Media Coverage

Robert Murphy, executive director of the Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University, called the results “amazing,” and “caught many people by surprise.” He pointed to Lollapalooza as a potential model for future events.

Before the rise in popularity of fitness trackers and smartwatches, cardiologist Sadiya Khan said patients rarely came in with questions about why their heart rates seemed high or low. But the growing interest in wearable devices, which some early research suggests can even detect coronavirus symptoms, means many people have a trove of real-time health information at their fingertips.

The number of people hospitalized for the disease in Lake County is increasing quicker than the number of new cases, according to reports from Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital, Vista Medical Center East in Waukegan and Advocate Aurora Health, which operates Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville and Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington.

Some medical experts, including Dr. Larry Kociolek, a pediatric infectious diseases physician-scientist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, warn that with the surge of the delta variant, the start of the new school year is not the right time to ease up on masks.

Dr. Sadiya Khan, an epidemiologist and cardiologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, agreed. She said the drive to deliver booster shots is premature while the virus is still circulating among millions of unvaccinated people — the ones responsible for “the overwhelming majority” of infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

“We’re making things worse by taking stances against mitigation measures that would have allowed us to demonstrate some sense of normal,” said Mercedes Carnethon, vice chair of preventive medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

“From my perspective, if you were at Lollapalooza, you should be masking and self-quarantining to keep other people safe, vaccinated or not,” Dr. Marc Sala, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist at Northwestern Medicine, told the Tribune recently. “My take is that if you were at Lollapalooza, you have to assume you were exposed to (the virus) and should behave as such to protect those around you.”

“If the dermatologist did not check their entire body, these skin cancers would be missed,” said lead author Dr. Murad Alam. He is vice chair of dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago. His team reviewed the medical records of more than 1,000 patients for the study, which is scheduled for publication in September in the International Journal of Women’s Dermatology.

Dr. Michael Wolf, the associate vice chair for Research, Department of Medicine at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine expects approval would get about 5-10% more individuals worried about safety to get vaccinated.

Steamy weather can not only be enervating, it poses serious health risks for many people, says Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, president of the American Heart Association and chair of the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.