Their son Jonathan told the media on Monday that both are “resting comfortably and are responding positively to their treatments.” Physicians at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago have been “carefully monitoring their condition” because of their ages — Jesse is 79 and Jacqueline is 77. Both Jackson and his wife received their vaccines earlier this year. Jesse Jackson has been urging others in the African American community to get inoculated. Data from the Kaiser Family Foundation as of August 18 show that Black and Hispanic people remain less likely than their white counterparts to have received a vaccine, leaving them at increased risk, particularly as the Delta variant spreads. Jackson announced in 2017 that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The Parkinson’s Foundation says that living with Parkinson’s does not put you at greater risk of contracting COVID-19, but it does make it harder to recover if you contract it. Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that breakthrough cases such as these are rare, more vaccinated people appear to be getting infected as the highly transmissible Delta variant has swept the nation. “While we are constantly hearing about ‘breakthrough’ cases with the vaccine, it is very important to note that what is not being discussed often is severity,” said Eric Cioe-Peña, MD, the director of Global Health at Northwell Health in New Hyde Park, New York. “Vaccinated Americans — even those with breakthrough infections — have a much lower risk of hospitalization or death and therefore it is vitally important that we continue to vaccinate these at-risk groups.”
