CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Wednesday the death of two more city employees to COVID-19.
"It is with a heavy heart I announce our city government has lost two more employees to COVID-19," Lightfoot said.
A plumber with the water department died Wednesday morning after having coronavirus for two weeks.
"He worked out of the department's central district and was known as an absolute prince by those who were lucky enough to have worked with him," Lightfoot said.
The city also lost firefighter Ed Singleton, a veteran of the fire department for over 25 years. He died Tuesday night.
"Both men were dedicated public servants who loved their city. Both deaths serve as another painful and tragic reminder of the seriousness and the danger of this terrible disease. Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of these two men, who themselves are struggling in this terrible moment," Lightfoot said.
Despite the two losses, Lightfoot also announced that Chicago is beginning to flatten the curve on COVID-19 cases.
"We should not confuse improvement with success. Despite our recent gains, I want all Chicago to hear me loud and clear - we still have a long way to go," Lightfoot said. "Many things are needed for us to lift the restrictions we have put in place on our city and be comfortable to reemerge from our stay-at-home order. A decision is ultimately in the hands of Governor Pritzker.
"The new, never before released data we are providing today includes details on hospital capacity, case rates, and community mobility. All of which provide valuable insight into where we are and where we need to go when it comes to mitigating and eventually recovering from this COVID-19 pandemic. This data also builds on the information we released last week related to disparities across race and economic status."
You can view the new data on the city's website.
Lightfoot said there will be four key areas that will be guiding the city's strategy in the fight against coronavirus moving forward. First, the city will be focusing on data related to the number of cases and the rate of change in the number of cases.
"To think about lifting restrictions, we will need to see a sustained and substantial drop in the rate of new cases, and we are not there yet. At this point, in the arc of this pandemic, while the rate has slowed, new cases are continuing to increase daily," Lightfoot said.
Second, the city will continue monitoring ICU and ventilator capacity date overtime.
"Less than a month ago, we have gone from approximately seven percent to 40 percent of our ICU beds across Chicago occupied by patients with COVID-19. We have gone from about one percent to about 25 percent of our ventilators used by critically ill patients with COVID-19. Our hospitals in Chicago have been stretched. There is no question, but they have risen to the challenge," Lightfoot said.
Third is the ability to administer widespread testing.
"We are seeing improvements in the last few weeks, but we are still not testing nearly enough people on a daily or weekly basis. This issue has been a standing request to our federal leaders, something Governor Pritzker has talked extensively about, and something I addressed in a recent conversation with Vice President Pence," Lightfoot said.
The fourth key area is the city's ability to have vigilant monitoring and contact tracing.
"We are currently developing technology and community outreach to allow adjust for that. We need to build this infrastructure and we are working on it," Lightfoot said.
"These four metrics are key, but there are other considerations that I know you will want to be in place to give you confidence that coming back together as families, friends, coworkers, customers, and patrons will be safe for everyone. Rest assured that we are hard at work thinking about and planning for a world in which we reopen before there is a vaccine; and a vaccine is likely not going to be available until 2021," Lightfoot said.
"I know these restrictions have been frustrating and challenging for every Chicagoan, but this is exactly the wrong time to let our guard down. This virus has been difficult and unpredictable at times from the beginning and we all acknowledge that; but what we can't do, as other places across the globe have done, is come out of these stay-at-home measures too soon following some gains, only to have cases surge all over again. We do not want to make that mistake, and as we move forward, we will continue to update the public on plans to emerge as well as to stand our economy back up, which we are also very focused on."
Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Arwady gave insight into Chicago's latest date on COVID-19.
"As you heard the Mayor say, all of you staying home has in fact saved lives already," Dr. Arwady said. "I want to thank you for that, but to also let you know that we are a long way from done."
Dr. Arwady went through the phases of an outbreak.
"Before we are in a pandemic phase, where cases are really growing at very large rates, we work on what is called containment, which is the traditional public health work, where we follow up on every single case and we do a lot of the detailed, contact tracing. This is where, if you remember early on, we were able to talk in detail about investigations that might have involved a funeral or a gathering and we can really see how disease spreads. Some of the investigations we did here locally around the earliest cases, even back in January that helped us understand some of the risks of transmission...but then as cases really start to rise and we get to a point where we are added hundreds of cases, 800 cases a day sometimes, we are not able to continue to do all of that containment and we have to move to what we call mitigation," she said.
"Mitigation is a fancy word for keeping the number of infections down, in a way that does involved some of these sacrifices. So the things that we have done, like limiting the number of people that can come together, closing schools, the most obvious being the main stay-at-home order, some of the work that we have done around closing the parks or closing along the lakefront - those are all meant to limit the new infections through what we call community mitigation, because if the curve continues to go on this really steep increase, we overwhelm our healthcare system. That is what we saw in Italy. That is what we have seen to an extent in New York. And all of this community mitigation work, into the phase where we are flattening the curve, is especially about protecting the healthcare system," Dr. Arwady continued.
She said Chicago has flattened the curve, due to most people doing what they are supposed to do - staying home and practicing social distancing. If mitigation was not in place, the daily numbers would be much higher, in both the city and state.
If the city had continued to see cases doubling every two days since March 14, "we would be today at 1.5 million cases just in Chicago. We would be at 48,000 deaths in Chicago. That would be deaths in a month that is more than we see in two and half years from all causes across Chicago," Dr. Arwady said. "If we had even continued doubling every three days...if we'd not done anything to shelter in place...we could today be looking at more than 62,000 cases in Chicago and potentially 2,000 deaths.
"The difference that all of this change and flattening the curve is because people in Chicago have largely done the right thing and limited new infections....Illinois and Chicago are both making progress in flattening the curve...especially compared to the whole U.S. We have seen a lower percentage in cases and deaths here in Chicago residents...As a city and as a state, we are absolutely moving in the right direction," Dr. Arwady said.
