Prairie State Wire

After 36 deaths linked to COVID-19 at the LaSalle Veterans' Home last year, state leaders are still trying to figure out what went wrong, and Republicans are questioning whether Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration did everything it should.

Republicans first requested to meet with Pritzker regarding the incident last fall that resulted in the deaths of 36 residents and the infection of multiple staff and residents with the novel coronavirus. 

During a recent hearing before the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Republican members questioned Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) Director Ngozi Ezike about his agency’s response.

“Was your chief of staff providing you daily updates?” State Rep. David Welter (R-Morris) asked Ezike during the hearing. 

Ezike told the committee that he was receiving a “daily table with updated information.” He also said that he felt that it would be “nearly impossible” to have “boots on the ground” in every facility for which the IDPH has responsibility amid a pandemic. 

“You’ve taken a disturbingly passive view of what IDPH’s role is supposed to be,” State Rep. Deanne Mazzochi (R-Westmont) told Ezike in the hearing. “You’re saying you can only look at things if you’re invited and establishing a connection, but IDPH, throughout the pandemic, has been directing a whole host of what public and private entities need to do and micromanaging them to the Nth degree. But you didn’t think it was IDPH’s place to be proactive when it comes to state-run facilities like the LaSalle veterans home?”

Ezike told Mazzochi that IDPH treated all facilities such as the LaSalle Veterans' Home the same and applied the same rules across the state. 

“You promised ‘we're deploying all available resources, and those statements seem very inconsistent with the testimony you are providing right now,” Mazzochi told Ezike. “Best efforts were not being taken at the Lasalle facility than were they? … When you have a facility where one is wearing dirty gloves from one patient to the other, do you consider that best practices?”

Ezike said those were not “best practices” and were deficiencies that needed to be corrected.

The hearings followed sharp criticism from Republican leaders of how Pritzker’s administration handled the outbreak at the LaSalle Veterans Home, the Illinois Valley Times reported. Following the deaths, Linda Chapa LaVia resigned as director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs.