Ahead of hearing, questions linger over COVID-19 outbreak at Illinois veterans’ home

(The Center Square) – Legislators in an Illinois House committee are expected to hear more about what happened at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home where a COVID-19 outbreak has killed 35 people. Some hope unanswered questions are addressed.

After the Legionnaires outbreak at the Quincy veterans’ home that eventually killed 13 over three years, lawmakers requested an audit. The Auditor General produced a report with specific recommendations, like having the Illinois Department of Public Health determine what’s the appropriate time for an onsite visit following a determined outbreak.

State Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, said recommendations laid out in that 2019 report weren’t followed by the Pritzker administration.

“It states a recommendation that sites putting a very specific procedure in place for site visits once it is determined that there is an outbreak inside a veterans’ home,” Rezin said.

IDPH should “revisit its policies and determine what response timeframe is adequate to conduct on-site monitoring visits in response to a confirm disease outbreak,” one audit recommendation said.

IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike responded to the recommendation in a March 4, 2019, letter saying the agency accepted the recommendations.

“IDPH will work to standardize policies and procedures for on-site monitoring visits by (the) local health department … and by IDPH when the local health department requests,” she said.

Fast forward to the LaSalle COVID-19 outbreak that started Nov. 1, 2020, there never was a local health department site visit. An IDPH consultant previously testified local health department employees were only working remotely because of COVID-19. It took 12 days for IDPH to make a site visit to LaSalle. The Quincy Legionnaires outbreak, the local health department there took 2 days.

Around the time of the Auditor General’s report in March 2019, the governor said his administration was “taking action where the state has fallen short and taking a proactive approach to protecting the safety and wellbeing of residents and workers alike, a foundational duty of state government.”

Rezin this week said that doesn’t seem to be the case.

“Is this just lip service or are we actually going to see changes that need to be made and who is enforcing these changes,” Rezin said. “Right now we’ve just been told by the administration ‘everything has taken care of and we’ve corrected the problems,’ but we don’t know for sure.”

Rezin, who hopes to take part in Saturday’s House hearing, said someone from the Illinois Department of Public Health has to answer why it took 12 days for the first site visit.

“The day that they knew that they had an outbreak at the veterans’ home, we need that person from the Department of Public Health testifying so that we can ask questions,” she said.

The Department of Public Health had a consultant to testify at previous hearings, but the consultant didn’t have specifics when asked.

A spokesperson with IDPH said Thursday the committee “is not requesting the appearance of any IDPH personnel for Saturday’s scheduled hearing.”

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