State are on track to move to phase three of the reopening plan before the end of may. He also announced illinois has become the number one state in the nation for coronavirus testing per capita. This is just over one hour. Welcome to our tuesday, may 19, daily update. We are going to started off with the medical update from dr. Ngozi ezike. Dr. Ezike thank you, governor. Good afternoon, everyone. I will get right to the medical update. Since yesterday, we are reporting 1500 45 additional individuals with covid19. We now have 98,030 total cases in the state of illinois. This does include 146 additional people with covid19 who have been reported to have died in the last 24 hours. A total of 4379 fatalities. Of those, 993 were the icu and 576 were on ventilators. There is evidence that the stayathome plans are working. I know people are asking, but why are there so many cases and why are people continuing to die . But we know that the number of cases is a big function of how many tests we are doing and we know that the deaths would have been significantly increased if we had not implemented the stayathome order. We could have been seeing tens of thousands of deaths. We mustved to reopen, do it safely and deliberately. The decision to change our daily lives was not made lightly. Very thankful to Governor Pritzker for firmly deciding to protect all illinois ends by enacting illinoians by enacting the stayathome order back in march. If he did not to our commit to our safety so early in, illinois would not be so ready to advance to the next phases of our restore Illinois Plan. Hear me clearly. The virus is still out there. So stay at home whenever you can and keeping her distance from other people is still the way to stop and minimize the spread. Picture, if you will, dominoes lined up. You knock over the first dominoes and the others are closely behind it. The rest will fall in succession. If you take some of those dominoes out of the line or you spacee them further apart and then knock over the first dono, the rest of the line does not fall. Tore is not another domino contact. Is too far domino away to been october, think of that as social distance and. Theust continue to follow data, which will inform how we move forward and get to our new normal. We cannot undo all that we have done. We are going forward. We want to get into phase three and then beyond. We will be all in for alan ip. We will continue to stay home, where our masks, wash our hands, and clean frequently touched surfaces. Lets do this together. , i will translate comments into spanish. [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] and with that, i will turn it back over to Governor Pritzker. Gov. Pritzker thank y very much, doctor. I want to begin my portion of todays briefing with some frankly very exciting news. Havethe last few weeks, we seen illinois make significant measurable progress. I have been reporting on it to you. In growing our daily testing numbers. Today, we reached another major milestone. Among the most populous states in the United States, illinois has now overtaken new york to become the number one state in the nation for testing per capita over the past seven days. Dore was much more work to to advance testing to make it even more widely available. Do to advance testing to make it even more widely available. Of course, idph and its officials were working day and night to process the tests that are given to them. The Raw Materials procurement teams, our instate research our partnerartners, clinics or administering swabs and tests, commercial laboratories, the Illinois National guard, and the Countless Health care workers doing the patient care right on the ground. I will take this moment to remind everyone who can get a free test at any of our testing locations. Has symptoms, cough, a fever,of breath for example. Anyone who has a risk factor such as contact with someone confirmed to have covid19 or a compromised immune system or a serious medical condition. Anyone who works in asuch as coe confirmed to have health care facility, anyone who works inorrectional facilities such as jails or prisons, anyone who works as a Government Employee at any level of government, anyone who serves as a First Responder such as a paramedic, emergency medical technician, Law Enforcement officer or firefighter, anyone who supports Critical Infrastructure such as workers and Grocery Stores or pharmacies or restaurants or gas stations or public utilities, factories, childcare, and sanitation. As testing expands, so will the criteria allowing more peoplpleo get access. A full list of our more than 250 public testing sites is available on our website at coronavirus. Illinois. Gov. Want to update you by letting you know that all four regions of illinois remain on track to meet the metrics to move into phase 3 of restore illinois. That is terrific news. Phase 2 of the plan began 18 days ago on may 1, with the reopening of state parks, golf and other Outdoor Recreation facilities, the opening of garden centers, pick up Shopping Options at retail stores, the beginning of schools allowing students back in to retrieve personal belongings, and some additional sectors of manufacturing returning to work. Of course, it has been in phase 2 that nonemergency surgeries restarted, which included everything from biopsies to chronic pain procedures to orthopedic surgeries. These three openings happen for all of illinois over two weeks ago and they are only now coming to some other state, like new york, new jersey, and california , where Curbside Pickup at retailers only became available in just the last few days, or golf in massachusetts which opened about a week after illinois. I know that monitoring the various measurements, rules, and regulations across the United States is hard to do, especially if you live in a border city and you see a lower level of precaution just down the road. Believe me, i wish there wasnt such a patchwork of different airmens requirements from state to state. There should have been a national plan. In fact, there was real potential for one. In mid april, the president unveiled the white house guidance for reopening with plicit Public Health factorsrs weighed in the mix. Under the president s own plan, illinois would not reach the next phase until aftfter our current Illinois Plan has begun phase 3, but President Trump decided to inject politics in where science and data should leaving the states to create the patchwork that exists today. Some states have chosen not to listen to the advice of medical experts. There are even politicians in illinois who ignore science and instead are playing to a small minority who protest at our state capital. Most of the states with the largest economies have chosen to listen to the science and analyze the data and act according to what will restart jobs and businesses safely. I can say with confidence that here in illinois we have committed to operate with a focus on Public Health and transparent, measurable benchmarks to move to each new phase. For those interested in seeing the data and the metrics, they are updated each afternoon and posted online at dph. Il linois. Gov restore. Joininus today are two experts in infectious disease. Dr. Richard novak from the university of Illinois Health system and dr. Emily landon the executive medical director for Infection Prevention and control at university of chicago medicine, who first joined us in march and inspired so many illinoians to help keep each other safe. These two doctors have graciously offered their time to update you on the battle on covid19, which is still ver much alive in the halls of our hospitals and among the population at large. Before i turn the microphone over, i want to say that i know that there are some of our fellow illinoians who feel that their lives didnt change much between phase 1 and phase 2 and we are all itching to move ahead. So why cant we just do it now . There is no doubt this is hard. But Public Health means each of us is working to protect all of us. It is about our collective impact on each other. Areuse many illinoians engaged with three openings that have occurred, it is critical that we observe the full 28 day measurement period before moving forward to phase three. The good news is that we are from that point and we are all on ack and moving forward before the end of may. , businesses, and employees gear up for phase three, we will be providing specific safety and mitigation guidelines for workplaces and activities that are reopening. These guidelines have been in development with Business Owners , employee representatives, and industry associations, including many women and minorityowned operations and a look forward to sharing more information about that in the coming days. Until l then, im delighted to hand this conversation over to from university of chicago medicine. Thank you, Governor Pritzker, for inviting you to join me today inviting me to join you today. First of all, i want to thank all of you illinoisans for being sensible, cautious, and selfless in the way you have approached this pandemic. Some of you have been sick. Some of you have lost loved ones. And many of you have lost jobs. But i know a lot of you will also look back on this and wonder why we had to stay at home since nothing awful happened . But like i said in march, this exactly is the mark of success. It is what i flat curve looks like. It is not perfect. Still every person with covid passes it along to someone else who has will get covid. That means our case counts and hospital load stays stable and somewhat predictable. We would love even less transmission, but this virus is tricky. Flat hasing things required huge sacrifices. Now, we all realize there will be no swift rescue, no knight in shining armor in the form of a vaccine or antiviral that will sweep in and return our lives to normal before the summer comes. Im pretty disappointed about not looking forward to sitting by a pool are going to block parties and taking a vacation. Reviveneed to begin to some of our workplaces and it is not without risk that we do this. Our transmission balance is tenuous. It could set off another wave of infections that threaten our lives d livelihoods. We need masks, hand hygiene, and we need distance to make this work. And we do need to be alln in order to be successful. These cloth masks like the one i have here are our lifeline. Can have covid for days before they get sick or they may never get symptoms at all, which means anyone can be contagious with covid at any time and these cloth masks dont just help protect you from other people who may be sick, which it turns out some new evidence they may be better than we thought they were, which is great news but they also help to keep your own respiratory droplets inside the mask, so that you cannot get boxes,to Grocery Store but they are not perfect. You cannot wear them when you are eating and drinking and that means we have to pair them with keeping our distance and staying home when we can and keeping our hands clean in order to maintain the tenuous transmission balance that we have. So please, never leave the house without your Face Covering. And always put it on when you go inside another building or if you are near other people outside. Soon it will be as natural as wearing pants, which most of us are pretty good about. I still see a lot of people though that dont have Face Coverings on outside and it makes me wonder if we are going to be as successful in this next phase as we have been in march and april. I think we can do it. This is a fight against a virus, not an ideology. I know many of you understand that. Almost all of you. And you will take my message to your and you will leave families, communities, neighborhood in wearing a mask, staying home when you dont need to be out in order to make space for essential workers to be able to get to their essential jobs and for other people to do important tasks. When you do go out, you will wear your mask p proudly because it says to oths that you are not giving up and you are in this fight to win. Gov. Pritzker thank you very much. Terrific. Just a message i know people will take to heart. Very much appreciate your time and willingness to share. Introduceld like to dr. Richard novak from the university of Illinois Health system. Thank you very much, governor. Im very pleased to participate in this conference today. Illinois is meeting its goals of expanding the availability of covid19 tests. A percentage of positive tests is declining as he pointed out earlier. In the hospital setting, this is reflected by slow or measurable decline in hospitalizations. Flattening the curve has care systeme health from being overwhelmed. This is all a result of the careful measures that we have been taking. Shipments receiving of the drug remdesivir which has been proven to reduce the severity of the illness, particularly if it is given before the severity of the illness gets worse. We are not done with this, however. We have launched the next phase the secondning with drug with hopes of improving the outcome. We are making slowow, but steady progress in controlling the pandemic in illinois. This has been through careful examination of and response to the data. Ofnow people are tired Wearing Masks and social distancing also. We still havedo to do this . Masks are effectiveve at capturg the droplets. , we call this source control. And yourhe source droplets have been captured in your mask. South korea was able to rapidly control their epidemic a universal masking, social distancing, and largescale testing, just as we are doing here. Up in thegins to open coming weeks and we will need to continue practicing social distancing and Wearing Masks. With theanalogy dominoes. We do these things because it protects people around us. I wear a mask so i wont spread the virus to you, you then wont spread it to your family and friends. In turn, i hope you will do the same for me, and eventually this pandemic will fade to the point where we wont need to do it anymore. Search for new treatments and Prevention Strategies is proving unprecedented. Vaccine trials will be starting this summer here in illinois and elsewhere. Everyone to volunteer anparticipate in these important studies. The whole world is waiting for the results of these trials. Donning my mask and turning it back over to you come governor. Go cubbies. Gov. Pritzker go cubbies, there you go. Terrific. Thank you very much, dr. Novak. Now, i would be happy to take any questions from members of the media and perhaps the doctors might be willing to take questions, as well. We are going to start with online questions and then we will move to pool reporters and we will try to keep it tight and even between all three of us. We will start with npr. Ezike please elaborate that phase three will allow limited summer Care Childcare and summer programs . As the guidance been made available yet . Dr. Ezike yes, so we will have more information to come before the end of the week, but we know there are childcare establishments that are already open now. We will continue to make that available as more and more people will be returning to work. Obviously, that neither is pressing and more pressing as people are getting ready to return to work, so we will lay out that guidance in a few days and we will have more childcare opportunities to address the needs of the community as they start returning to work. Capital news illinois. Hospitalization numbers all appear to be the lowest since you started reporting daily data by a considerable amount. Should we take anything from this or are we still expecting volatility in the metrics . I think i would like to calln any one of the three doctors to answer that question, but perhaps we will start with dr. Ezike. Andezike it is great news im glad you noticed that. Under 4000 for the number of people hospitalized. Obviously, it is a continuum. People get infected, then they get sick, then if they get hospitalized, than the icus and maybe pass on. It is a good sign that there are fewer people in the hospital, but we have to remember that things are going to start changing, so we will continue to follow these numbers and it is why we need a hard reset and cant just jump from phase 2 to phase 4, because with each phase we have made changes in loosening things up, so we want to make sure that these new things that are coming on board are not resulting in another new acute spike or increase, so that is why we will continue to watch closely. Over the next phase, we will make sure that these measures that have loosened dont have a spike that will make us want to tap the brakes a little bit. We will be watching that closely, but yes this is good news. This just solidifies the mattress have been working, both the stayathome, the masking, the social distancing all of those things are effective and that is why we have numbers that are improving. Mind,ndon if you dont dr, ezike has that everything important, but i would just add that the volatility is up to us. The way we take in and adapt to the changes that we have to make in order to accommodate this virus in our daily lives. So i hope and i know illinois can n do it. Governor, lawmakers will return to springfield this week and vote on a budget based on the new estimates that are now about month old. Are there updated revenue estimates available from your office and are you asking lawmakers for a lump sum budget to gov. Pritzker the answer to the latter question is no. The answer to the former question is there have not been revenue adjustments, but there is additional spending required somedicaid that we believe of the federal funding that will come will alleviate a little bit of that. We are including it in the budget because we do not know. That additional spending will have to be in the budget, therefore we will have to make room for it because we have to