Thread by @BauerJournalism

Gov. JB Pritzker has his daily coronavirus update for Illinois at 2:30 p.m. I'll live tweet.

Follow for updates and let me know if you have questions.

Numbers from today: blockclubchicago.org/2020/11/09/cor…

Numbers from the weekend: blockclubchicago.org/2020/11/09/118…

You'll be able to watch here: multimedia.illinois.gov/press/press-li…

Pritzker: "Today is even more about action than accomplishment because the president-elect is a good and decent and empathetic man who comes prepared for national leadership with real plans to address this economic pain, to battle this pandemic and to defend our health care ...

"workers and, when the time comes, to ensure that a safe and effective vaccine will be made available to all Americans. I'm so very pleased to see as one of the president-elect's first acts" the creation of a COVID-19 task force.

Pritzker: In Illinois, we'll continue to persevere, "soon with at least one fewer major impediment."

Pritzker: "We may have a real problem on our hands" as the weather gets cooler and people move inside more.

Pritzker: "Our new daily cases are up nearly 380% since Oct. 1. Our statewide test positivity is up over 180% in the last 5 weeks. And both our statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths per day are up more than 150% in the same time period. The virus is winning the war...

" right now. The situation has worsened considerably in certain areas of the state, with massive increases in the rates of community transmission, specifically in three regions. As a result, regions 5, 7 and 8 — that's southern Illinois and Chicago's" south and western suburbs...

are going to Tier 2 of mitigations. No gatherings of 10 or more people on gatherings, additional restrictions on sporting/rec events and more restrictions on bars/restaurants.

Pritzker: Region 7 and 8 share in this unfortunate trajectory; "each now has a positivity rate above 13%, meaning just about one in every seven tests in these areas is coming back positive. Per the WHO, the benchmark for reopening is no more than 1 in every 20 tests."

Pritzker: "Mitigations are only effective if they're followed." Too many officials are ignoring their local health departments "and doing nearly nothing to assist their residents in following even the most basic COVID-19 guidelines."

Pritzker: If you see something, say something. If you see someone not wearing a mask, remind them it's for their own good they wear one.

Dr. Ngozi Ezike, head of the Illinois Department of Public Health: Wash your hands, watch your distance, mask up, etc. "We all want an end to this pandemic. We are all on the same team. We want to be able to hang out with our friends. We want to enjoy our favorite ...

"restaurants. We want to have our large weddings and all the things that have been sacrificed since March. But there's only a few paths to get us there, and one is by reducing the amount of virus circulating so that we no longer see sustainable spread. We do this by limiting ...

"our group sizes as well as wearing our mask and keeping our distance. ... By not doing these things, the virus continues to get ahead of us." That leads to more cases, more hospitalizations and more deaths.

Ezike: "Today, unfortunately, we are reporting another 10,573 newly identified cases of COVID-19 for a total of 498,560 total cases in Illinois."

14 more deaths.

Ezike: "You cannot test out of quarantine. So remember, still 14 days for quarantine after your exposure. It can take up to 14 days to develop the symptoms of the disease if, in fact, you caught it."

Pritzker: "When we add mitigations, this virus doesn't react right away, right? ... You put mitigations on, people have been exposed for days before potentially ... and you have to wait several days for people to show symptoms or to get tested or whatever. That's why we saw we...

"give two weeks, three weeks depending upon which mitigations we're putting on to see whether the mitigations are having an effect. Remember, you're trying to bend the curve. ... Things are going up and they don't just immediately start going down. You have to wait a couple ...

"weeks, at least, before you look at new mitigations after you put new ones on today."

Pritzker: It's not whether the mitigations are strict enough; it's whether people are following them.

Region 1 is in a situation that is "extremely unfortunate" because it's at the corner of Wisconsin and Iowa.

People are crossing the border in those places, where there aren't the same mitigations and cases are up, etc.

Pritzker: He says the same people asking him to remove mitigations from restaurants are the ones who brought COVID-19 to his office.

Ezike: "The team has always reached out in any time that we have identified a case. ... I've actually been stricter in cases just to be overly cautious. I've probably put him on quarantine when we probably didn't have to just to be abundantly cautious. In this case, there was ...

"an exposure on Monday; the person developed symptoms on Thursday and tested, found out on Friday. So, per CDC guidelines, if someone is identified, you go back two days from when symptoms began." Anyone that person was around Tuesday/Wednesday, if they had more than ...

15 minutes of contact within 6 feet, that's a contact. The Monday meeting was outside of that contact.

Ezike: "When you identify a case, a confirmed case is a person that has a positive test that says yes, you have been diagnosed with COVID — that person, when they develop symptoms from symptom onset, when you go backwards, you go back two days. And all the people that the ...

"person was in contact with in the proceeding 48 hours are now, if they reached 15 minutes, were within 6 feet, those individuals from Wednesday and Tuesday, those individuals" are contact.

Pritzker says he was tested Wednesday, as he regularly is, and again late afternoon ...

Friday "just out of an abundance of caution because as Dr. Ezike points out I wouldn't fall int he normal zone of contact tracing. I just wanted to be extra sure ... ."

Pritzker: "There's a massive amount of fraud that's been going on. We are detecting the fraud, but you have to have the incoming benefits claim come in ... in order to detect whether they're possibly" fraudulent.

Pritzker: "The most important thing you can do for our economy is to fight COVID." Most economic damage being done is because most people don't want to go to a place that's crowded. Even states without mitigations saw economic downturn.

Pritzker: "We're a big state that has a major city in it. It's not quite as relevant to talk about, let's say, a state that doesn't have a major city. We're much more like New York or Los Angeles or name the big cities around the country than we are ... Madison, for example. ...

"We're just a much, Chicago has a much bigger footprint and number of people. And so when we had the major number of deaths that occurred early on, and nobody understood this and I still think we don't fully understand this virus ... we were trying very hard to slow down the ...

"virus. Even after we put a stay at home order in, you saw deaths rising considerably. And you saw the same thing in New York and in Detroit and in a number of other cities."

Pritzker: "You can look at county data. What we're gathering is 97 local public health departments and their data in order to show what types of outbreaks exist in the state. Most important to us is to try to use that data to determine what kinds of mitigations or where can we...

"be most effective at trying to keep down the numbers across the state."

Pritzker: "We're not gonna distribute a vaccine that we don't know is safe."

Pritzker on Biden plans: "I've been calling for a national mask mandate for some time ... . Think about the states around us ant he fact that they don't have mitigations in many of those states, and that has an effect on Illinois ... . We do need help with testing and tracing."

Pritzker: "We need more. It's clear to me that what you really wanna do is what the University of Illinois is doing: testing twice a week and you're gonna know" quickly if you have COVID. "If you can do that, we could isolate people much more quickly" and lower transmission.

Pritzker: The FDA is holding up the distribution of those saliva tests.

Pritzker: "The city of Rockford has done a better job, I wanna say, than some of the surrounding areas. ... People [outside Rockford] are less likely to wear a mask ... . We need to make sure" local authorities "take this seriously. We want to make sure that people are ...

"following mitigations and, if they looked ... if people would follow these mitigations, these numbers will come down."

Pritzker: Underwood is going to end up winning. "There were a lot of polls that were way off. The polling that was done in Illinois, I think most of it showed Joe Biden would win by 20 points and he seems to have won by 13 points."

Pritzker: Some of the flawed thinking is due to people thinking there'd be big turnout among Democrats. "I think there's a lot to evaluate about polling, that's for sure."

Pritzker: "I think you've seen these tiered regional approaches, this is the right way to go. Again, when people will follow the mitigations. But I'm very concerned as we approach Thanksgiving, I'm very concerned as numbers rise and, as a result, as I've told you for days, we ...

"are looking at really all the possibilities, the possibility that we would have to go back a phase, the possibility that we would have to ultimately have a stay at home order. Those are not things I would prefer to do. These numbers are not sustainable."

Pritzker: He looks at every day: Are we bending the curve?

Pritzker: The vast majority of people want officials to take action with mitigations, and that takes action from all levels of government.

Pritzker: "I'm very concerned for the future of our restaurants and our bars. I know these mitigations are very, very difficult on them. In every stage of mitigation in every state, bars and restaurants are one of the first subjects that get addressed."

Pritzker: NYC has done well and they had restaurants shut down until Sept. 30 and bars are still shut down.

Pritzker: He's trying to find some middle ground.

Pritzker: "I remind everybody that we have a significant COVID-related failure of revenues in this state. If the federal government, if the Congress finally gets around to a package that includes helping our local governments and our state, that will be part of the solution. ...

"But the other part is going to be significant cuts."

Press conference over. blockclubchicago.org/2020/11/09/cor…