By Jerry Nowicki
Governor JB Pritzker said Tuesday the State’s COVID-19 peak could come in mid-May and he is examining the current stay-at-home order for potential changes.
The governor made the comments during a Washington Post Live interview with reporter Robert Costa.
Pritzker said individuals “have really been abiding by” the State’s second-in-the-nation stay-at-home order, which he said led to fewer deaths and hospitalizations than anticipated at this point.
“And so the result of that has been the pushing out of what had been anticipated to be a peaking in the middle or near the end of April, so it’s been pushed out now according to the models to maybe mid-May but at a lower level,” he said.
Pritzker was asked about differences in the Chicagoland area and downstate Illinois when it comes to fighting the virus, and he said there are different infection rates depending on region. That could inform changes to the stay-at-home order, the governor said, although he did not directly respond to a follow-up as to whether some counties might reopen before others.
“And now I think we can make some adjustments based upon hospitalization rates, based upon ICU bed availability, based upon infection rates, as we look to, how can we begin to adjust things and work toward, after the peak, really reopening the economy,” Pritzker said.
He was asked about recent tweets from president Donald Trump calling to “liberate” certain states with Democratic governors.
“When he tweets out liberate Michigan or liberate Minnesota, or liberate Virginia, he’s fomenting protest and I hate to say that is fomenting some violence and I’m very concerned about what that might mean for the country if he keeps doing things like that,” Pritzker said.
The governor said the president “should be pulling people together right now,” and he noted recent protests of stay-at-home orders nationwide likely will lead to a wider spread of the virus, including more deaths among those who attended the events.
“They’re frankly going to be giving each other coronavirus and people unfortunately will get sick, and some people may die as a result of the president’s rhetoric that has brought them out to protest,” he said.
• Harmon Letter:
The State’s five Republican congressmen responded Monday to a letter sent last week by Illinois Senate president Don Harmon requesting $40 Billion in aid to the State, including $10 Billion for the state’s pension system, which has an unfunded liability of $138 billion.
The GOP members hold five of Illinois’ 18 congressional seats, and they said Harmon, D-Oak Park, should consider pushing structural reforms before requesting “aid that is beyond this immediate crisis.
“We will fight for more aid to support the State and local governments in Illinois, but your letter assumes the federal government will approve aid that is beyond this immediate crisis,” the congressmen wrote. “For example, you suggest the State’s revenue loss will be approximately $14.1 Billion, but your letter requests aid that is many multiples of the State’s loss projections. We fully support federal assistance to help defray some of the State’s losses, but we oppose using the crisis as an opportunity for a full-scale federal bailout.”
They said the pandemic did not cause the pension crisis in Illinois, but only “further illuminated the one that already existed.”
— Capitol News Illinois