Pritzker says La Salle veterans home deaths were spurred by area residents ignoring state’s COVID-19 mitigations

Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker asserted Thursday that Illinois Valley residents’ defiance of the state’s COVID-19 mitigations played a factor in the 2020 coronavirus outbreak that resulted in 36 residents deaths at the Illinois Veterans Home in La Salle.

An Illinois Auditor General’s report released earlier in the day found that the Illinois Department of Public Health, which is under the jurisdiction of Pritzker’s office, “did not identify and respond to the seriousness,” of the outbreak at the La Salle veterans home.

In November 2020, the veterans home had 203 positive cases among staff and residents.

The outbreak brought scrutiny to the veterans home from General Assembly committees. The head of the state’s veterans administration Linda Chapa LaVia resigned amid the fallout, and the administrator of the La Salle facility also was removed from her post. There also are pending wrongful death lawsuits brought by some of the residents’ families.

At the time of the November 2020 outbreak, Pritzker said “our communities, our mayors, our councils, our county boards and county chairs” weren’t following or enforcing mitigations. He reiterated that notion on Thursday.

“In November 2020, in a number of communities in our state, we were fighting an uphill battle to stop the spread of COVID, we were at the dawn of the worst surge to date and, you may remember, this is before we had vaccines,” Pritzker said at an unrelated press conference Thursday in Springfield.

November 2020 was one of the worst months in La Salle County for both COVID-19 infections and deaths. There were 3,433 confirmed COVID-19 cases (second to January 2022 at the height of the Omicron variant) and 61 coronavirus-related deaths (second to December 2020).

Pritzker said his administration was working against Republican elected officials who told residents to defy mitigation acts. He did not cite any officials specifically. The governor also said his administration worked an average of 18 hours per day for nine consecutive months on COVID-19 response issues.

“Everyone agreed, COVID came into La Salle because it was spreading rampantly in the surrounding communities,” Pritzker said.

State Sen. Sue Rezin (R-Morris), whose district includes the La Salle veterans home, said by pointing the finger at residents who defied mitigations the governor was looking for an excuse to deflect the Auditor General’s report. Rezin said infection rates were comparable in Will and Adams counties, where other veterans homes had reported COVID-19 cases among residents and similar outbreaks didn’t occur at those facilities.

“The independent report combed through 1,800 documents, also visited the home, put a timeline into place for communication between departments, and showed the governor’s office was in daily contact with its chief of staff, who was updated daily,” Rezin said. “The governor’s office and department of health didn’t act on a defined outbreak. They knew it on Nov. 1, and didn’t act on any requests, until Nov. 12. By then, the outbreak was out of control, 11 veterans had already died.”

According to the auditor general’s report, the IDVA chief of staff inquired about a site visit and about rapid tests (Nov. 9), and inquired about getting antibody treatments (Nov. 11) for La Salle Veterans’ Home residents. From the documents reviewed, IDPH officials did not offer any advice or assistance as to how to slow the spread at the home, offer to provide additional rapid COVID-19 tests, and were unsure of the availability of the antibody treatments for long-term care settings before being requested by the IDVA chief of staff.

It wasn’t until Nov. 11, when the IDPH State Medical Officer noted she spoke to the IDPH chief and he told her the governor “was very concerned and wanted IDPH to visit the home” that an IDPH site visit was scheduled. The site visit was conducted the following day.

Pritzker said Thursday the IDPH was following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines by not making a site visit until it was safe to do so. He said a response could be provided by having an IDPH official talk to a healthcare official on-site via phone without further infecting residents or officials.

“I personally made sure that IDVA visited the site when they could be sure the potential benefits wouldn’t outweigh the serious risks of introducing the virus,” Pritzker said.

The governor said IDVA had its own health care officials and the report overlooked that IDPH was the central, responsible agency for the entire pandemic, which meant responding to independent nursing homes, schools, as well as veterans facilities. He also said his investigation focused on IDVA because that was the agency he wanted to examine if it had followed guidelines correctly. Pritzker said the veterans homes in Illinois were equipped with the latest science-based guidance.

“I’m the governor of the state of Illinois, so I understand these agencies are my responsibility. My appointments to lead those agencies, those are my responsibility,” said Pritzker, who noted all of the state’s coronavirus-related deaths weigh heavily on him, especially those at the veterans home. “The policies and procedures are done by the agencies themselves. The management of the individuals who work at a particular veterans home are handled at people at those homes, so we wanted to make sure there’s no way you can see across 50,000-plus in your government as governor, exactly what everybody’s doing. That’s why we focused this effort on finding out what happened at the agency. I appoint people to office, I also take them out of office when they’ve not done the job.

“At a time when all agencies were stressed, at a time when the disease itself was widespread and rampant, people in the area weren’t following the mitigations,” Pritzker said. “People were infected and bringing it into the home. And that was an enormous challenge. And then on top of that there were some management faults that occurred and as you know I did hold people accountable and I did fire people who were in those positions. And now we have an IDVA director who is doing a fabulous job.”