ones guiding us forward. All of you, with your creativity, your passion and your care for others are going to shape our future. Let me be the first to say, I can’t wait to see all that you will accomplish.
* Illinois Superintendent of Education Carmen Ayala…
Since the suspension of in person instruction, when it began on March 17, Illinois schools statewide have risen to the challenge of holistically serving students in new and in different ways. Decatur public schools for example, has partnered with local radio stations to provide stories and lessons on the air. Vienna High Schools has parked school buses equipped with Wi Fi hotspots in strategic locations throughout Johnson County to boost internet connectivity for students at home. And the Northwest suburban special education organization has pre-recorded videos using American Sign Language to read and sign stories to students with disabilities.
This pandemic has altered the fabric of how we teach how we learn and how we connect, but it has not shaken the core of what our schools do. And that is to take care of Illinois children and prepare them for what is next. Our schools focus on social and emotional skills like resiliency empathy and adaptability. So when the unpredictable events in life knock us down, we have the strength and the mindset to get back up.
* More from the superintendent…
Many families also do not have sufficient access to computers or internet at home. And we’re going to tackle this digital divide head on. As part of a strategic effort that will extend beyond the end of this pandemic, we will use the Illinois State Board of Education, federal CARES act dollars to increase access to technology and devices in our least resourced districts, and we encourage school districts to use their CARES act funding allocations for this purpose as well. Closing the digital divide will be pivotal in fulfilling the agency’s new post pandemic strategic plan. […]
Will students returned to school totally caught up? We’re not expecting them to. … We’ll be releasing transition guidance to help schools address learning loss and students social emotional needs when they return to the classrooms, whenever that is safe to do so.
* On to questions for the governor. Are you tracking the cases of positive cases of coronavirus among health workers healthcare workers? Do you know those numbers here in Illinois and also how many health care workers in Illinois have died?…
Dr. Ezeki: We have all of those numbers in our database, our databases are populated with information from our local county health departments as they manage the individual cases. So we know that there have been numbers of individuals who are health care workers, different, different types of health care workers, and we can get to those numbers. Specifically, so that you can keep those I haven’t reported out specifically on those but I can get those for you.
* Why haven’t you reported that yet?…
Dr. Ezeki: I actually haven’t broken it out like that so it’s not it’s something that my team can assemble we have, you know, occupational status for many of the, of the cases that are in the database, but we haven’t broken it out like that so we can get that for you.
* How about McCormick Place? We understand that now there have been patients admitted. Are they only coronavirus patients how sick are they and tell us a little more about that?…
Pritzker: There are five patients there, so far, and they are all people who have a low acuity COVID 19.
* Are some hospitals full?…
Dr. Ezeki: We divide our hospitals, our 211 hospitals into 10 to 11 regions … There’s no region that has no beds, but individual hospitals can get to capacity and so that would have resulted in some of the transfers that we have seen.
* Was there any talk about extending the school year into the summer or adjusting next year’s school year and also what does this do to the stay at home order to the state?…
I’ll make decisions about the stay at home order, as I do, you know, everything else on a day by day basis following it and I’ll let you know as soon as I know.
I did not consider what would happen mid summer. There are summer school programs and other things that may take place but at the moment we felt like this was the right answer.
* Can you expand on the grading the non grading and really what does compliance mean?…
We’re not intending to say non grading or grading, it’s just a, we want students to be treated with enough understanding that teachers are not using it as a compliance tool to give them a bad grade because they don’t have an internet connection or the internet connection is spotty or these are sometimes difficult circumstances people are not used to kids are not used to being home and doing schooling. And so there needs to be more understanding that’s really the point of the comments.
* Governor DeSantis in Florida is letting parents choose whether or not to redo the school year. Is that a possibility here?…
I haven’t looked at what Governor DeSantis is doing. I guess the basis of your question, certainly something we could look at. I mean it’s not something that we’ve contemplated right now, given the amount of time that’s left in the school year and the fact that some school districts many school districts do have a pretty good elearning program in place so they can get much of the instruction done, but I recognize that there are kids who may not get as much. And therefore, you know, something like that might work but I’ll go look at what Governor desantis has done.
* Today was the biggest one day jumping cases, do you expect this to keep happening and if so, and are you showing the curve is flattening if the, you know, numbers keep increasing and do you expect those numbers to keep increasing?…
Pritzker: You saw that this was our second highest day for testing. We had I think 7300 tests that were that came back today. And that leads to of course, a higher nominal amount of people who tested positive. There are lots of people out there, unfortunately, who don’t get tested who are COVID positive. And so the more we test the more we’re gonna see test positive. So the thing I would track and then that’s a, we look at it. But the bigger, more important number is really the number of hospitalizations and ICU beds, for several reasons but the most important of which is, if people are sick enough to go to the hospital. That’s a definite signal, you know that someone is, you know, COVID-19 positive likely you know if they have a respiratory issue. And then of course ICU beds are, you know, a worsening of that condition document.
Dr. Ezike: So, one of the byproducts of being able to flatten the curve is that you will delay the peak, and maybe it’s not a peak where you go straight up and down, but maybe if I can use a term plateau, where you’re kind of flattened for a while. So again we’re looking at all these numbers to figure out exactly where we are in our curve, and it is really a day by day thing and then you look at week trends. So, we’re not exactly surprised that we would see more cases. There is the extra factor of how many tests were done versus on one day versus another so again we’re following all that we are continuing to increase our amount of testing. So, if the denominator, if you will, of total people being tested is increased, we will see higher numbers so we’ll take that into account but definitely all the numbers are being evaluated every single day, and we are making the best educated guesses out of the trends that we see from the data.
I don’t think we’ve peaked.
* With the highest to date number of known cases being reported in a single day and the high number of deaths in a single day reported yesterday. What do you attribute that to and what evidence shows that the state is in fact bending the curve or no?…
Well, first thing that people should take note of is that we talked about this the other day, the doubling times. How long does it take to double the number of cases in a state, how long does it take to double the number of fatalities in a state. We have seen that the length of time it takes to double increase significantly, even more than I reported the other day it’s actually increasing that, doubling time. And that’s a very good thing, that’s a good thing.
We have not peaked, I think you just heard Dr Ezike say, and I will repeat it.
* Are the scientists you consult saying anything about actions you can take to cause a “downward trajectory of documented cases within a 14 day period” to quote the new White House guidance?…
There isn’t some specific action that you can do that leads to a downward trajectory. What you can do is keep doing the things you’re doing that are slowing the center of the curve.
And there are a few other things you can do. You know I talked the other day about one of the state reps who suggested that people who work in grocery stores and other stores should be required to wear masks. I have encouraged everybody to wear a mask when they’re out in public. And you know if we perhaps if we enforced that more, or if people just enforced it by talking to people as they see them on the street.
I think that’s another way that we could do it, but there isn’t something specific. I wish I could tell you, we don’t live in a dictatorial society, we don’t live in an authoritarian world. This is a free country and we want to make sure that we are observing people’s civil liberties while keeping them safe and that’s the balance that we’re trying to strike here.
* Is Randolph county on the state’s radar given that you have two large facilities there … Can you describe what efforts you may have in place there, given that they are somewhat of a hotspot in Southern Illinois?…
So just so you know we’re watching every county in Illinois. You hear us reporting on cases in counties, and the numbers of counties in part and you can read about it at IDPH, in part, we make sure you know about the number of counties because we want people to know what’s going on across the state and this isn’t just a Cook County or Chicago issue this really is happening everywhere. That’s number one.
And number two, with regard to congregate facilities we’ve talked about this quite a lot like the congregate facilities of every type are being surveilled by us all the time. We are talking to the leaders and managers of those facilities, we are delivering PPE or making sure that there are guidelines for them to follow guidance given by IDPH, to make sure that we’re caring for those people as best we can. Those are very difficult circumstances, just to be clear, it’s happening all over the country. When you put for example, seniors together in a congregate facility, they can’t easily be moved around. And you know in a nursing home just as one example. …
Same thing for a correctional institution. You’ve seen that we brought the National Guard in to Stateville. We’re looking at other places where we might want to deploy them and making sure that we’re bringing even more medical facilities or making more medical facilities available to the staff, and to the inmates themselves.
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today announced 1,842 new cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 62 additional deaths.
Boone County: 1 female 60s
Cook County: 2 females 40s, 1 male 40s, 2 males 50s, 2 females 60s, 5 males 60s, 4 females 70s, 4 males 70s, 5 females 80s, 5 males 80s, 3 females 90s, 4 males 90s
DuPage County: 1 male 60s, 2 males 70s, 1 female 80s, 3 males 80s, 2 females 90s
Kane County: 1 male 60s, 1 male 90s, 1 male 100+
Lake County: 1 male 90s
Macon County: 1 female 80s, 1 female 90s
Madison County: 1 female 60s, 1 male 60s
Monroe County: 1 female 80s
Randolph County: 1 male 80s
St. Clair County 1 unknown 60s, 1 female 70s, 1 male 80s
Will County: 2 males 80s
Henderson and Wayne counties are now reporting cases. Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 27,575 cases, including 1,134 deaths, in 92 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years.
Hospitals in New York City are running out of dialysis fluids as thousands of coronavirus patients develop kidney failure, an unexpected development that could presage the next critical supply shortage nationwide.
Approximately 20 percent of coronavirus patients in intensive care around the city need the kidney treatment, often for weeks, a development that many providers did not see coming. FEMA held a call Monday with FDA and CMS to discuss the possibility of issuing emergency use authorizations to import more dialysis fluids, according to a document obtained by POLITICO.
But shortages are already testing hospitals in New York, where more than 202,000 people have become infected and almost 11,000 have died. The same day that federal regulators met, major New York hospital systems convened to discuss the emerging dialysis crisis. Some are struggling with dire shortfalls of dialysis fluids and trained nursing staff, and have reached out directly to manufacturers for help, according to two people on the call.
* I asked the Illinois Kidney Care Alliance’s spokesperson if that was happening in Illinois…
Some of our coalition members have been involved in the response to the increased need for renal replacement therapy, which has put pressure on many hospitals in New York and elsewhere.
In New York and New Jersey, patient numbers requiring renal therapy are five or more times normal volumes. We have not yet seen this phenomenon in Illinois, but that doesn’t mean we won’t. Illinois already has more than 30,000 patients with serious kidney disease, and a sharp increase in demand for equipment, supplies, solutions and nursing support could bring unprecedented challenges. But our coalition members stand ready to bring our experiences and lessons learned in New York to assist in the crisis response in Illinois.
As hydroxychloroquine has been touted as a possible treatment for COVID-19, patients with autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis have struggled to fill the prescriptions they rely on to keep their condition manageable. The Food and Drug Administration reported March 31 there is a shortage of the drug.
A French study of 36 COVID-19 patients last month found those given HCQ and an antibiotic saw a reduction in their viral load — results President Donald Trump has highlighted. Other studies have found mixed results for HCQ’s ability to treat or prevent COVID-19, and a larger French study this week found the drug didn’t have a significant effect on the disease.
Dr. Rosalind Ramsey-Goldman, a professor of rheumatology at Northwestern, says hydroxychloroquine is an essential medicine for lupus patients.
Sold under the brand name Plaquenil, HCQ helps treat symptoms such as fatigue and joint pain, lessen flares and prevent organ damage. And HCQ has fewer side effects than other drugs lupus patients take, Ramsey-Goldman said.
Three Smithfield Food employees have tested positive for COVID-19, prompting extra precautions at the meat-processing plant, according to the Warren County Health Department.
The department said Friday it is conducting “extensive contact tracing” regarding the employees, one of whom lives in Warren County while the other two live in Rock Island County. The department did not describe their health status. […]
A Smithfield Foods plant in South Dakota has been shut down since last week. Thursday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff toured the Sioux Falls plant, three weeks after the first COVID-19 case involving a Smithfield employee was determined on March 24. The CDC team is assessing conditions and developing an action plan needed to safely reopen the hog harvesting facility.
McCormick Place field hospital now accepting COVID-19 patients
Antiviral drug being tested at UChicago Medicine shows promise against COVID-19
COVID-19 SBA loan funds exhausted: At Devon Bank, ‘applications with no place to go’
Chicago COVID-19 survivors share their stories
‘I feel like I lost the battle for my husband,’ widow of dead Cook County Jail detainee says
Chicago police announced Thursday 49 more confirmed cases of COVID-19, raising the total number of cases in the department to 288. Of the cases, 276 are officers and 12 are civilian employees, Chicago police said.
A four-year legal battle that pitted a suburban teacher against her employer ended Thursday when the Illinois Supreme Court sided with the school district, ruling the teacher was not entitled to all of her paid sick leave because she gave birth just before summer break and had ample time to recover before her job resumed.
The ruling, which sets a precedent for most of the state’s public school teachers, held that Wood Dale District 7 doesn’t have to let teachers carry over benefits to the new school year for births that occurred during or right before summer break. Nothing precludes teachers, however, from taking unpaid time off through the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.
In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Anne Burke wrote that a measure in the Illinois School Code granting 30 days of paid sick leave to male and female teachers for “birth, adoption, or placement for adoption” must be used immediately.
A statute dating back to the early 1800s cannot be applied to daily fantasy sports betting, Illinois’ highest court ruled Thursday. Fantasy sports, the court ruled, are games dominated by skill, not by chance.
In April 2016, Colin Dew-Becker and Andrew Wu competed in a fantasy NBA contest through the website FanDuel. They each paid $109 — a $100 wager and $9 fee to the company. Wu’s team scored almost double the points Dew-Becker’s team did, making him the winner.
Dew-Becker filed a lawsuit three days later to recover his bet. Under a centuries-old Illinois law called the Loss Recovery Act — passed in 1819, one year after Illinois became a state and 40 years before the Civil War — those on the losing end of an illegal wager have a legal avenue to get their money back.
In order for that to be a possibility, however, that money had to be lost while gambling. The state Supreme Court, after consulting recently-published peer-reviewed studies, ruled that while nothing in the act’s language omits internet contests from its purview, daily fantasy sports bets do not fit the definition of gambling as dictated by law.
A team at Southern Illinois University Carbondale this week delivered its first round of a key substance needed for COVID-19 tests to health authorities in Springfield. SIU was the first university in the state to do so.
Andrew Wood, director of the School of Biological Sciences, on Tuesday hand-delivered the first 10,000 vials of Viral Transport Medium formulated at SIU to the Illinois Department of Public Health. SIU researchers, along with several other state universities, are working on making up the shortfall of the substance.
Gary Kinsel, vice chancellor for research at SIU, said he is proud of how well faculty are performing in meeting the ongoing challenges presented by the health emergency.
“It’s a source of great pride that our faculty have stepped up to provide such an important contribution to the state of Illinois during this pandemic,” Kinsel said. “I know that their efforts expand the state testing capacity and ultimately save lives.”
Viral Transport Medium (VTM) is a pH-buffered fluid with a specific formulation of salts, protein and other chemicals that maintains the genetic information of a virus until it can be tested. Faculty have been working around the clock organizing the effort to make the substance, which is in short supply because of the ongoing health emergency and large need for testing.
The batch was manufactured by a team of microbiologists and several students last week at SIU.
Scott Hamilton-Brehm, professor of microbiology and a leader of the effort, said the SIU team intends to keep the pace of 10,000 vials per week
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is planning to close the state’s schools for in-person instruction through the end of the academic year because of the coronavirus, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times.
The governor and his team have worked through the details of the extended closures this week and will announce the decision Friday afternoon, sources said.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is fully on board with the move but isn’t expected to attend the news conference with the governor because of scheduling conflicts, sources said. Lightfoot on Thursday hinted strongly that the decision was coming but said it was up to Pritzker and she would like to be part of that discussion.
Pritzker’s original stay-at-home order was to expire April 7. He already has extended it once — until April 30 — and has hinted for days about a second extension deep into May.
* The Question: Agree or disagree? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please…
Governor Pritzker provided the first estimates of how hard the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will hit Illinois. According to the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget (GOMB), General Fund revenue in the current fiscal year will be at least $2.7 billion less than initial the initial projection of $40.2 billion. That is cause for significant concern, because — as shown in Figure 1, the revenue shortfall amounts to fully 10 percent of what Illinois budgeted to spend on General Fund services this year — where 96 cents of every dollar of such spending goes to the core areas of: education (inclusive of early childhood, k-12, and higher ed); heath care; human services; and public safety.
Figure 1: FY 2020 Enacted General Fund Appropriations ($ Millions)
As shown in Figure 1, of the $40.8 billion in total General Fund spending budgeted for FY 2020, $13.6 billion is for “Hard Costs” or mandatory spending obligations over which decision makers have no discretion, because they are required to be paid either by law or contract. Once those Hard Costs are paid — as they have to be — that leaves only $27.01 billion appropriated for services.
Given that there are only two and one-half months left in FY 2020, it would be incredibly difficult to implement a 10 percent cut to core services — especially when considering the increased demand for health and human services caused by the pandemic. [Emphasis added.]
And because only two and a half months remain in the fiscal year, a 10 percent cut to core services for the remainder of FY20 would be the equivalent to a 50 percent or so slash in annual expenditures. Impossible.
(T)he Pritzker Administration has decided to cover over half of the $2.7 billion revenue shortfall now projected for FY 2020 by incurring $1.2 billion in new short-term borrowing plus deferring $400 million in investment fund repayments from FY 2020 into FY 2021, while transferring $323 million via interfund borrowing.
The bad news is the pandemic’s impact on the economy and hence state revenues is not limited to FY 2020. Governor Pritzker also announced that revenue projections for FY 2021 have been revised downward by $4.6 billion, which, when coupled with repayment of the $1.2 billion in new short-term borrowing that will be incurred this year, plus the deferral of $400 million in repayments that were due in FY 2020 into FY 2021, will drive the total revenue shortfall for FY 2021 up to around $6.2 billion.
And that hole will be $7.4 billion without passage of the graduated income tax, which, the CTBA points out “is almost 36 percent of the current year’s General Fund appropriations for the core services of education, health care, social services and public safety.”
As Americans continue to shelter in place amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a record 22 million people have filed for unemployment over the past four weeks, and many more have struggled to access benefits. But some of the very workers who process those claims have started to fear for their own health.
Multiple employees with the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) told The Daily Beast they were being forced to work in an unsafe office environment even though they could theoretically get their jobs done from home.
“A quarter of our office is not coming in because they don’t want to die,” one IDES employee told The Daily Beast. […]
“Nobody is wearing masks,” said another IDES worker. “There is no social distancing.”
After this story was published, a spokesperson for IDES told The Daily Beast the agency had been deemed essential. “Because of this, there are essential employees who are required to report to their physical work location, although we are working to provide as many essential employees as possible with the proper IT, privacy, and confidentiality resources to continue and complete their work from home.”
* I checked in with AFSCME Council 31 to see what the union knows. Here’s Anders Lindall…
AFSCME represents more than 900 employees in IDES. Responding to the historic surge in unemployment claims and getting jobless folks the benefits they need and deserve, union members in IDES are doing vital work to help their communities in the wake of the pandemic crisis. And they’re doing it under intense stress caused by the enormous volume of claims and the knowledge that applicants are desperate for income.
As with every employer, we have urged IDES to move as many employees as possible to work remotely. Right now 40 percent of our members in the agency are teleworking, with another 20 percent set to move to remote next week. We continue to push for that transition wherever possible, not only to maximize social distancing but to respond to concerns from members including high-risk health conditions and lack of child care.
For those employees still required to come to the worksite, at our urging every IDES office should be implementing staff rotations to reduce the number of people and their proximity in any location, providing adequate supplies of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes, reimbursing employees for masks and gloves and ensuring regular deep cleaning of every office.
We believe those practices are being followed in most instances and we’re continually following up with management in locations where members have raised ongoing concerns. Whether in IDES, throughout state government or in any other setting, no one should be put at unnecessary risk, their family exposed, or their community introduced to viral spread as a consequence of doing the essential public service work that must go on.
OK, but in my opinion, the state should be requiring its workers to wear masks in the office.
The national average for testing is 10,417 per million people. Illinois’ is 9,561 per million. Gov. Pritzker has said time and time again that the state needs to be testing at least 10,000 people a day, but the state has never really come close to that.
Gov. Pritzker announced a breakthrough with testing several days ago, only to walk it back, claiming that a Thermo Fisher testing machine did not work as advertised. Last week, he announced increased testing for African-Americans and other vulnerable populations, but those tests were not done because the local health centers haven’t been given the supplies and Lurie Children’s Hospital, which was supposed to test the swabs, hadn’t yet set up testing protocols.
Ford said the governor’s broken promise on providing testing isn’t just troubling, it’s personal. The Democratic state representative said he knows at least 15 African Americans who have died from COVID-19. They were healthy or had only minor health troubles, Ford said.
“But they weren’t going to die if it wasn’t for coronavirus. And one of the reasons they died is because they were not tested,” Ford continued. “I’m seeing long lines for drive-up testing in other areas and none here in Austin. This is an indication of how the black community at large — and not just over the coronavirus — are treated by government.” […]
“Life expectancy in Austin is 20 to 25 years less than it is nine miles to the east, downtown. Black people are already dying. Now, if you have an underlying condition and you get COVID-19, we don’t know if you have a life expectancy,” Ford said.
“How can the governor say we’re bending the curve when they’re not testing an entire segment of the population? It’s false narrative. [Pritzker] has got to step up and make sure that he’s taking care of people on the West Side and the black community at large.”
Though some reporting had suggested the machines and testing supplies had still not been delivered to health centers six days after the governor initially made that announcement, Ezike on Thursday said if any testing site didn’t have supplies “it must be en route or on its way or coming today.”
“We definitely are trying to make that available immediately so that we can get the testing up,” Ezike said.
For everyone’s sake, I hope that turns out to be true. Black people get the okeydoke far too much as it is. If the governor is going to make promises like this, he needs to make sure he keeps them.
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Chicago and Cook County account for 70% of the state’s 25,733 infections. But some people — mostly Republicans — complain that [Pritzker has] neglected the rest of Illinois, even as it shares in the economic pain and social disruption from measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Thursday marked Pritzker’s 40th daily televised update, and the 29th in a row from his office in downtown Chicago.
“Mostly”? Not a single member of the super-majority party is quoted with a complaint.
Pritzker’s briefings are available statewide and while it’s not his preference, the governor is following his own recommendation by “staying home as much as possible to limit exposure,” spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said.
That touches another downstate nerve that has stung for decades: Chicago-based governors who spend too little time in the capital and its Governor’s Mansion. He could be just as effective in Springfield, according to GOP Rep. Terri Bryant of Murphysboro.
“I don’t want him to do a tour around the entire state with an entourage, but I’d like to see him conducting the business of the state at the seat of government,” Bryant said. “It would give everyone in the state access to him instead of just Chicago.”
That would mean moving his staff and his family and his agency directors to Springfield.
And, to be clear, I have said for decades that governors should live wherever they want as long as they’re in town for session.
Elections have consequences.
…Adding… Sen. Andy Manar (D-Bunker Hill) was on Sam Madonia’s show today. Madonia said he’s heard “there hasn’t been a lot of communication between the governor’s office and maybe some people on the Republican side of the aisle. How do you react to that?”…
I respect all the individuals, especially downstate Republicans, who have expressed that. I get along with almost all of them. I just don’t see it, though. I mean, I’m staring right now, I’m sitting in my house in front of my computer, I’m staring at email after email. [One] email has 22 attachments from the governor’s office in my inbox, either last night or this morning with everything that was announced or executed by a state agency yesterday, down to minute details. So I think the governor’s office is inundating legislators with information. So, I just don’t see that Sam and I don’t understand. I just, for the life of me don’t understand that criticism.
…Adding… Rep. Avery Bourne (R-Morrisonville) on Facebook…
Yesterday, a spokesperson for Governor Pritzker said he’s not holding any of his daily press conferences from Springfield because he’s following his own advice and staying home as much as possible. Today, the Governor released a self-promoting ad he filmed with penguins at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago and he’s using taxpayer dollars to promote it. We all love penguins and we all need a little levity, but come on - you can’t say you don’t have time to come downstate.
Travel time between the James R. Thompson Center and Shedd Aquarium: 11 minutes.
Travel time between the James R. Thompson Center and Morrisonville, IL: 3 hours, 29 minutes.
Nearly 300 Illinois nursing home patients and staff have died from COVID-19, but exactly where still remains largely cloaked in secrecy.
Unlike some states, Illinois hasn’t named specific facilities where the virus has been detected. That’s been true even in cases of significant clusters of deaths.
Several other states do publish those lists.
* Nursing homes are not required to report cases and deaths to family members or employees. But they do have to report the data to the state. IDPH, however, is only releasing totals to the public…
As of Thursday, in Illinois, the Pritzker administration reported 587 patients and nursing home staffers who tested positive, at a total of 305 nursing homes. At least facilities have had at least one patient or staffer die.
That’s almost 42 percent of all nursing homes in Illinois with positive cases and 17 percent with reported deaths.
Most counties aren’t releasing that information, either.
* A Tribune reporter asked IDPH Director Ngozi Ezike about this yesterday. Her reply…
We’re working on getting information out regarding the nursing homes. I think there might be some delays in keeping up with that but working on that in terms of our approach to dealing with really one of our most vulnerable populations.
A department spokesman later told the Tribune the agency was “working on compiling a listing of the locations,” which it hoped to provide “as soon as possible.”
Look, IDPH is stretched to the max. A year of partial rebuilding undoubtedly wasn’t enough to fill in the hollowed-out organization. But this isn’t a matter of reaching out to nursing homes to gather data. The information is already supposedly being reported to the state. Families, residents and workers need to know what the heck going on.
Though Illinois hospitals are, in many ways, busier than ever as they care for patients with the new coronavirus, they’re also taking a financial beating that’s affecting their workers and raising questions about how the institutions will recover once the worst of the pandemic has passed.
The Illinois Health and Hospital Association estimates that hospitals statewide could now be losing about $1.4 billion a month. That’s the money hospitals are missing out on because of canceled elective surgeries and fewer visits by other patients, many of whom may be avoiding medical care for fear of catching the virus. […]
In Illinois, hospitals are trying a number of tactics to stanch the bleeding, including reaching into their reserves, halting improvement projects and furloughing workers — sometimes with pay and sometimes without. Hospitals are sidelining workers because, without elective surgeries and with declines in outpatient care, there may not be enough work for them, at the moment. They also want as few extra people in hospitals as possible, to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. […]
Illinois hospitals also continue to contend with the same financial challenges they faced before the coronavirus. Before the pandemic, about 40% of the state’s hospitals were operating in the red or close to it, according to the Illinois Health and Hospital Association.
Friday, Apr 17, 2020 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
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Beyond communicating the immediate facility changes deemed necessary by the stay-at-home order and new services offered, social media has also been utilized to share online and mobile features. In line with the People Helping People philosophy that drives the credit union movement, credit unions have emphasized their position as a true financial partner to members and the entire community.
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Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker had some words of advice for Wellington when he visited the famous penguin at the Shedd Aquarium on Sunday.
“All right now, 6 feet apart, everyone,” Pritzker tells a group of penguins in a new video for his social media campaign, #AllInIllinois.
“Wellington, come on back,” Pritzker says, as the Shedd’s oldest — and perhaps most popular — penguin listened and rejoined a group of penguins walking in order — 6 feet apart.
The 60-second video — which also features the governor preaching to sea otters and garden eels — is the latest in Pritzker’s attempt to get residents to stay home and follow health guidelines, like social distancing and washing hands, as the battle continues in the deadly coronavirus outbreak. The latest pitch is intended for the state’s families and children.
