Today, I'm announcing a series of additional vaccine requirements aimed at protecting our most vulnerable residents, unvaccinated children and their families, and the ability of hospital systems to handle the #DeltaVariant surge in Illinois. Our current vaccination levels are not enough to blunt the ferocity of Delta variant hospitalization surges in some regions.
 
Hospital administrators are asking for more help to manage the sheer number of incoming patients – who are almost exclusively unvaccinated residents.

Today, it’s my privilege stand with the @IllinoisLBC to sign the Illinois Health Care and Human Services Reform Act into law.

This legislation advances a key belief of mine that is shared by millions of residents across Illinois: healthcare is a right, not a privilege. This legislation takes sweeping action:
▶️ Requires implicit medical bias training
▶️ Caps costs for blood sugar testing equipment
▶️ Builds out a Community Health Worker certification and training program
▶️ Launches new Anti-Racism Commission

This criminal justice package that I signed today helps make Illinoisans safer. We're advance our values in the law, because of the passion and push of the @IllinoisLBC, activists, and residents intent on leaving a better Illinois for all our children. It achieves three priorities that @LtGovStratton and I outlined:

1⃣ Transform the pretrial detention system, which hurts low-income people while the wealthy walk free

2⃣ Divert low-level drug crimes into substance treatment programs

3⃣ Reduce excessive stays in prison

Today, I'm signing HB 3653, The Safe-T Act, into law. This police reform and accountability and criminal justice legislation is a substantial step toward dismantling systemic racism by bringing us closer to true safety, true fairness and true justice.

Here are the facts: ✖️MYTH: The bill endangers communities and emboldens criminals.

✔️FACT: It moves Illinois from a pretrial detention system which prioritizes wealth to one that prioritizes public safety. It also improves access to substance use programs and modernizes sentencing laws.

It’s incumbent upon us not to forget the ways that COVID highlighted the inequities that low-income families have long faced – and the ways it’s accelerated the need for us to respond. One of the largest gaps – made even more significant in the pandemic – is the digital divide. Long before COVID-19, I set the goal of bringing broadband digital infrastructure to every corner of Illinois by 2024 through Connect Illinois, and I'm happy to report we are well on our way toward our goal of making broadband accessible for every Illinoisan.

The pandemic has caused every state in the nation to face tremendous revenue shortfalls, and Illinois is no exception.

The loss of state tax revenue from COVID-19 will cost us in excess of $4 billion over two fiscal years. I've worked with governors of both parties and spoken countless times with members of Congress to aggressively advocate for federal support to make up for the missing dollars that fund schools, pay caregivers and first responders & deliver essential services to residents in need.

The COVID-19 vaccine is a critical tool to safely reach the other side of the pandemic and begin Phase 5 of our Restore Illinois plan. Illinois will only distribute a vaccine that's deemed safe. Experts will review vaccines at the state level, in addition to reviews by @US_FDA. The @US_FDA is reviewing 2 COVID-19 vaccines in December 2020, w/ multiple others in the final stages of evaluation. The @pfizer vaccine recorded a 95% effective rate and is being considered on Dec 10. The @moderna_tx vaccine recorded a 94% rate and is being considered on Dec 17.

We need to re-center the conversation on what matters most: the health of our people, and the trends that are moving that health in a precarious direction.

Statewide, we have a real problem on our hands, and people’s lives hang in the balance. We are seeing substantially more confirmed cases right now than we ever saw in the spring. Today, we are at a new high, a seven day average of 5,043 new cases per day – closing in on twice what we saw in May.

From the beginning, we've used encouragement and education to get businesses to follow our public health guidance. But unfortunately, some business owners refuse or don’t want to follow the rules, thereby putting their patrons, the public and their workers in danger. That's why @ILStatePolice has ramped up random checks of businesses that are subject to mitigation rules to identify those that aren’t following them, and they’ve begun progressively taking more stringent action to hold scofflaws accountable.

Today, we stand to deliver a message to Peoria and beyond: cases, positivity, and hospitalizations are all rising around the state, and we have got to reverse the trend and slow the spread of the virus. Peoria’s Restore Illinois region, Region 2, is currently the best performing of our state’s 11 Restore regions – but a 7.2% positivity average is nothing to write home about, and that’s on top of a slight uptick in hospitalizations this month after leveling off in Aug. and Sept.

Over the weekend and into today, Southern Illinois has triggered our failsafe metric of a sustained average positivity rate above 8%. So starting Thursday, Region 5 will move to increased mitigations, including the temporary closure of indoor dining and indoor bar service. While we take action to save lives, we're working to save livelihoods as well. @IllinoisDCEO has distributed $24.6 million to Region 5 businesses and communities, and they'll receive priority consideration in the currently open round of BIG Grants, worth a total of $220 million.

To date, Illinois has had relative success in keeping this virus at bay, and we’re still doing better than many of our neighbors, but the latest data indicates a concerning direction. All 11 regions have seen an increase in positivity compared to where we were at last week’s update.

Statewide, our positivity rate has grown by more than one full percentage point in the last week alone, and in most regions, COVID-like hospital admissions have also increased.

Family gatherings, celebratory vacations and travel have all taken on a new meaning — and a new sense of concern — in a way we never expected a year ago.

But just as was true for Easter and Eid and the Fourth of July, this virus doesn’t make exceptions for traditions. Yesterday, the @CDCgov director reiterated a concern that epidemiologists have been expressing for a few weeks now: Small family gatherings are one of the most prevalent ways the virus is being transmitted. cnn.com/2020/10/14/hea…

I want to wish everyone a Happy Hispanic Heritage Month! While we're celebrating virtually this year, this an opportunity for our Latinx residents to celebrate traditions and for all of us to understand the work that lies ahead to build a state that truly serves all its people. The same obstacle that forces us to join together virtually – COVID-19 – has also underscored how far we have to go in that work, as Latino communities, as well as Black and Indigenous communities, have disproportionately shouldered the economic & health burdens of this pandemic.

Illinois now has the lowest infection rates among all our neighboring states and one of the lowest positivity rates in the country — but this virus hasn't gone away.

Here's our plan to preserve the progress we've made: www2.illinois.gov/Pages/news-ite… Unlike in late February, we now have significantly greater ability to test, trace & limit the spread of #covid19:

➡️ More than 33,000 tests per day, a record weekly average

➡️ Triple the number of contact tracers

➡️ 3% average positivity rate, down from a peak above 23%

I'm testifying before the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security on our national response to the worsening coronavirus pandemic. Tune in now: When it became clear that #COVID19 was not a phenomenon limited to Asia or Europe, we fully expected the federal government – home of the @CDCgov and @HHSGov – would arm the states with information, equipment, testing capability and personnel.

Tomorrow, Illinois moves into Phase 4.

Moving to Phase 4 this early was never a given.

It’s because of the people of Illinois that we’re seeing a trajectory of relative success where other parts of the country are not. But I want to be clear: the virus hasn’t gone away, and I’m not afraid to protect the people of Illinois by moving a region back to an earlier phase if we see a surge.

Ours will not be one of the states that takes no action in response to a return to a peak.

It's official: Each of our four Restore Illinois health regions has hit our @IDPH health benchmarks for advancing into the next phase. Because of your commitment to being #AllInIllinois, Phase 3 will begin tomorrow, May 29. ✔️ 1. At or under a 20 percent positivity rate and increasing no more than 10 percentage points over a 14-day period

I feel compelled to use this platform to address what happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis – and to Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, and Christian Cooper in New York City, and countless others whose memories we cannot allow time to erase. Events that echo what we have seen happen to too many people, too many times, in too many places – and yet we, as a people, have not yet found the humanity to stop these vile, horrid acts from happening, to truly contend with the racism that permeates our society and root it out.

I have good news to share: The experts have indicated we can build on our plan to bring back more activities faster, as long as Illinoisans continue to do as we have, adhering to precautions & safety measures to keep each other safe. The epidemiologists now believe that summer offers us an opportunity.

After working with restaurant industry representatives, I'm pleased to announce that restaurants can open for outdoor seating when Phase 3 begins, likely for everyone just 9 days from now.

We have to figure out how to live with #COVID19 until it can be vanquished – and to do so in a way that best supports our residents’ health and our healthcare systems and saves the most lives.

With that in mind, I'm introducing our framework for moving forward: Restore Illinois. Restore Illinois is a public health plan to safely reintroduce the parts of our lives that have been put on hold.

Science and data are our overarching guardrails, and we also listened to organizations, school leaders, businesses & elected officials from across the state.