With the federal government ramping up its vaccine distribution efforts and a third vaccine potentially becoming available next week, Chicago could begin vaccinating more groups of residents in March, according to Dr. Allison Arwady.

Socially distant seating, mask mandates and temperature checks will be in place at many venues, but some experts remain concerned about community spread and the threat of more contagious variants of COVID-19. 

Like a lot of urban growers, Stephanie Dunn of Star Farm sells her produce at farmers markets around Chicago. Now she’s about to start up a different kind of farmer’s market: her own food co-op housed in a building she is preparing to renovate thanks to a grant from the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund.

Chicago could start receiving Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose COVID-19 vaccine in early March, Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said Wednesday.

The Chicago Board of Education has approved a new measure allowing Chicago Public Schools to track which teachers and employees have gotten a COVID-19 vaccine. Down the line, it would allow the district to require vaccinations.

Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine offers strong protection against severe COVID-19, according to an analysis released Wednesday by U.S. regulators that sets the stage for a final decision on a new and easier-to-use shot to help tame the pandemic.

Illinois will soon be able to ramp up its vaccination effort. “Things are getting better,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Wednesday. “This pandemic will end, but in the meantime, we have to mask up, help each other out and we’ll get through this together.”

U.S. residents can expect to live one year less, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that uses data from the first half of 2020. That decrease in average life expectancy is even steeper in Black and Latino communities. 

Hospitals don’t just offer health care. Many offer care for the human spirit as well as the human body. We talk with a chaplain at Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park about the challenges of ministering to patients and families during a pandemic.

Visitors to Chicago who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 do not have to quarantine for 10 days or record a negative test for COVID-19, the city’s top doctor said Tuesday.

Children who would have received free or reduced-price meals under the National School Lunch Program if their schools were not closed or operating with reduced hours are eligible for the benefits.

“There's not a requirement for employment for everyone (to get the vaccine),” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said during a press conference Tuesday. “But we certainly want to encourage everyone to take advantage of this life-saving vaccine.”

Over the past year, therapists have helped their clients through a myriad of challenges: a global health and economic crisis, a reckoning with racial injustice, a tense political climate and a deadly mob at the nation’s Capitol. And they’ve done so while also managing their own mental health.

An executive order from President Joe Biden has created a special new enrollment period for people to get health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. What you need to know.

At half a million, the toll recorded by Johns Hopkins University is already greater than the population of Miami or Kansas City, Missouri. It is roughly equal to the number of Americans killed in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. It is akin to a 9/11 every day for nearly six months.

“The people, wildlife and wetlands of the Calumet area have borne more than their share of pollution, and it’s time for the City of Chicago to find a different way,” conservation organizations said in support of the General Iron hunger strikers.