Thread by @GovPritzker

Today I want to talk about #COVID19 testing here in Illinois – where we were, where we are, and where we’re going.

While we’ve moved past a phase of pure containment, it remains a priority to further build our testing abilities in part to understand the presence and spread of COVID-19 across Illinois.

Five days ago, we were running about 2,000 tests/day across our 3 state labs, 4 commercial labs & 15 hospital labs.

Today, we average around 4,000 per day, with 30 hospital & clinical laboratories now up & running.

Within the next 10 days, we believe we'll get up to 10,000.

The 10,000 tests per day marker is significant because that’s what the scientists and experts tell us we need to get a truly holistic understanding of the virus in each of our 102 counties.

Right now, we’re working with roughly the same data that the majority of states are working with.

That gives our state a rough picture of the virus’ landscape across our state & in our municipalities by extrapolating the data & modeling the virus’ spread in other countries.

Ultimately, my goal is to reach a large enough testing capacity where we’re able to test everyone who needs a test on a regular basis.

But for right now, all of the experts point to 10,000 tests as the standard we need to achieve.

I’ll be frank with you: Where we are now is not where I want to be.

To be clear, the loss of essentially the entire month of February in the effort to scale up robust testing – and the exponential spread that followed – was a profound failing of the federal government.

Nationally, there have been some improvements in testing – but we still have so far to go.

The U.S. is still trailing other countries in testing on a per-capita basis, several times over.

The White House has promised millions of tests for weeks now, and they’re just not here.

I’ll welcome the testing capacity when it actually arrives.

But I’m not going to wait on promises from the federal government that may never be fulfilled.

We need this testing capacity now, so we’re building it ourselves. Here’s how we’re getting there:

✔️ Adding a third shift at state labs
✔️ Acquiring new lab machines
✔️ Working with DPI to ensure our staffing and logistics reflects this increased capacity

I also called @AbbottNews to ask that Illinois be first in line for their just-announced 5-minute rapid test for COVID-19.

I’m proud to say they expressed their dedication to taking care of their home state & will be very helpful to us here in IL as their production ramps up.

In a parallel effort, we’re collaborating with our university and hospital partners to ensure Illinois’ commercial testing can grow as fast as possible.

As for our drive-thru testing, we added a fifth facility: the @IL_Natl_Guard opened a second state-run drive-thru site in McLean County yesterday, joining the first site on the northwest side of Chicago and the three federal HHS sites in Bolingbrook, North Lake and Joliet.

Still, due to the federal government requiring federal personnel representation at our two state drive-thrus, we remain tied to the 250 test cap at each of these locations.

We know there’s greater need, so we are pushing the federal government to change their requirements.

We’re also pressuring the federal government on the return timelines of these tests.

The private labs contracted by the federal governments are taking 4-7 days and sometimes even up to 10 days to turn around results, which is too long.