Pritzker issues stay-at-home order on COVID-19

Takes effect at 5 p.m. Saturday, as state reports fifth death and 585 coronavirus cases

Gov. Pritzker conducts his daily coronavirus briefing Friday along with Brad Cole of the Illinois Municipal League, Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and Dr. Emily Landon. (Illinois Information Service)

By Ted Cox

The governor imposed a statewide stay-at-home order effective at 5 p.m. Saturday in a bid to slow the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker made the announcement at his daily COVID-19 briefing, held Friday at the Thompson Center in Chicago. Joined by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, they maintained that the order, set to last through April 7, would make little difference to those who have already been staying home this week across the state as the virus spreads.

Yet they also said it was critical to take additional measures as the state reported its fifth death from COVID-19 Friday — a woman in her 70s in Cook County — and as new cases set another in a series of one-day highs with 163 confirmed, to bring the Illinois total to 585 in 25 counties, almost a quarter of the 102 statewide.

“You’ll still be able to leave your house to go the grocery store to get food,” Pritzker said. “You’ll still be able to visit a pharmacy, go to a medical office or hospital, or to gas up your car at a gas station. You’ll still be able to go running or hiking or walk your dog. Many, many people will still go to work. For the vast majority of you already taking precautions, your lives will not change very much.

“There is absolutely no need to rush out to a grocery store or gas station,” he added.

The governor listed farm workers, the media, veterinarians, plumbers, and especially delivery workers as some of the critical laborers who will continue their jobs, while laundromats, banks, bridges, and mass transit stay open and restaurants are allowed to conduct deliveries and pickups. “The fundamental building blocks that keep our society safe and steady will not be closing down,” Pritzker said.

“We are doing all that we can to maintain as much normalcy as possible while taking the steps that we must to protect you,” he added, but “all nonessential businesses must stop operating.”

Pritzker said there was no set answer for when schools would reopen, but he pushed back the target date to April 8 after the stay-at-home order is set to expire.

“The coronavirus will not go away by happenstance,” Lightfoot said. “We must be intentional about taking the steps to flatten the curve,” meaning to slow the inevitable spread so that hospitals aren’t overwhelmed by those needing treatment. “We can only save lives and blunt the spread of this virus by keeping as many people as practical at home and safe.

“Now is not the time for half-measures,” she added, urging city residents to “take all necessary precautions.

“It’s clear that the time is now for us to be very definitive in telling people that you must stay home,” Lightfoot said, but she emphasized, “This is not a lockdown or martial law,” and she echoed the governor in saying, “There is absolutely no need to change your normal purchasing patterns. … Do not take this direction as a reason to run to the stores, buy everything in sight, and hoard bottles and supplies. Please, the grocery stores will remain open and stocked. So be mindful of your neighbors and do not hoard supplies.”

The governor called in Dr. Emily Landon of the University of Chicago Medicine, an expert on infectious diseases, to lay out the case for a stronger response to the outbreak, and she firmly endorsed the order.

“This is the only way forward,” Landon said. “This virus is unforgiving. It spreads before you even know you’ve caught it. And it tricks you into believing that it’s nothing more than a little influenza.

“But the real problem is not the 80 percent who will get over this in a week,” she added. “It’s the 20 percent of patients, the older, those who are compromised, those who have other medical problems, who are going to need a bit more support, such as oxygen, or maybe a ventilator, life support.”

Landon drew parallels with the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak of a century ago, when St. Louis successfully limited cases by imposing such an order, while Philadelphia held a large World War I rally and parade and soon saw its hospitals overrun with patients.

“Our health-care system doesn’t have any slack,” she said. “All we have to slow the spread is distance, social distance.

“Our health-care system doesn’t have any slack. … All we have to slow the spread is distance, social distance.”

Dr. Emily Landon (Illinois Information Service)

“How can soccer of book club be so dangerous? Why ask so much of people for just a few hundred cases? Because it’s the only way to save those lives, and now is the time. Because the numbers we see today in the news are the people who got sick a week ago. And there are still people who got sick today who haven’t even noticed that they’re sick yet.

“Even starting now we can’t stop the cases from coming fast and furious, at least for the next couple of weeks in the short term, but with a real commitment to sheltering in place and a whole lot of patience we can help protect our critical workers.”

Without the additional measures, she warned, “The healthy and optimistic among us will doom the vulnerable.”

Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said that, beyond the stay-at-home order, additional medical steps included moves to arrange drive-through testing for the virus, and remote “telehealth” interviews for those who think they might be infected.

Pritzker and Lightfoot both advised that they did not expect police to have to enforce the order against an unwilling public. “We anticipate that people will follow this order,” the governor said. “In the end here, what we’re really asking people to do is do what they ought to.”

Lightfoot said they were out to “educate people into compliance,” and that police officers are being advised to warn people congregating to simply get off the streets, “and for most people, that will be enough.”

“We don’t know yet all of the steps we are going to have to take to get this virus under control,” Pritzker said. “For the most part, I think, people will be able to go out and recreate,” including walking, hiking, running, and biking

But he added, “I’m not going to tell you that I know that April 7 is ultimately the end date.” He said public health officials would have to determine “if it’s having the desired effect of bending the curve.”

Pritzker pledged, however, "I want you all to have the truth. I’m giving you what I know honestly. I’m bringing the experts to you so you can hear directly from them what’s really going on. I’m acting in a way I think is responsive to the facts, to the science and the medicine that we have at hand.”