President Donald Trump singled out Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker Sunday, saying the governor has not performed well in the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Pritzker criticized the president saying he knew about the pending crisis early on but didn’t act quickly enough.
Trump, Pritzker and other government leaders have been holding regular press briefings during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
One sticking point has been supplies of personal protection equipment such as masks, gloves and ventilators.
Trump said Sunday he’s preparing to send Illinois 600 ventilators.
“Amazingly, 600 will be going or have gone to Illinois and I mean, there’s a governor I hear him complaining all the time, Pritzker, he’s always complaining and yet I said just give me a list of the couple of things we’ve done in Illinois,” Trump said. “We’re building a 2,500 bed hospital in McCormick Place, that’s the big convention center in Chicago.
“And we’re helping to staff it and probably will end up staffing it because he’s not able to do what he’s supposed to be able to do as governor,” Trump said. “He has not performed well.”
Friday, Pritzker joined Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, with Army Corp. of Engineers crews behind him, to unveil the convention center retrofit as an overflow medical facility.
Pritzker has for weeks criticized the White House for not invoking the Defense Authorization Act, and for not filling the state’s entire request of personal protective equipment and ventilators.
Pritzker said Sunday in Chicago said the federal government knew of the coming outbreak.
“The federal government had intelligence briefings, they had memos, they had advice from their medical advisors all the way back in January,” Pritzker said. “Look, I understand, nobody could have predicted what happened here, perhaps, or very few people, on the other hand they had this information before the states did.”
Pritzker said the White House should have been more aggressive in acquiring personal protection equipment and ventilators.
Pritzker said he’s requested 4,000 from the federal government.
Illinois public health officials reported Sunday they have 2,636 ventilators. About 35.5 percent of those are being used. The state says about 29 percent of the state’s total ventilators are being used by COVID-19 patients.
