COVID policies at issue in race for Illinois governor
 

[June 07, 2022]  By Greg Bishop | The Center Square

(The Center Square) – Most Illinois counties maintain either low or medium COVID-19 levels, but additional counties are being added to the high category.
 

Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who extended an emergency declaration earlier this month, said Monday the state is continuing to monitor the situation to determine if further mitigations are needed, but with sufficient vaccines and treatments available, hospitalizations are not a problem.

“That is one of the reasons why even though you have seen case numbers go up, you have not seen hospitalizations go up commensurate with that,” Pritzker said at an unrelated news conference.

Later in the day, Pritzker stood by having issued consecutive declarations since March 2020, comparing COVID-19 to a flood situation and pointing to continued federal declarations.

During last week’s GOP gubernatorial debate on ABC7, each of the six candidates opposed mandates like Pritzker enacted since the start of the pandemic. Attorney Max Solomon said he’d put his trust in the hands of the people.

“There’ll be no mask mandates and there’ll be no vaccine mandates and remote learning would be off the table,” Solomon said. “Look, the best person to make sure that they’re healthy is you.”

Entrepreneur Jesse Sullivan said he would lead “from a place of liberty and freedom.”

“Johns Hopkins showed that those free states like Florida, and Illinois where we were locked down, no difference in COVID rates,” Sullivan said. “The difference was on our economy and on our children in their learning outcomes suffering.”

State Sen. Darren Bailey, who sued the governor over mandates two years ago, said he wouldn’t issue mandates.

Businessman Gary Rabine heralded his part in a lawsuit against a federal vaccine mandate.

Former state Sen. Paul Schimpf, R-Waterloo, and Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin said there should be local control.

“Let the parents have a voice in their kids’ education, in what’s going to happen with their kids wearing masks and getting vaccinated,” Irvin said. “That’s what we have to do. Give parents their voice back.”

Greg Bishop reports on Illinois government and other issues for The Center Square. Bishop has years of award-winning broadcast experience and hosts the WMAY Morning Newsfeed out of Springfield.