GOV EXTENDS STAY-AT-HOME ORDER THROUGH APRIL AS 26 MORE DIE FROM COVID-19
As deaths surge again, gov extends stay-at-home order, warns ‘we don’t know when we’re going to peak’
Tuesday marked another record spike in Illinois coronavirus deaths with 26.
But it was far from the peak of the crisis that already has gripped the state for nearly a month.
“We don’t know when we’re going to peak. And we don’t know when we’re going to come off that peak,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker warned as he announced the extension of his statewide stay-at-home order through April 30.
The latest measure to quell the COVID-19 outbreak had seemed inevitable with a four-digit tally of confirmed cases growing by the day — but Pritzker’s signature will ensure huge swaths of the state economy remain shut down for another full month along with classes for more than 2 million children statewide.
“This may not be what residents want, but it is what we need,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said. “Stay home. Save lives. Period. The fewer people who stay home, the longer this crisis will last, and candidly, the more people who will die.”
Pritzker said the decision to extend the order initially in place through April 7 was based on daily advice from scientists, medical experts and modelers. All schools will be closed, while all essential businesses will stay open.
It was underscored Tuesday by 937 additional confirmed cases, raising Illinois’ total to 5,994, while the 26 deaths raised the statewide toll to 99.
Among the dead are a married couple from Ukraine who officials said died less than five hours apart from each other Saturday at Glenbrook Hospital after bouts with COVID-19 and underlying cases of pneumonia. Feliks Ogorodnik, 88, and his wife, Luiza, 84, are thought to be the first couple to both contract fatal cases.
Seventeen of the latest deaths occurred in Cook County, while the virus has now spread to 54 of Illinois’ 102 counties.
Within hospital capacity — for now
Pritzker said the state’s health care system is “still within our capacity, and we’re working every day to acquire new ventilators or convert alternate-use ventilators to increase that capacity, but from all the modeling that we’ve seen, our greatest risk of hitting capacity isn’t right now, but weeks from now,” Pritzker said.
To increase that capacity, state Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch, DHillside, urged Pritzker to consider reopening the shuttered Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park as another response center.
“We need to have all beds available,” Welch said.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said the health system is girding for an influx of coronavirus patients that could have a “profound impact” on county finances — not that that’s a focus, she said.
“Our focus has been on trying to figure out how we’re going to deliver care to all the people who are going to swamp the health care system,” she said.
Cook County Jail will “continue to be our biggest public health problem within the county,” Preckwinkle said, where more than 100 detainees have tested positive.
While a Navy comfort ship is being dispatched to New York to treat that city’s massive outbreak, Lightfoot said she didn’t see a need for a similar hospital ship in Chicago.
“I don’t anticipate a large naval vessel on the shores of Lake Michigan. That’s why we are taking other steps to make sure that we have added capacity to help meet the challenge and the surge that’s gonna come to our hospitals,” the mayor said, pointing to McCormick Place, where officials are prepping up to 3,000 hospital beds.
Officers calling in sick
Virus concerns also have hit the Chicago Police Department, where 800 officers are calling in sick each day.
“We have asked our members, if you are feeling ill — if you do not think you should be at work — be on the medical. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Fraternal Order of Police President Kevin Graham said.
Lightfoot agreed, saying, “I’m grateful that people are abiding by” advice to stay home.
“This disease doesn’t discriminate. … It’s not surprising that we’re starting to see confirmed cases among our first responders. We expected that to be true.”
BBQ legend feeds Roseland Hospital
After a Roseland Community Hospital dietary department staffer came down with COVID-19 symptoms last week, officials shut down the department and instead relied on pizza and donations to feed patients.
When Chicago-area barbecue legend Charlie Robinson heard of the closure, he stepped into action, donating over 100 five-course meals to patients and staff Tuesday from his Robinson’s No. 1 Ribs.
“I really want to recognize Robinson’s Ribs for donating this food today to keep our employees and our patients nourished,” Roseland CEO Tim Egan said.