CHICAGO, Ill. – As the administration of President Joe Biden is criticized nationally for not giving enough attention to over-the-counter or at-home COVID-19 test production, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is giving continued attention to both vaccines, and testing.
“To get more shots in arms, we are coordinating with local health departments, expanding capacity, by assisting them with surge staffing to help them administer the vaccinations,” Pritzker said during a news conference Monday in Chicago.
As for testing…
“We’re also increasing our community-based testing by 50 percent, from four days a week, to six days a week,” said Pritzker. “Tests are free, and available to anyone.”
That includes the Peoria Civic Center testing site, now available from 10:00 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
Pritzker says more help will be given to local health departments in the coming days regarding to testing capacity. That’s in addition to helping hospitals with staffing, equipment, and antibody treatments.
Illinois Department of Public Health Director, Doctor Ngozi Ezike says she still doesn’t understand why people won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine and booster shots.
“If you can significantly, drastically, reduce your chance of being hospitalized, or dying, why wouldn’t you avail yourself of that opportunity?” Ezike said.
Ezike says yes, she knows the COVID-19 vaccines aren’t perfect, but no vaccine is.
She says every event during the holiday season will have what she calls an “uninvited guest” — either the Delta or Omicron variants — but how you address those visitors will be key.
In short, one official says hosptial workers are tired. And, possibly feeling defeated. And, in some cases, perhaps even depressed.
Colleen Kannady is president of Carle BroMenn Medical Center in Bloomington-Normal, and says nowhere was that more evident then when she recently talked with an Intensive Care Unit doctor and asked how he was doing.
“He looked at me, very down and distraught, and very defeated, and he said simply to me, ‘I am so tired with people needlessly dying. It doesn’t have to be this way, and it’s tearing apart families.”
As we reported recently, Carle and UnityPoint Health Central Illinois are looking at joining forces in the region.
Kannady says she is concerned that the message of getting vaccinated is becoming, in her words, “white noise”, even as most COVID patients are unvaccinated.
The state’s current surge in new cases, officials say, is as high now as it’s been at any point in the pandemic.
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