Pritzker to Illinoisans: 'You have saved thousands of lives'
Hospitalization rates hold steady as 59 new deaths reported
Gov. Pritzker credits Illinoisans with limiting the toll from the coronavirus crisis at his daily briefing Monday. (Illinois.gov)
By Ted Cox
Gov. Pritzker applauded Illinoisans at his daily coronavirus briefing Monday, saying, “Real progress has been made,” and “all the projections indicate you have saved thousands of lives.”
Pritzker said hospitalization rates for COVID-19 were holding steady, as the state reported 1,151 new cases of the disease and 59 deaths resulting from it. That brought total state confirmed cases to 31,508, with the death toll at 1,349, but the daily fatality count remained well below the single-day high of 125 set last Thursday and equalled on Saturday.
Pritzker reported that the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized statewide had climbed steadily, but not alarmingly from 3,680 two weeks ago to 4,599 on Sunday. But at the same time the number of Intensive Care Unit beds had increased, so that while 43 percent of ICU beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients two weeks ago, that figure has declined to 40 percent, where it’s held steady over the last 10 days. Similarly, as of Sunday, 757 COVID-19 patients were on ventilators statewide, hooked up to 23 percent of the state’s total capacity of about 3,200, but that was down from 29 percent of ventilators devoted to coronavirus patients two weeks ago.
Pritzker said estimates were that those percentage figures would be 10 points higher without the added capacity and mitigating efforts, including the stay-at-home order, that have limited the spread of the virus. “Because Illinoisans have come together by social distancing, learning at home, and staying at home, we’ve so far prevented our worst-case scenarios,” he said.
Chicago alone claimed last week to have saved more than 1,650 lives from the worst estimates.
“This continues to be a very difficult time,” said Illinois Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike, but she too noted the progress made.
That moved Pritzker to say he is considering reopening parts of the state to more activity on a “region by region” basis, but the keys to that are determining hospital capacity over an extended area, as well as adequate testing.
He said he is weighing “how best to give people the most freedom while keeping people healthy.” He said he is studying “the ability to do as much as possible without spreading the virus.”
Pritzker said, “We need a lot more testing than we have today,” to reopen the economy with confidence, but “it’s a lot more than just one test for each person. … We need a lot more testing across the country before everybody is going to feel comfortable.”
He added, “None of this is done by whim,” but at the same time he has not yet moved to extend the deadline for the stay-at-home order beyond April 30.
After sitting in on a conference call with Vice President Trump earlier Monday, Pritzker blamed the Trump administration for the continued failure to conduct adequate testing. He said Pence maintained that they were getting testing devices to the states, but he added, “There’s a big difference between testing capacity and getting results.” Results are often slowed, he said, by the lack of necessary raw materials to conduct tests, such as swabs to gather samples and reagents to process them.
“The White House has not delivered what it said it would deliver,” Pritzker said. He charged that the Trump administration was delivering shipments of personal protective equipment and other coronavirus materials not directly to the states, but through “distributors,” who act as middlemen. He called them “profit-making private businesses … who are getting the government to deliver to them their goods. … Then they get to decide where those goods go.”
Pritzker added, “What they’re taking credit for at the White House is that the distributors have customers in Illinois that they’re sending goods to, because those customers ordered those items of PPE. So that’s a far cry from delivering to the states so that we can distribute to, for example, a nursing home that has an outbreak. … What they’re doing is delivering to for-profit businesses that are selling for profit to their prior customers who have ordered things from them.”
Pritzker and Ezike said the state was adopting a two-pronged approach to limiting outbreaks in nursing homes and other facilities offering long-term care, with more testing being conducted in sites without a confirmed case, and testing of all staff in residences that have confirmed the coronavirus. Facilities in targeted minority communities are also getting more attention.