Don't be a COVID turkey this Thanksgiving
Pritzker, Ezike make final pleas to stay home as guv lays out plans for fiscal stopgap
Enjoy a turkey this Thanksgiving, but state officials continue to advise not to mingle with those outside your household this year as the pandemic persists. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
The governor and his public health director made their final pleas Wednesday for Illinoisans to stay home this Thanksgiving.
“The safest thing we can do for one another is stay within our own households,” Pritzker said during his daily coronavirus briefing. “But if you are hellbent on gathering with others outside your own home, please do it with just a few people.” Wishing Illinoisans a “healthy and safe Thanksgiving holiday,” he urged them to give thanks with family and friends remotely, online or via video messaging. “Stay home when you can,” he added. “We can get through this safely.” And Pritzker reminded everyone, “This crisis may come to an end in just a few months” as COVID-19 vaccines are prepared and distributed.
Dr. Ngozi Ezike said she wanted to “implore one more time” for people to stay within their own households. “We don’t want anybody’s Thanksgiving dinner to turn into a COVID-19 superspreader event,” Ezike said. “Our goal is to protect and not infect those that we love and care for. My fear is two weeks from now we’ll start seeing a new spike in cases or hospitalizations because people from various households gathered to celebrate Thanksgiving. Please be a part of the solution and not part of the problem.”
After new daily case counts dropped below 10,000 this week as the entire state observes Tier 3 mitigations in the Restore Illinois plan, including a ban on indoor service at bars and restaurants in a bid to again flatten the curve of rising infections, Ezike reported 11,378 new cases Wednesday, bringing the state total to 685,467. Some 155 new deaths attributed to the coronavirus took the statewide toll to 11,832. The state did report 114,000 tests in a day, with Pritzker pointing out that topped 10 million total, with a million conducted just over the last 10 days, but 6,133 people remained hospitalized across the state being treated for the coronavirus, with 1,208 under intensive care and 679 on ventilators. The seven-day statewide positivity rate stood at 10.2 percent.
Ezike advised those who go ahead and mix households this weekend to be tested for COVID-19 between a week and 14 days afterward — earlier if symptoms are detected.
Faced with a deadline to borrow emergency funding from the Federal Reserve to make up for tax revenue lost in the pandemic and the economic collapse it’s caused, Pritzker said the state would be drawing on an additional $2 billion, after borrowing $1.2 billion from the Fed’s Municipal Liquidity Facility earlier this year. The General Assembly had authorized up to $5 billion in COVID borrowing, but Pritzker said, “I am reluctant to saddle our state with that amount of short-term debt.” He pledged to “repay this line of credit as soon as possible,” through either an additional coronavirus federal relief package — as President-elect Biden has supported — or a rebounding state economy.
Pritzker said he’d consulted Comptroller Susana Mendoza and Treasurer Michael Frerichs on the borrowing, and they’d agreed. Mendoza issued a statement saying: “Given the lack of assurance of additional federal aid coming any time soon, I cannot justify borrowing more than $2 billion of the $5 billion authorized at this time. The $2 billion is necessary given that this targeted borrowing will allow us to stabilize Illinois’s health-care system in the middle of a pandemic and a COVID-19 spike here in Illinois. Allowing our health-care system to collapse would be fiscally irresponsible and morally indefensible.
“The Illinois Office of Comptroller will use federal matching dollars to turn the $2 billion into $3 billion to pay critical medical bills and avoid paying late-payment interest penalties,” she added. “Our responsible approach will stretch every borrowed dollar to its maximum benefit to taxpayers.” Mendoza projected that the debt would be repaid over three years, but like Pritzker she too pushed for an additional federal COVID relief package.
Pritzker warned of budgets cuts in the meantime, especially after the failure of the Fair Tax Amendment in the election. “To get where we need to go,” he said, “some of those cuts are going to have to be relatively painful.”