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“The school situation is so complicated — there are many nuances beyond just the scientific one,” said Dr. Taylor Heald-Sargent, a pediatric infectious diseases expert at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, who led the study, published in JAMA Pediatrics.

Researchers throughout the world are racing to find effective treatments to reduce morbidity and mortality and develop vaccines to limit the spread of COVID-19. It is imperative that clinical investigators prioritize the representation of diverse populations and emphasize enrollment of populations at the highest risk for exposure, incidence and poor outcomes.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, IL is ranked No. 10 on the Best Hospitals Honor Roll. It is nationally ranked in 11 adult specialties and rated high performing in 1 adult specialty and 10 procedures and conditions. It is a general medical and surgical facility. It is a teaching hospital. The evaluation of Northwestern Memorial Hospital also includes data from Stone Institute of Psychiatry and Prentice Women’s Hospital.

To combat unconscious biases that can affect treatment, clinicians typically are given protocols to follow — checklists to run through to make sure they don’t miss a diagnosis, said Dr. Melissa Simon, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and the director of the Center for Health Equity Transformation at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. When someone goes into the emergency room with chest pains, for example, there is an exhaustive list of laboratory tests that need to be ordered and vital signs that need to be checked to run through possible diagnoses.

Dr. Clyde Yancy of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Dr. Gregg Fonarow of the University of California, Los Angeles, co-authored an editorial that accompanied the two new studies in the journal JAMA Cardiology on Monday.

Igor Koralnik, chief of neuro-infectious diseases and global neurology at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, oversees the Neuro Covid-19 Clinic at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, which launched in May. The clinic has had many patients who didn’t test positive for Covid but have lingering neurological symptoms that Dr. Koralnik believes were caused by Covid.

TODAY spoke with Mercedes Carnethon, professor and vice chair of preventive medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and Linsey Marr, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech who also has expertise in the airborne transmission of viruses, about the best practices for travel during the pandemic.

“We are casting a really wide net so we can make sure we have enough people identified and ready to go for upcoming studies,” said Dr. Karen Krueger, principal investigator of the registry and Northwestern Medicine physician and instructor. “This is vital to individuals’ and community health during the coronavirus pandemic.”

The two are Wendy Armstrong, professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Emory University’s School of Medicine, and Tina Tan, professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Both are board members of the Infectious Disease Society of America.

Should schools reopen, said Tina Tan, an IDSA board member and pediatrics professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, there is no way to know which children are most vulnerable to getting COVID-19, or the mysterious related illness impacting some more severely, including some in Illinois.