Media Coverage

Dr. Eve C. Feinberg, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University and a member of the ASRM COVID task force, said that in-vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures involve multiple tests and procedures including blood tests, a surgery to remove eggs and an embryo transfer to place the embryo into the uterus.

Dr. Michael Angarone, an assistant professor of medicine in infectious diseases at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said drug addicts could be in danger of acquiring or spreading COVID-19 not only if they’re purchasing narcotics as part of a large group, but if they use IV-based drugs, they could be at a higher risk for infections, such as HIV, that weaken their immune systems.

In the Chicago area, teens and young adults are developing red, purple, sore and itchy toes that doctors are informally calling “COVID toes.” Dr. Amy Paller, the chair of dermatology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said that in the past week she’s gotten more than 50 reports of new pediatric cases in the Chicago area. She said she expects many more cases as news of the condition spreads.

“Very often with new diseases, people try multiple things at once, making it difficult to tell what, if anything, worked,” Dr. Richard Wunderink, Northwestern’s medical intensive care unit director, said in the statement. “Researchers in China gave a similar drug to a small number of people and observed what they thought were good effects. It is important to confirm—or not—these findings before we use this medication routinely. We also need to look to see if there are unexpected side effects of the drug in these patients.”

Dr. Ben Singer, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, believes the disparity has had a lot to do with factors such as pre-existing health issues along with limited access to medical services. Black and Hispanic workers are also more likely that their white counterparts to work at jobs that pay per hours, they are also more vulnerable to layoffs.

Dr. Marcelo Malakooti, medical director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, said his hospital has had children with COVID-19 infections, but added, “Our numbers are not very high, but it’s really too early to know how coronavirus will affect the pediatric population at large.”

“It is not surprising that this is exaggerated,” Dr. Clyde Yancy, chief of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said of NPR’s findings of the racial imbalance in deaths at nursing homes. He wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association about the long history of racial disparities in health care and how it plays out now in this pandemic

Dr. Mehreen Arshad, a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University in Chicago, agreed that there’s just not a lot of data on children and COVID-19 yet, especially kids with compromised immune systems. She said that immunocompromised children likely have less risk from COVID-19 than older adults do, but they may have more risk than children with healthy immune systems. She added it’s important to “take all precautions” to lessen the risk of infection for these children.

There also has to be enough testing capacity to aggressively test in advance people who aren’t yet sick but are at high risk from COVID-19, said Dr. Tina Tan, a professor of pediatrics with the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. That includes testing both workers and patients in nursing facilities; jailors and inmates in prisons; front-line workers like transit drivers, police and firefighters; the homeless; and people in black communities that have been hit hardest by the pandemic.

Characterized by a reddish-blue discoloration of the extremities, the condition is proving particularly prevalent among kids. Amy Paller, MD, chair of the Department of Dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine says that in the last few weeks, dermatologists nationwide have begun seeing an influx of the condition.