Jesse Jackson and wife 'responding positively' to Covid-19 treatment

The Rev. Jesse Jackson and his wife, Jacqueline, are “responding positively” to medical treatment after having been hospitalized with Covid-19, their family said Sunday.

Doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago were “carefully monitoring” their conditions because of their ages, said their son Jonathan Jackson. Jesse Jackson is 79, and Jacqueline Jackson is 77.

“Both are resting comfortably and are responding positively to their treatment,” he said in a statement.

He did not say what treatments his parents were receiving or how they contracted the coronavirus. Both were vaccinated in January.

Their positive tests are two examples of high-profile “breakthrough” cases, which public health experts say are rare and expected and usually result in mild symptoms.

Fully vaccinated people who become seriously ill or die from the disease tend to be older or to have compromised immune systems, experts say.

Jesse Jackson, who founded the civil rights organization Rainbow Push Coalition in 1971 and twice ran for president in the 1980s, announced in 2017 that he has Parkinson’s disease.

The organization announced Saturday that the Jacksons had been hospitalized for Covid-19.

source: nbcnews.com