Top health official: More money, manpower needed to slow spread
The state’s top health official said Tuesday that her department and local health departments across Illinois have already spent more than $20 million in an effort to stem exposure to the coronavirus, though more money and manpower are still needed.
Speaking to the Illinois Senate Public Health Committee, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said the agency needs more people and money to help with managing the virus.
“Right now, we have many of us working seven days a week, you know, more than 12 hours a day towards these efforts,” Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, told the Illinois Senate’s Public Health Committee.
Ezike said IDPH and local health departments have spent over $20 million in stemming the outbreak of coronavirus in the state and may need more money to help with personnel, equipment and housing costs.
As of Tuesday, four people in Illinois have tested positive for the virus. Another 22 have been tested and are awaiting results, Ezike said.
Ezike, who will testify in front of the United States Congress on Wednesday, said the state has about 2,200 coronavirus test kits and is waiting for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to send more.
However, this year’s state budget included a $200 million surplus, which could be used by the state in an emergency. The state also has about $6.39 million in a Public Health Special State Projects fund, with room to ask for extra federal appropriations authority.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Monday stressed that the economic impact of the coronavirus is not yet clear.
“Broadly, I will say that there are expenditures that are being made by the state in order for us to be fully prepared. And I have worked closely with our federal representatives,” Pritzker said at a Chicago news conference about the coronavirus.
The governor said he spoke with Sen. Dick Durbin, as well as Vice President Mike Pence in a conference call with other governors about the potential for a reimbursement and broader appropriation bill to help states cover expenses.
Meanwhile, a patient suspected of having coronavirus who was admitted to The University of Chicago Medical Center on Monday tested negative for the disease, the hospital announced Tuesday night. Last weekend, an Arlington Heights couple became the third and fourth people in Illinois to be confirmed as having the virus.
Four employees of ABC7 were kept away from work Tuesday out of concern that they may have been exposed to the coronavirus, according to media reporter Robert Feder.
On Monday, a reporter and photographer interviewed a food service worker at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, where a coronavirus patient is being treated, Feder reported. The photographer later shook hands with another photographer at the station. The spouse of the initial photographer is also employed at the television station.
All four did not come to work Tuesday, pending coronavirus testing on the food service worker.
As concern grows, Chicago Public Schools is readying a plan to protect students from any potential outbreak.
CPS spokeswoman Emily Bolton said the district is developing guidance for schools and implementing a strategy to prepare for various scenarios, though she offered little detail as the planning continues.
An outbreak of the virus in Italy is also impacting several Illinois universities’ studyabroad programs.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Loyola University, Northwestern University and Illinois State University have asked nearly 400 students studying abroad in Italy — where the virus has spread rapidly — to immediately return to the United States.
The virus has infected more than 90,000 people worldwide and killed more than 3,100. More than 100 cases have been reported in the United States, leading to nine deaths, all of which were in Washington state.