Pritzker chides Trump on ventilators, testing
‘We need exactly what we’re asking for, perhaps more,’ says guv as coronavirus cases top 3,000, death toll at 34
Gov. Pritzker expresses exasperation with the Trump administration over its lackluster response to the coronavirus crisis at his daily briefing Friday. (Illinois Information Service)
By Ted Cox
Gov. Pritzker blasted President Trump Friday on the lack of ventilators and coronavirus testing and the generally lackluster federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The governor pressed urgently for a more focused response by the Trump administration as Illinois reported 488 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the state total to 3,026 in 40 counties. Eight new deaths brought the statewide toll to 34.
At the outset of his daily coronavirus briefing at the Thompson Center in Chicago, Pritzker said, “I want to take a moment today to address some of the latest ideas that have been floating out of the Oval Office. President Trump yesterday went on a talk show to question whether Americans really need more ventilators to save people’s lives. He did this on the same day our nation overtook China and Italy having the highest number of COVID-19 positive cases. To say that these comments are counterproductive is an understatement. And, frankly, at worst the comments are deadly.”
Pritzker was adamant in saying, “We need exactly what we’re asking for — perhaps more. If we don’t get the equipment we need, more people will die. … One way or another, we need these supplies.
“We need thousands of more ventilators,” he added, “as many as we can get in short order.”
Pritzker repeated his persistent calls for Trump to make use of the Defense Production Act to centralize the federal response and get personal protective equipment — also known as PPE — to the states so they can distribute it to health-care workers on the front lines in combating the pandemic. “He needed to do this, to activate the Defense Production Act, weeks ago — even yesterday,” Pritzker insisted.
Trump did invoke it late Friday to call on General Motors to adapt a factory to build ventilators, prompting the governor to say, “I’m so pleased to know there’s some movement, but that’s only GM.”
Pritzker said the state had just received a new shipment of N95 masks, and along with other PPE they were being distributed to hospitals in Champaign, Peoria, Edwardsville, and Marion. “We will not rest until each and every region of our state has what it needs,” he added, “but, without the federal government, individual states don’t have enough market power to procure what is needed on their own.”
Asked about the various rules and regulations put in place by various states in response to the pandemic, Pritzker said, “There wouldn’t be a patchwork of rules if the federal government had stepped up in the first place. … This is a war. It’s a war against a pandemic. The federal government needs to lead, and until it does we’ll be a leader here in Illinois.”
Pritzker also called out Vice President Mike Pence, head of the administration’s coronavirus response, for his unfulfilled promises about expanded testing. “I’ve been one of the loudest governors on the subject of testing,” he said. Within the last month, he added, Pence insisted there would be “millions” of tests available. “It didn’t happen,” he said. “The truth is that, even now, that’s not true.”
The governor said if he’d known then what he knows now, he’d have been trying to get additional equipment on his own, as he is currently. But he repeated his criticism, “It’s a Wild West out there,” trying to compete with other states and nations for a limited amount of medical resources.
On the state level, Pritzker urged all health-care providers to enroll in an emergency alert system through the website illinoishelps.net so they can be called on in an immediate crisis. “Your fellow Illinoisans need you. Your state needs you,” he said, adding that the order applied to anyone “in the medical profession in any capacity whatsoever.” He added, “We want to be able to literally text them” to call them to action in an emergency.
He said more than 500 retired doctors and nurses and other health-care workers had already replied to his call to return to work and be recertified in an all-hands-on-deck approach, and he called for more, saying, “Please come back to work for at least the next few months to help us battle against COVID-19.”
The Pritzker administration also announced new initiatives to house as many of the state’s homeless as possible ahead of the spread of the virus, as well as expanded food stamps, or SNAP benefits, with a new more open application process not requiring a personal appearance at a state office. The state is also trying to arrange emergency child care for health-care workers pressed into duty. Pritzker urged citizens to consult the state’s comprehensive coronavirus website to seek out any and all available sources of aid, and he said he was aware of the inherent contradictions right now with the stay-at-home order for those suffering domestic abuse, repeating the state’s domestic-violence hotline at (877) 863-6338.
According to Pritzker, the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Board of Higher Education are both working to assure seniors, both in high school and in college, that they’ll be graduating as classes continue for some online.
Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said much of the focus on treatment for the virus continued to be on the elderly. “As we expected and as we feared, the greatest number of hospitalizations is among individuals older than 65 years of age,” she said, adding that 86 percent of the deaths involved patients 60 and older.
Ezike said the state was continuing to expand all available testing for the virus, while running two shifts a day at the primary testing lab. She said expanded testing would help in compliance with the stay-at-home order. “If someone knew they were positive, I think that would affect their behavior,” she said, adding it would also eventually help officials to “know when we’re getting to a better place.”
“We rely upon the science. We rely upon the experts out there,” Pritzker said. “Nothing is set in stone,” he added, but “for now” the statewide stay-at-home order he imposed only a week ago is still scheduled to expire April 7.