Saying there is “no time to waste,” Gov. JB Pritzker commended some East Central Illinois leaders for their response to COVID-19 and chided others for allowing the virus to “infect their constituents because they’re afraid of the few, loud anti-maskers.”
“When this is over, there will be an accounting by your constituents of who worked to keep it right,” he said during Thursday’s COVID-19 briefing. “The rest of us will still do our jobs. The state will do all they can to help hospitals serve their capacity and find additional staff. Health care workers will take up their posts on the front lines as they have every, single day.”
Pritzker urged Illinoisans to call their “county board chair or local mayor” and “ask them what they’re doing to keep you and your loved ones safe.”
Among those officials the governor mentioned (though not by name) were those in Champaign-Urbana, Carbondale and leaders in Sangamon County.
The governor’s remarks come on the day the state saw 12,702 COVID-19 cases confirmed in the past 24 hours and an additional 43 deaths. Of the more than 5,000 people (5,258) who have been hospitalized with the virus overnight, 956 of those people were in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and 438 are on ventilators.
“Please know that 5,258 — we never saw that number in wave one (of the virus),” Illinois Department of Public Health Administrator Dr. Nogzi Ezike said. “I am telling you that that number is only going to increase based on the number of cases that we’ve identified for last several weeks.”