Media Coverage

Dr. Khalilah Gates, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital told CNN Saturday that the CDC research gives us new information about the virus’ impact on children that can help us make informed decisions about opening schools. “We can’t back off of testing, and we do have to have more rapid testing,” Gates added.

“This isn’t the time to find loopholes in the guidelines,” said Taylor Heald-Sargent, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine outside Chicago. “The CDC guidelines are just that, they’re guidelines, and it’s really the nuances that make the difference.”

On the positive side, medical professionals have a better understanding of what they are dealing with, said Dr Khalilah Gates, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. “We don’t know all of it, but it’s not the fear of the unknown anymore,” she told Reuters.

There are downsides, too. Given the amount of protective equipment staff must wear to go into patients’ rooms, nurses may enter less frequently to monitor patients, said Cindy Barnard, vice president of quality for Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, which has 10 hospitals in and around Chicago.

Black people who have experienced anti-Blackness may have shorter life expectancies, said Clyde Yancy, chief of the cardiology division at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Yancy cited a 2014 American Journal of Preventive Medicine study, which revealed that experiencing bias accelerates aging for Black men.

One in five people struggle with health information, says Michael S. Wolf, director of the Center for Applied Health Research on Aging at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. “It’s easy to misunderstand [medical information],” says Wolf, who is also founding director of the medical school’s Health Literacy and Learning Program. Some will be too ashamed to say so while others won’t realize they missed a critical detail.

Mayra Ramirez, 28, joins the 3rd hour of TODAY with her surgeon, Dr. Ankit Bharat of Northwestern Medicine, to tell Al Roker about her recovery after becoming the first coronavirus patient to undergo a double lung transplant. “I have the scars to prove that this is real. I never want anyone to undergo what I went through,” said Ramirez.

“It’s such a paradigm change,” said Ms. Ramirez’s surgeon, Dr. Ankit Bharat. “Lung transplant has not been considered a treatment option for an infectious disease, so people need to get a little bit more of a comfort level with it.”

“When this came to our attention, we were struck,” said Dr. Clyde Yancy, chief cardiologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and an editor at JAMA Cardiology. The findings would have been virtually impossible to pinpoint without this study, as the majority of patients didn’t exhibit any symptoms and these specific abnormalities detected by the MRI wouldn’t have been seen on an echocardiogram, which is more commonly used in the standard clinical setting.

“Mayra and Brian wouldn’t be alive today without the double lung transplants. COVID-19 completely destroyed their lungs and they were critically ill going into the transplant procedure, making it a daunting undertaking,” said Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the Northwestern Medicine Lung Transplant Program.