Will County Gazette

Will County Republicans used a news conference in front of the Will County Courthouse last week to protest a COVID-19 hotline created by the Will County Health Department & Community Health Center for residents to report businesses that are non-compliant with the state’s coronavirus rules and regulations.

“We're paying people that are contact tracers government money and yet we’re asking for regular citizens to be the reporting body to the health department?” said George Pearson, chairman of the Will County Republican Party. “How soon will the health department have somebody out to check on this report? Is an investigation going to be delayed by a couple of days? It’s just ridiculous.”

Susan Olenek, executive director of the Will County Health Department & Community Health Center, reportedly issued the message to the general public while asking them to be part of the solution by calling and reporting "businesses who are not complying with the state’s current COVID-19 mitigations for Region 7," according to a news release.

Susan Olenek, executive director of the Will County Health Department & Community Health Center | LinkedIn

“This is draconian,” Pearson told the Will County Gazette. “Business owners need to unite and sue the governor along with the Illinois Department of Public Health. All of this should be under the Public Health Emergency Act and not under the governor's emergency act. If this were under the right law instead of the governor’s rules then each business would have a right to appear before a judge and the Department of Public Health would have to present a reason why they're shutting that business down. Right now, under the governor's emergency act, they can just arbitrarily shut down business after business.”

Nearly 260,000 coronavirus cases have been reported statewide with 8,332 deaths, as of Sept. 15, compared to 12,955 positive cases in Will County with 367 deaths, according to the state Department of Public Health.

However, Will County GOP officials questioned the legitimacy of the coronavirus case count at the Sept. 11 news conference.

“The Will County Health Department and the Illinois Department of Public Health have been keeping us on lockdown and pushing us to even more stringent mitigation based on this case count but they have been putting forth bad numbers,” Pearson said. “They're triple and quadrupling one individual's test, which is causing the positivity rate to go up and the positivity rate is different than what the actual test numbers are."

Olenek did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

WJOL reported that the numbers don’t add up based on an investigation by the Joliet Chamber of Commerce.

“Several people that have been tested four or five times because once they test positive, they keep getting again and again and the health department is counting all those tests at the same time as new cases,” Pearson said in an interview. “We've got a problem with that because they’re shutting down businesses based on these inflated numbers. They’re cutting off people's income and keeping kids out of school because they are lying about the numbers. We're no longer in a health care crisis. We're now in a political crisis.”