Media Coverage

Until then, “You still pose a clear and present danger to your parents,” says Dr. June McKoy, associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. A visit may depend on where your loved one lives “Everybody got excited when the vaccines came out,” says McKoy, a geriatrician who works with nursing homes in Chicago.

Dr. Aderonke Pederson is a psychiatrist and instructor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Northwestern University. She’s an advocate for Black health and wellness. She says while we celebrate Black History Month, we also need to examine the impact COVID-19 and racism have on the daily lives of Black people.

There is no scientific evidence between COVID-19 vaccination and infertility, according to Dr. Tarun Jain, Northwestern Medicine. Dr. Jain, a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist, said the vaccine is very effective, and the major medical societies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend women who are trying to conceive or pregnant to get the vaccine.

“While no kidney will last forever, a kidney transplant is expected to last for several years,” Dr. Dinee C. Simpson, a transplant surgeon at Northwestern Medicine, tells Yahoo Life.”It’s very uncommon to lose a kidney so quickly, and its a devastating event for all involved.”

Denying women vaccines is concerning for multiple reasons, said Dr. Emily Miller, assistant professor in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Northwestern Medicine’s Feinberg School of Medicine. It sends a message that women cannot make decisions about their own health and body. And for breastfeeding moms, it could add pressure to wean. “That just creates a whole different risk balance that doesn’t need to be introduced,” she said. “That’s just not fair to put women in that scenario.”

Tea drinkers in the study tended to have a healthy intake of fish and vegetables, noted Van Horn, who is also a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. Those cautions made, Van Horn said that specific plant compounds — in the case of green tea, one called epigallocatechin-gallate — “are increasingly being recognized as having important anti-inflammatory cardio-metabolic benefits.”

Sanja Josipovic, who at the time worked as a home health nurse with Northwestern Medicine in Winfield, Illinois cared for Sevala Habibovic inside her home. Both women were Bosnian refugees and they developed a friendship over six months of care.

“I could see why people would feel as if that would be unfair but people who are smokers are in general at higher risk for getting sicker when they develop COVID-19,” said Dr. Samuel Kim, a thoracic surgeon at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. A study, published Jan. 25 in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Internal Medicine, found that people who smoke or who have smoked in the past are more likely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19 than people who haven’t smoked.

Melanie Swift, co-director of the Mayo Clinic’s vaccination-distribution program, said she would not fly for pleasure, only for work. Given the high level of virus in much of the United States, geriatrician June McKoy of Northwestern Medicine said even people who are vaccinated need to be careful when visiting inoculated elderly relatives, and should wear masks and sanitize their hands.

“Communities should be able to generate daily and certainly weekly data to understand the demographics of who is being vaccinated. Local health departments and health institutions need to respond to these data in real time to identify where COVID-19 vaccine uptake is not matching COVID-19 disease burden,” wrote Dr. Muriel Jean-Jacques, Northwestern University Department of Medicine vice chair of diversity, equity and inclusion, and Dr. Howard C. Bauchner of the Boston University School of Medicine, a professor of pediatrics and community health.