Prairie State Wire

If Gov. J.B. Pritzker gets the 4,000 ventilators he's requested, Illinois could end up with 2,280 more ventilators than it needs under worst-case scenario projections for the coronavirus crisis in Illinois, according to an analysis of recently released data from the state. 

Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner of WirePoints.org explained in a recent report that up until now it's been hard to access the real data that showed how prepared the state was to handle the pandemic. 

"Without data, the public can’t be sure about just how bad the situation really is," Dabrowski and Klingner wrote. 

The data, however, is slowly trickling out. 

“The state finally began collecting and releasing data on April 3rd,” they wrote. “But aside from a press release on April 7th, the data has not been publicly released on the (Illinois Department of Public Health) COVID-19 data page. The data is seemingly available only upon request, though some charts of the data are now beginning to show up on Facebook and Twitter.”

Dabrowski and Klingner said that according to an April 7 health care capacity report issued by the governor, the state has 2,899 ventilators. Projections from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) show the state will only require 2,130 ventilators by April 18, when the need is expected to peak. 

Those numbers are without the additional 4,000 ventilators Pritzker has requested from the federal government or using the worst-case scenario outlined by the IHME, which predicts the state would need 4,107 ventilators. 

Dabrowski and Klingner do caution that it's unclear what COVID-19 projections Pritzker's team is using and as of April 8 the governor refused to say. 

"There are many other projections than the IHME’s, but it’s one that’s prominently mentioned," they wrote. 

As of April 9, the Illinois Department of Health said 16,422 people have COVID-19 within the state out of 80,857 who have been tested, and 528 have died.

The largest clusters of infection are in Chicago, according to the Department of Health website.