Three new deaths, 422 total cases of COVID-19

Gov. Pritzker insists gas stations, grocery stores will be replenished, but warns parents schools may stay closed

Gov. Pritzker and Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, conduct their daily coronavirus briefing Thursday at the Thompson Center in Chicago. (Illinois Information Service)

By Ted Cox

Illinois reported three new deaths and 422 total cases of COVID-19 Thursday as the coronavirus outbreak spread across the state.

“Our total case count continues to grow exponentially,” said Gov. Pritzker at his daily briefing on the pandemic, held at the Thompson Center in Chicago. The 134 new cases was again a new one-day high, although just above the 128 announced Wednesday, when the state reported its first COVID-19 fatality.

The three new deaths involved patients in Cook and Will counties and a Florida visitor to Sangamon County, according to Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. “Unfortunately, we do anticipate additional deaths,” she added, and although senior citizens and those with compromised immune systems or respiratory problems have been the worst afflicted, she warned against anyone of any age or region thinking that COVID-19 can’t strike them.

“It can affect anyone, and even healthy people,” Ezike said, adding that the entire public response calling fo citizens to stay home is intended to “break the cycle of spread. It really will take each of us making our individual sacrifices, our household sacrifices, and our community sacrifices to reduce the spread of the virus and free up our health-care system for our most vulnerable.”

Some of the increase, Pritzker said, was due to expanded testing, as the state is now testing 1,000 people a day for the virus, up from 200 a day earlier in the outbreak, with expectations that will soon rise to 2,000 a day and more. But Pritzker said it was also due undeniably to the spread of the disease, and he cited national statistics finding that four out of five new COVID-19 patients were found to have been infected by someone showing no symptoms.

“We have to flatten the curve,” Pritzker said, meaning the rising curve of those known to be infected. To that end he continued to advise Illinoisans to stay home as much as possible, and he warned parents schools may not reopen as currently scheduled for March 31.

“Parents should be contemplating the possibility that could be extended,” he said.

In a speech to Chicagoans later in the day, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Chicago Public Schools would stay closed until at least April 21, adding, “We need to give parents and guardians plenty of advance notice about this reality and the ability to plan.”

Lightfoot was also firm on citizens avoiding the spread of COVID-19. While she resisted calls for a “shelter in place” order, restricting people from going outside except for essential needs, she left no doubt about people who are stick staying home, even if they’re just experiencing curious aches and pains.

“If you are sick, stay home,” she said. “That’s an order.” Her administration backed that up with a threat to issue fines of $100 to $500 for people who knowingly go out in public while infectious.

Pritzker acknowledged the virus and the shutdown of businesses across the state was having a brutal effect on the economy. “There is no doubt there is an enormous cost everyone is bearing,” he said.

But he insisted the supply chain was intact for grocers, pharmacies, and gas stations, and that citizens had no need to worry about getting the essential things they need.

“Essential services will not close,” Pritzker said. “Interstates, highways, and bridges will stay open. Grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations — these sources of fundamental supplies will continue to operate. There is no need to run out and hoard food, gas, or medicine. Buy what you need within reason. There is enough to go around as long as people do not hoard.”

He asked Illinoisans to be thankful to employees at those businesses, who in a way are on the front lines in the battle against the disease as are doctors, nurses, and other health-care workers, as well as police and firefighters, whom he also took pains to salute.

“These are people who leave their families every day and expose themselves to the risks of COVID-19 by treating patients — more and more of whom are presenting with symptoms,” Pritzker added.

Lightfoot echoed that, rallying Chicagoans by saying, “Resiliency and resolve are baked into our DNA, and, as a people, this is our moment to prove to ourselves and a nation that, in Chicago, we may get bent, but we will never be broken.”

Mayor Lori Lightfoot addresses Chicagoans Thursday, saying, “Resiliency and resolve are baked into our DNA.” (WLS-TV Channel 7)

Paula Basta, director of the Illinois Department on Aging, said the state’s in-home services and home-delivered meals “will not be interrupted,” adding they’ll be expanded. She praised an increasing number of stores setting aside hours exclusively for seniors, as did Rob Karr, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, which has set up a webpage with a list of those stores and their special hours.

Although the governor’s primary focus is on the public health, he said he’s also intent on the economic fallout. “There is no doubt there is an enormous cost that everybody in Illinois is bearing for the economic damage that is coming from COVID-19,” Pritzker said. “There’s no doubt about it, this is going to have a significant economic effect on Illinois, and we are trying to mitigate that damage just like we are trying to mitigate the virus itself.”

The governor said he’d cleared the way for 20,000 small and mid-size businesses to get a two-month delay in filing their sales taxes, as well as low-interest disaster loans of up to $2 million through the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Lightfoot said that, through a public-private partnership with banks and other financial institutions, she was creating a $100 million Chicago Small Business Resiliency Loan Fund for firms struggling to survive the economic downturn. She emphasized that, through “a strong and diverse economy,” the region has always “bounced back strong and quickly from those downturns. We are working at all levels of government — local, county and state — to make sure that the final tale of this economic challenge will be the same, a strong comeback.”

Back on the health side, Pritzker said the 13,000 members of the Illinois National Guard might be called on in “critical work planning for the weeks and months ahead,'“ including setting up mobile testing units outside hospitals for drive-through testing, as well as potentially helping to reopen shuttered hospitals or build field hospitals.

“We want to make sure we don’t end up in the situation Italy is in,” Pritzker said, without enough beds to treat the critically ill patients who need them.

The Pritzker administration is also setting up a website doctors can enroll in for the latest up-to-the-minute information on the outbreak through a website called Siren, at siren.illinois.gov. Pritzker advised, “Every doctor in the state should do this immediately.”