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Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb Issues ‘Stay At Home’ Order
Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb issued a “stay at home” order for the state Monday, following similar orders enacted in adjacent states Illinois and Ohio over the weekend.
Holcomb said Monday that the order still allows the state’s 6.8 million residents to seek essentials including groceries and medicine and makes exemptions for employees of crucial industries.
The state has reported seven deaths and 259 virus infections. The state’s most recent death from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, was an adult over the age of 60 in northeastern Indiana’s. Allen County’s health department announced his death Sunday, the Indiana State Department of Health said.
The governors of adjacent Illinois, Ohio and Michigan, as well other states, have ordered residents to remain in their homes, except for to perform essential tasks, to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
On Friday, he delayed Indiana’s May 5 primary election until June 2, but said he would need to see more signs that the virus was spreading statewide before taking action to order residents to stay home.
The governor has ordered all schools to remain closed until at least May 1, banned public gatherings of more than 50 people and closed restaurants for all but pickup and carryout business.
10:02 a.m. Lightfoot says city will be ‘repurposing’ empty hotel rooms as ‘quarantine spaces’
Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Monday morning the city of Chicago will be announcing the “repurposing” of empty hotel rooms as “isolation and quarantine spaces” for coronavirus patients.
Lightfoot also had a personal reflection: “I’m a black woman in America. I learned early on nobody was going to save me. I had to step up and make sure I took care of myself. And that is the approach that we’re taking in the city of Chicago.”
Lightfoot provided an update on city services in an interview with Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC.
Also in the morning, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on NBC’s “Today Show” repeated his call for the federal government to take charge of acquiring personal protection equipment such as masks and gowns. His comments about the feds need to step up on Sunday drew the ire of President Donald Trump.
“We’re competing for ventilators with FEMA and the federal government. So Illinois is bidding for ventilators against the federal government. In another case, we were bidding against foreign countries and other states. And so what’s happening to not just on ventilators, but on all the PPE that we need? Prices are being ratcheted up, and we’re competing against each other on what should be a national crisis, where we should be coming together and the federal government should be leading.”
Read the full story from the Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet.
9:41 a.m. Pastors pray outside Cook County jail for release of inmates to help protect them from the coronavirus
A group of religious leaders from across the city hope to add the power of prayer to an effort to have large numbers of inmates released from the Cook County Jail in the wake of the spreading coronavirus.
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“The most important thing is to understand that incarcerated people are just as much a part of our families as people who are on the outside,” said Jason Lydon, the pastor at Second Unitarian Church in Lake View, as he stood outside the jail complex Monday. “It is the responsibility of judges in this particular moment to get people free for the purpose of ensuring individual health, as well as community health.”
Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli was expected to appear before a judge at the George Leighton Criminal Courthouse later Monday to present an emergency petition seeking the mass release of inmates — particularly the most medically vulnerable among them.
Read the full story from reporter Stefano Esposito.
8:50 a.m. NewsGuard launches coronavirus misinformation tracker
Disinformation and misinformation about the fast-spreading coronavirus is pervading the nation and the globe as aggressively as the virus itself.
NewsGuard — “The Internet Trust Tool” — is a rating service that vets news websites for accuracy and transparency. Its leadership includes former Chicago Tribune editor James Warren.
The group has been tracking news and information sites in the U.S., the U.K., France, Italy, and Germany that have published materially false information about the virus. As of Monday morning, they listed 33 websites in the U.S. circulating inaccurate information about COVID-19.
Last week, NewsGuard traced a single story story that originated on an obscure Indian website — one that’s been debunked by PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, yet ended up being viewed and shared by tens of thousands of Americans because unreliable news sources regularly follow and republish each other.
“The takeaway is how easily misinformation can be amplified by even a small group of unreliable sites that share their claims on social media. Put differently, social media is a misinformation force multiplier,” NewsGuard’s Washington Correspondent Gabby Deutch argued in Wired.
Sunday: ‘Strained at every level.’ COVID-19 pressures already burdened Chicago hospitals
Roseland Community Hospital is re-purposing rooms, establishing an outside screening center and bulking up staff in preparation of the virus spreading.
The far South Side hospital, a so-called safety net hospital that serves predominantly low-income families on the city’s far South Side, is now bracing for a wave of patients to come through its doowas already operating at about 90% of capacity each day since nearby MetroSouth Medical Center closed last year.
Read more from reporter Manny Ramos.
Sunday: Illinois surpasses 1,000 coronavirus cases, including infant and 9 deaths
The tally of COVID-19 cases in Illinois surpassed 1,000 on Sunday, including an infant who recently tested positive for the virus.
Three more people have also died from the virus, and more deaths are expected, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said Sunday.
Ezike reported 296 new cases since Saturday’s briefing, bringing the statewide total to 1,049. Nine people have now died of the coronavirus in Illinois.
New cases
Sunday: Trump angrily tweets at Pritzker after gov criticizes feds’ COVID-19 supply shortages
President Donald Trump shot off a furious tweet to Gov. J.B. Pritzker after the Illinois leader told CNN Sunday he needs more federal help to procure masks and other protective equipment sorely needed as the coronavirus pandemic swells.
.@JBPritzker, Governor of Illinois, and a very small group of certain other Governors, together with Fake News @CNN & Concast (MSDNC), shouldn’t be blaming the Federal Government for their own shortcomings. We are there to back you up should you fail, and always will be!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2020
With governors of other big states shopping the world for supplies with open wallets, Pritzker told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” show, “We’re all competing against each other. This should have been a coordinated effort by the federal government.”
Pritzker and the governors of California and New York — Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo all Democrats, have been pleading for resources from the federal government as the number of coronavirus cases explodes.
Read more from columnist Lynn Sweet.
Sunday: In coronavirus fight, side with the scientists
COVID-19, or coronavirus, has brought most of America to a halt. Restaurants and bars are closed. Traffic is minimal and travel is out of the question. We wash our hands regularly as we sing two rounds of “Happy Birthday.” Plastic bottles of hand sanitizer are everywhere. Meanwhile senators and their staffs debate the right approach to buying time (eight weeks? six months?) to weather a virus that is marching around the world.
In the contest of experts on COVID-19, I’m putting all my chips on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s square. He is the respected head of infectious disease research at the National Institutes of Health, who started under President Ronald Reagan and has served with distinction under administrations of both political parties. He is our government’s lead on the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Dr. Fauci tells us things will get worse before they get better, and a strong response now can avoid a medical disaster later.
