UPDATED: Pritzker Defiantly Rejects Comparisons of LaSalle Deaths to Quincy Legionnaires Outbreak
Governor JB Pritzker Friday rejected comparisons in the response to an outbreak of COVID-19 that has killed 33 residents at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home to a Legionnaires outbreak at the Quincy Veterans’ Home in 2015. Pritzker heavily criticized the Rauner administration for its response to the Quincy outbreak.
UPDATED (MONDAY 9:00 PM):
NOTE: We goofed on Friday and posted an old story in this place.
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Governor JB Pritzker Friday argued no comparisons should be made between a 2015 Legionnaires outbreak at the Quincy Veterans’ Home that killed 15 veterans and the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home that killed a 33rd resident this week.
Pritzker skewered the Rauner administration over its handling of the outbreak and used it as a key message in his victory over Rauner in the 2018 gubernatorial election. But Pritzker says twice as many COVID-19 deaths in around six weeks doesn’t compare to the Rauner incident.
“We acted much more intensely and much more intently than the Rauner administration ever did, Pritzker said at his daily news conference Friday in Chicago. “They tried to cover it up. That is what is so disturbing about what happened at Quincy those several years ago. We’re doing everything we can to make it transparent. We’ve done inspections. We’ve uncovered things that need to be changed and we’ve made those changes.”
He argued the Legionnaires outbreak was far more avoidable.
“Legionnaire’s disease is extraordinarily preventable. It is in the water supply. We know where it comes from. We know that you can either deal with it within the water supply or make sure that on the other end, we’re not causing mist and other things in hot showers or in the delivery of hot water to people that they inhale it. You can prevent all that. It’s known,” Pritzker said. “This is a novel coronavirus today. This is not Legionnaires. In that novel coronavirus means, that no matter what we do, even if we put all the mitigations in the world in, sometimes because of the prevalence of the disease, because we don’t exactly know everything about it, it’s not preventable for everybody. I wanna make sure we do everything we can and learn from the experience and not hide anything and be as transparent as possible so that we can get better.”
Asked if he bore any moral responsibility for the outbreak, Pritzker sidestepped.
“Look, I bear the responsibility of leadership of the state and that means that everything that happens across state government, to some degree or another, lands on my shoulders,” he said. “The veterans’ homes are extraordinarily important. The people who live there are very important to all of us. We want to keep them healthy and safe.”
“Most importantly, the question is, at the time that people become aware on site of what’s happening, what are their reactions? How do they care for people there and make sure that they’re safe? And then, what do we learn from that to carry on elsewhere to make sure that we’re keeping all of our veterans safe?”
For the first time Friday, Pritzker acknowledged he dismissed the administrator of the home because of the response to the outbreak.
“It’s an accumulation of things during this entire matter, he said.” Suffice to say there are things that are just unacceptable, like hand sanitizer not being the right type in the right place, that’s just one example.”
An initial site visit revealed hand sanitizer dispensers in many patient rooms in the facility contained a product that was not effective in killing the virus that causes COVID-19 and that some staff members were using unapproved masks and personal protective equipment.
Pritzker says he doesn’t know who ordered the insufficient products.
“I don’t know how that could have happened,” he said. “I want to know everything and I think that the public should know how that could end up happening.”
Pritzker says it’s easy to look back and find mistakes that may have been made in handling the outbreak in LaSalle.
“Is there more that could have been done? I don’t doubt that there’s more that could have been done,” he said. “It is easy in retrospect to say that about, really, almost any situation. But I will also say that our intent here from the get-go, has been to take care of these veterans and make sure, not only do we learn what mistakes may have been made, but to rectify them.”
