CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Members of the group West Side Black Elected Officials, which includes aldermen, state lawmakers, and members of Congress, held a Zoom news conference Saturday afternoon to voice support for the embattled Loretto Hospital.
West Side Alderman Chris Taliafero said he shares his colleagues concern about what he called “the egregious acts that came from Loretto.”
He said it will have to work to restore public trust.
Taliafero also said the hospital has done extraordinary work during the pandemic that has gone uncovered by the press.
“So, I don’t want to take this contemptuous conduct and have it impact Loretto to a point where the hospital closes or offers any other disadvantage to our community,” Taliafero said.
Other Black elected officials voiced the same concerns, including State Representative Lashawn Ford, who resigned from the hospital board after revelations that people connected to hospital executives were vaccinated out-of-turn leading one executive to resign.
Congressman Danny Davis, Alderman Emma Mitts, Alderman Walter Burnett and Senate Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford, a long-time member of the hospital’s Board of Trustees, were also among those voicing concerns about the impact the scandal could have on the hospital.
Vaccines to the hospital are being withheld by the city of Chicago while there’s an investigation.
The Black elected officials also said that while Loretto doesn’t currently have vaccines, shots are being given elsewhere on the city’s West Side.
Lightford is defending the hospital’s CEO George Miller after it was revealed that 200 members of his suburban church were vaccinated out of turn. Lightford is a long-time member of the hospital’s Board of Trustees and the hospital’s emergency department is named for her.
The hosptial’s former COO and CFO Dr. Anosh Ahmed, who resigned this week over a series of vaccination scandals is refuting some of the allegations, said in a statement that he left his post because he had become a distraction.
He also said many of the allegations, first reported by Block Club Chicago, about out-of-turn vaccinations of Trump Tower workers, where he has a condo, employees of businesses he frequents and Cook County Judges are in his words “inaccurate or patently false.”
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