Spring has sprung a trap, say Pritzker, Ezike
Stay home on warmest day of year, they urge, as state’s COVID-19 death toll tops 300
Dr. Ngozi Ezike and Gov. Pritzker speak at a daily coronavirus briefing at the Thompson Center back in February. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
Ahead of the warmest day of the year expected Tuesday, the governor and the state’s leading health officer urged Illinoisans to stay home and “protect each other” by not spreading the coronavirus.
Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, began her remarks at the daily coronavirus briefing Monday at the Thompson Center in Chicago with “a few words of caution. The forecast says that tomorrow will be our warmest day in many areas of the state. Please stay home. I assure you, if people congregate tomorrow we will set the state back in our fight against COVID-19.”
Ezike went on to say that the state had confirmed 1,006 new cases of the coronavirus Monday, bringing the statewide total to 12,262. Some 33 new deaths brought the Illinois toll to 307.
“I hope that people listen to Dr. Ezike about the weather tomorrow,” added Gov. Pritzker. “Do not go meet people. Do not.”
Pritzker emphasized that should continue through Passover on Wednesday and Easter Sunday, saying, “Look, I understand the desire to worship. Passover is coming up. We’re in Easter week. This is a holy time of year. And I want very much for people to experience the spirituality that they normally would. We live in a very difficult time, and I would suggest that unfortunately we all should start to think about how we’re going to use technology in order for us to to gather, in order to hear our pastor or our rabbi or our imam or whoever we worship with — to listen to them and to worship online, perhaps by video or by phone, and to connect with family in the same way.”
Adding that he’d heard people planning to hold a Passover seder over the Zoom teleconferencing website by referring to it as a “zeder,” he said, “I think we’re all going to be experiencing the holidays in a very unusual way this year.” But he stressed the urgent need to avoid spreading the virus, saying, “We’ve got to protect each other.”
Pritzker and Ezike held the briefing just as Chicago was releasing new figures showing that COVID-19 was hitting especially hard in the city’s African-American community. According to city health data, 1,824 African Americans, 847 white residents, 478 Hispanics, and 126 Asian Americans had been diagnosed with COVID-19 through Sunday. African Americans make up 30 percent of the city population, but had accounted for 72 percent of the city’s coronavirus deaths.
“This new data offers a deeply concerning glimpse into the spread of COVID-19 and is a stark reminder of the deep-seated issues which have long created disparate health impacts in communities across Chicago,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said. “While this data is extremely troubling, we are determined to lessen the impact of COVID-19 by engaging communities that have traditionally been overlooked and that have suffered disinvestment and neglect for generations. Data and science have been a critical tool in our public health response to COVID-19 from day one, and we will continue to rely on them to move resources where they are needed most. We know that our residents’ health is impacted by a number of factors, and we will also be taking a critical look at ways we can ensure that every Chicagoan has the opportunities and resources necessary to maximize their health and well-being.”
“That’s a product of generations of systemic disinvestment in communities of color,” Pritzker said, “compounded by the disparities in health-care delivery systems and access.
“Here’s the reason that we think that it has a disproportionate effect on the African-American community,” he added. “Underlying conditions that exist, the poor health care that has been provided because of years of disinvestment in communities of color — those have both come together. This virus has had this terrible effect on the African-American community because of those two things. … We are countering it, both by reopening hospitals that are in those communities,” such as Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park and MetroSouth Medical Center in Blue Island, “as well as making sure that we’re messaging properly,” using social media and the All in Illinois campaign to reemphasize preventive measures.
Ezike pointed out that 70 percent of COVID-19 deaths have involved people with pre-existing conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease — all of which are more prevalent in the African-American community due to a historic failure, economic and social, to address chronic disease and its causes.
“Here’s the good news,” Gov. Pritzker said Monday. “We haven’t trusted what we were told by the White House. … It’s our own state procurement initiative that is making the difference.” (Illinois Information Service)
From the outset of Monday’s briefing, Pritzker reengaged in his war of words and policy with the White House and President Trump. He pointed out changes made in the mission of the Strategic National Stockpile of critical medical supplies to “support states and local governments during a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out.” After White House aide Jerad Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, insisted last week that it was “our stockpile,” not belonging to the states, Pritzker said the language was changed on the official SNS website. “Suddenly the website no longer said that the SNS would support states, but instead now said that the SNS is meant to ‘supplement’ state supplies during public health emergencies and only as a short-term stopgap buffer when the immediate supply of adequate amounts of these materials may not be immediately available.”
Pritzker went on to repeat that Illinois had received “a mere fraction of what we asked for” from the federal government in critical personal protective equipment, or PPE, such as hospital gowns and masks, as well as ventilators and COVID-19 testing kits Vice President Pence promised would be distributed in abundance. He said the government’s failure to provide those tests in the required amount is “a massive hindrance” in the entire effort to quell the pandemic.
“Here’s the good news,” Pritzker added. “We haven’t trusted what we were told by the White House.” Instead, his administration went to work obtaining those essential supplies on its own “by whatever means necessary.”
The governor added, “We need to outfit our heroic health-care professionals” in their role “saving lives while they’re protecting their own.” According to Pritzker, what Illinois received from the federal stockpile would have been utterly insufficient to fill the “burn rate” those doctors and nurses will need to overcome in replacing equipment that has to be tossed out over just 10 days of combating the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s our own state procurement initiative that is making the difference,” Pritzker said. “To anyone who wants a response to some of the blame shifting coming out of the White House, all I have to say is look at the numbers.”
Pritzker repeated his effusive praise for workers with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Army Corps of Engineers, and military medical staff expected to augment local health facilities, including the converted McCormick Place Alternate Care Facility soon expected to contain 3,000 beds for coronavirus patients. He called those federal workers “the people who know that their duty is to the residents of this country. These are all people who are fighting like hell for illinois, even with one hand tied behind their back by the White House.”