Media Coverage

How well does the COVID-19 vaccine work, will it be effective against mutating virus strains and how should we prioritize vaccine recipients when it comes to those who have already had it? We asked Northwestern University’s Dr. Elizabeth McNally for answers to some of your most pressing questions about COVID-19 vaccines.

“I think we’ve generated more questions on the subject than we have answers,” said Brian Hitsman, associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health issue in the U.S., affecting between 15% and 19% of the adult population and encompassing everything from phobias and panic attacks to intense fear of social situations and chronic worrying.

Northwestern University experts suggest checking in on current events a couple of times a day and no more. Constant updates can fuel anxiety and depression, they warn. “As a practicing preventive cardiologist, one of the most common risk factors for heart disease that I am seeing this year is stress,” said Dr. Sadiya Khan, assistant professor of cardiology and epidemiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “I know we can all agree it has been an extremely stressful year for all in every aspect of our lives, including stress related to the pandemic and associated health, financial and political events.” Constant news updates pile on layer upon layer of stress, according to Dr. Aderonke Pederson, a psychiatrist at Northwestern Medicine.

“It’s still early days, and we’re not out of the woods, even though I don’t think we see anything conclusive in the data yet,” said Jaline Gerardin, a Northwestern University assistant professor of preventive medicine who works on virus modeling.

For most of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been disagreement on every aspect of public health policies (e.g., universal lockdown, school reopenings). But there is near complete agreement that the path forward to end the pandemic is through rapid and mass vaccination to achieve herd immunity.

The SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.1.7, which first cropped up in the United Kingdom, was identified by Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine during an analysis of samples from positive COVID-19 tests, officials said.

The new COVID variant first detected in the U.K. has made its way to Chicago. Chicago and Illinois public health departments today announced that the case was identified through an analysis of positive COVID tests by Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

“While we knew that the memories of people with primary progressive aphasia were not affected at first, we did not know if they maintained their memory functioning over years,” said study author Dr. M. Marsel Mesulam, director of the Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

From a public health perspective, “testing is necessary in the short-term to be able to react quickly when cases are increasing and prevent or interrupt outbreaks whereas vaccinations are a prophylactic solution to prevent cases and end the pandemic,” said Dr. Sadiya Khan, assistant professor of preventive medicine in epidemiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Some good news is that vaccines are already being distributed to high priority groups and, with that, people should develop immunity to the virus. But even so, we could be doing this weird version of reality for a while, says Clyde Yancy, MD, vice dean for diversity and inclusion at Northwestern Medicine. “Every prediction that anyone might say would be a rough approximation—from me included,” he says.