State tops 3 million vaccines given
Governor says plans for gradual reopening underway
SPRINGFIELD – More than 3 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered statewide as of Friday, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a new $10 million public awareness campaign aimed at encouraging residents to get vaccinated.
The announcement comes as Illinois set another single-day record for vaccines administered Friday with more than 132,000 doses administered statewide.
While the governor expressed optimism amid the improving vaccination picture and declining rate of transmission in the state, he said misinformation and hesitancy to receive the vaccine pose potential problems as availability continues to increase.
“Even if we had enough doses today for everyone, we know that many people would still choose not to get vaccinated,” Pritzker said in a Friday news conference. “While it’s everyone’s choice whether to get vaccinated, we need to be certain that those who are uncertain have all the facts because these vaccines save lives.”
Pritzker said the new multiplatform public awareness campaign will take a “proactive” approach aimed at fighting misinformation and vaccine hesitancy.
The campaign’s messages will feature public health experts such as Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike, medical professionals, and those whose lives have been personally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This campaign builds on Illinois’ existing messaging, which
has used data to inform how to get outcomes that emphasize equity,” Pritzker said.
Pritzker also addressed ongoing issues in achieving racial equity in vaccination efforts. According to data from the IDPH, more than 68% of the state’s 3.1 million vaccinated residents are white, compared to 8.6% Latino and 7.9% Black.
Pritzker said beginning next week, the state will begin to direct more vaccines to community providers in rural and minority neighborhoods in order to achieve greater equity. “We have already made enormous progress,” Pritzker said. “Among our most important goals is to get the vaccines to Black and brown people and to more remote areas of the state.”
Public health officials on Friday announced 1,442 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 out of 103,336 test results, bringing the state’s sevenday rolling positivity rate down to a record-low 2.2%. As the positivity rate continues to decrease and availability of vaccines increases, Pritzker for the first time addressed the possibility of expanded reopening in the coming weeks as vaccines continue to be administered.
“We want to make sure that businesses have the opportunity to begin gradually opening, so we’re making changes and adjustments along the way here,” Pritzker said. “We’ll be announcing some of those coming up over the next few weeks.”
In a Senate committee hearing Thursday, state Comptroller Susana Mendoza expressed optimism that large-scale outdoor events such as the Illinois State Fair could resume with safety measures in place as soon as this summer, with indoor events like conventions to follow as early as the fall.
Under Phase 4 of the state’s
Restore Illinois guidelines, events of 50 people or more are not currently allowed. Phase 5, which allows for some large-scale gatherings with safety guidelines in place, is triggered pending “widespread availability” of COVID-19 treatments and vaccines.
Pritzker said he could not project when large-scale events could be held again, but said the decision to move into the next phase of reopening will be made after taking into consideration vaccination numbers, local transmission numbers and guidance from public health experts.
“This virus doesn’t seem to have a schedule, and we know that when we’ve seen the numbers come down before, there may be something that causes them to go back up again,” Pritzker said.
Pritzker said continued commitment to following public health guidelines would be key to moving forward on a gradual reopening effort and decreasing community spread of the virus.
“I’m very pleased with what we’re doing to keep people healthy and safe in the state,” Pritzker said. “We’re going to try to make sure that we’re moving the economy forward as we’re bringing down the COVID caseload.”
SPRINGFIELD – A new report by the credit rating agency Moody’s says Illinois will set a new record this year when it reports a total net pension liability of more than $300 billion, the highest of any state in the nation.
As of June 30, 2020, the report stated, the total unfunded liabilities of the state’s five pension systems stood at $317 billion, a 19% increase from the prior year. That was largely due to historically low interest rates, which have depressed pension fund earnings throughout the country.
With the state’s gross domestic product, or GDP, estimated to have fallen 2.5% in calendar year 2020, that pension liability amounts to roughly 37% of the state’s total economic output, up from a range of 28-32% over the previous four years.
When combined with other long-term liabilities, including retiree health care and bonded indebtedness, Moody’s estimates the state’s total liability ratio will amount to 48% of GDP for the fiscal year 2021 reporting cycle.
The report says that 80% of the increase is attributable to falling interest rates, but weakerthan-expected investment performance also played a role. The Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System, the largest of the five pension systems, reported investment returns of just 0.52% during the reporting period, far below its target of 7%.
“Illinois is an outlier among states both for fiscal challenges from pension expenses and for its limited capacity to modify the benefit packages that drive these expenses,” the report states. “The state allocates about 30% of its budget to retirement benefits and debt service, a ‘fixed-cost’ ratio more than three times the median for states, and its constitution gives public workers some of the most ironclad retirement benefit protections available.”
The report goes on to say that the amount that the state contributes to its pension funds is actually far less than what is needed to prevent continuing growth in their unfunded liabilities. Under current law, the contribution amounts are set each year at a rate aimed at achieving a 90% funded ratio by 2045.
The report also notes that Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 lacks any broad plan to address the state’s pension debt. But it also gave him credit for not suggesting the state scale back on pension payments over the short term to alleviate fiscal pressure brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a separate report to the state’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, or COGFA, the consulting firm Moody’s Analytics, a subsidiary of Moody’s Corp., said the state’s fiscal condition could hamper its ability to recover smoothly from the recession.
“Weak public finances mean Illinois will have to make extraordinary fiscal adjustments that leave it playing catch-up in the next business cycle,” the report stated. “Population loss and troubled state finances will limit Illinois’ long-term potential.”
The report says the state’s economy is expected to start recovering in earnest around mid-year and the unemployment rate should be under 6% by the end of the year, which would be in line with the national average but higher than other Midwest states.
How quickly the economy recovers will largely depend on how quickly the COVID-19 vaccines are delivered and how quickly the U.S. population as a whole achieves “herd immunity,” which is currently projected to happen by the fall.
“The economy should quickly kick into an extended period of strong growth as people shed their fear of getting sick and get back to doing what they did before the pandemic,” the report stated.