Media Coverage

A new study indicates Illinois saw a significant increase in non-COVID 19 deaths earlier this year as the pandemic began. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign looked at data from March through May of this year and compared the numbers to previous years. They discovered roughly 120,000 “excess deaths” that could not directly be connected to COVID. “These are things that in many ways can't be explained,” said Dr. Sheldon Jacobson, a Founder Professor of Computer Science at UIUC. “They could be possibly because people are not getting treatment for acute conditions or they are not practicing preventative medicine. It could be mental health issues.”

With two vaccines expected to receive federal approval in the U.S. within a matter of weeks, hopes for beating the coronavirus are looking up. Yet for millions of workers and businesses, the emerging immunizations also raise a host of questions, not the least of which is this: Can your employer require that you get vaccinated? For now, vaccination plans are focused on prioritizing who will receive the first doses, beginning with those who are most vulnerable as well as most exposed to the disease.

Delivering a vaccine for a global pandemic that has caused nearly 1.5 million deaths and has infected more than 65 million people will require a logistical effort of extraordinary complexity. The three leading vaccine candidates, from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca/Oxford, have very different requirements when it comes to shipping and storage, and even after the vaccines arrive at their destinations—the health clinics, hospitals, and pharmacies where vaccinations will occur—there are a host of logistical hurdles that this patchwork of health care providers must overcome to ensure efficient and equitable distribution.

Weeks before states expect to receive their first shipments of Covid-19 vaccines, conflicting messages from the federal government have obscured exactly how many doses may arrive. Some governors, including New York’s Andrew Cuomo and California’s Gavin Newsom, have made splashy announcements about how much of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s vaccines they expect should the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorize them this month. Other states can’t provide a solid answer given how quickly estimates change

Shortly before World War II, Minnesota-based U.S. Thermo Control Company introduced the revolutionary concept of transport refrigeration to the world, allowing trucks to haul frozen foods and perishables to every corner of the United States. The company, co-founded by renowned inventor Frederick McKinley Jones and businessman Joseph Numero, helped store items at controlled temperatures as they crossed “through mountain blizzards and desert heat,” according to a May 1950 article in the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune. During the war, these refrigeration units “kept food fresh on island bases and dropped into steaming jungle with parachute troops.”