scholarly journals SARS-CoV-2 genomic monitoring in the São Paulo State unveils new sublineages of the AY.43 strain

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Ranieri J. Lima ◽  
Gabriela Ribeiro ◽  
Vincent Louis Viala ◽  
Loyze Paola Oliveira Lima ◽  
Antonio Jorge Martins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Phylogenetic Tree ◽  
Viral Fitness ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Paulo State ◽  
The World ◽  
Continuous Description ◽  
Potential Impact

Delta VOC is highly diverse and more than 120 sublineages have been identified in Pango lineages with the continuous description of emerging ones. Brazil is now one of the most vaccinated countries against SARS-CoV-2 in the world which can enhance the emergence of viral mutations related to improved viral fitness. In this study, we identified two novel sublineages of the AY.43 lineage which were classified as AY.43.1 and AY.43.2 as observed on the specific clustering on the obtained phylogenetic tree. The novel sublineages were defined by the following characteristic nonsynonymous mutations ORF1ab:A4133V and ORF3a:T14I for AY.43.1 and ORF1ab:G1155C for AY.43.2. The majority of the analyzed sequences of both lineages were Brazilian, which shows that probably these two emerging sublineages have Brazilian origin. It is still unknown how these two sublineages are disseminated in S&atildeo Paulo State and Brazil and their potential impact on the ongoing vaccination process. However, the performed study reinforces the importance of the SARS-CoV-2 genome monitoring for timely identification of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants which can impact the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and public health policies

scholarly journals Vietnamese Public Health Practices in the Advent of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons for Developing Countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 163-164
Author(s):  
Jeconiah Louis Dreisbach
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Short Communication ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
World Health ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization

The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) presents a great challenge to developing countries with limited access to public health measures in grassroots communities. The World Health Organization lauded the Vietnamese government for its proactive and steady investment in health facilities that mitigate the risk of the infectious disease in Vietnam. This short communication presents cases that could benchmark public health policies in developing countries.

scholarly journals Assessment of Anti-SARS CoV-2 seroprevalence in habitants of Assam (AASSHA): report of the first serosurvey in Assam

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 2490
Author(s):  
Jyotismita Pathak ◽  
Mridusmita Das ◽  
Khalil Siddique
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ◽  
Herd Immunity ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Blood Samples ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

Background: Today, there is a pressing need to identify the proportion of people immune to the infection by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) so that public health policies can be formulated accordingly for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Keeping this in mind, we designed a serosurvey in Assam with aims to estimate the prevalence of infection as well as the infection to case ratio of the novel coronavirus in Assam.Methods: A total of 9 districts belonging to three different strata of districts were randomly selected for the study. In these selected districts, blood samples were collected from a sample of population and were checked for the antibodies (IgG type). Those testing reactive for the mentioned antibodies were considered to have been infected ever before the onset of the study.Results: A total of 2390 study subjects were tested for the presence of antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2. The proportion of people harboring antibodies against the infection was found to be 23.7 percent.Conclusions: The serosurvey revealed that the proportion of people having antibodies was lower than that required for attaining herd immunity levels in a population. The case to infection ratios reveal that there is a large chunk of population who didn’t know about their infection.

scholarly journals Side-Effects of Public Health Policies Against COVID-19: The Story of an Over-Reaction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edouard Lansiaux ◽  
Noe Tchagaspanian ◽  
Juliette Arnaud ◽  
Pierre Durand ◽  
Mark Changizi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Side Effects ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Western World ◽  
Global Response ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Short Period ◽  
The World

Let us all take a moment to talk, once again, about this new coronavirus pandemic that the world has been facing since November 2019 and about its global response. After a short period marked by the pandemic underestimation risk by most governments, the Western world went nuts and overreacted, most probably so as not to be accused of inaction. In many cases, the overall benefits of the chosen policies were not sufficiently questioned, which resulted in many side effects on global health .The medical motto “primum non nocere”, a moral principle everyone should at least consider following, was evidently not taken into account. It has been overlooked, and the virus has become an obsession, to the extent that nearly everything else, even the most valuable things in life, is still now under appreciated if not simply ignored. This review highlighted facts against this simplistic, one-dimensional view.

scholarly journals The Role of a Medicalized Discourse in the Global Activities of the World Health Organization

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 173-191
Author(s):  
Marta Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
European Union ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
World Health ◽  
Tobacco Policy ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization

This article presents selected results of a research project entitled Medicalization strategies of the World Health Organization1 in which the author analyzed and described three WHO policies characterized by a medicalizing approach. These three policies were compared with each other in terms of their conceptual (narrative) and institutional (practical) levels of medicalization and their effects. In order to better understand the role of a medicalized discourse in the global activities of the WHO, these three cases were also compared to one non-medicalizing policy. The aim of this article is twofold: firstly, to present two cases analyzed as part of the project, namely, the tobacco policy (a ‘medicalized’ one) and the ageing policy (a ‘non-medicalized’ one) and secondly, to consider the possible influence of WHO discourse on tobacco and ageing on public health policies in the European Union.

scholarly journals Waves of mental health Demands during the COVID-19 pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Jorge Sant´Ana Honorato ◽  
André Luiz Machado das Neves ◽  
Munique Therense ◽  
Gizelly de Carvalho Martins ◽  
Vivian Silva Lima Marangoni ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Psychological Symptoms ◽  
Clinical Psychologists ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Demands ◽  
To Come

Dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic is playing a significant role in public health policies around the world. Mental health is one. Either in supporting the maintenance of isolation or dealing with demands, which may come from the general population and health professionals. This work presents a compilation of data obtained by clinical psychologists during the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil. Through searches on social media with #Covid19 and #MentalHealth and the exchange of information on networks of professionals, it was possible to compile and group the main psychological symptoms presented during isolation. Information was clustered according to the period it appeared, in order to guide future situations. Moreover, to prepare a group of clinical psychologists to provide online assistance. Prevention must be the key to deal with the mental health catastrophe that there is to come.

Are We Living Longer and Healthier?

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (10) ◽  
pp. 1645-1658 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Zheng ◽  
Karen Siu Lan Cheung ◽  
Paul S. F. Yip
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Chronic Disease ◽  
Life Expectancy ◽  
Marked Improvement ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
The World ◽  
Disease Free

Objective: To examine whether we live healthier as we live longer in Hong Kong, which has one of the highest life expectancies in the world. Methods: Sullivan’s method was used to evaluate the chronic disease–free life expectancy (CDFLE), life expectancy in good self-perceived health (GPHLE), and impairment-free life expectancy (IFLE) among population aged 50 years and older in Hong Kong in 2007–2016. Results: In spite of the marked improvement in life expectancy in Hong Kong, the increase in GPHLE was much smaller, while CDFLE and IFLE even declined for both genders. The situation was more severe among older population. Discussion: People in Hong Kong live longer but with worsening health. The expansion of chronic diseases, self-perceived poor health, and impairments among older adults calls for more fiscal investments, government attention, and public health policies.

scholarly journals Utilizando Análise de Sentimentos e SVM na Classificação de Tweets Depressivos

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omar Andres Carmona Cortes ◽  
Wesley Eduardo de Oliveira Melo
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Machine Learning ◽  
Naive Bayes ◽  
Naïve Bayes ◽  
Entire Population ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Depression Symptoms ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
The World ◽  
Bayes Algorithm

The number of depression cases has grown worldwide. The WorldHealth Organization estimates that 5.8% of the Brazilian populationalready present depression symptoms. In the world, 4.8% ofthe entire population has presented some symptoms. These dataare alarming because they represent about 12 million people onlyin Brazil and 368 million worldwide. Therefore, it is essential tobuild applications that adequately identify the population’s feelingsabout depression to drive public health policies. Appropriate policiescan save money on public health and keep people active. Thus,this work investigates how to apply machine learning in classifyingdepression posts on Tweeter. The data were extracted from thesocial media network, reaching a total of 31.177 tweets classified asdepressive and non-depressive. The application was implementedin Python with Pandas and SciKit Learning. Results have shownthat SVM overcomes the Naive Bayes algorithm and can reach anaccuracy of 94%, precision of 91%, a recall of 91%, and an F1 Scoreof 91%.

scholarly journals COVID-19 infodemic: More retweets for science-based information on coronavirus than for false information

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 377-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina M Pulido ◽  
Beatriz Villarejo-Carballido ◽  
Gisela Redondo-Sama ◽  
Aitor Gómez
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Risks ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
World Health ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
False Information ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
The World ◽  
Fact Checking ◽  
Health Organization

The World Health Organization has not only signaled the health risks of COVID-19, but also labeled the situation as infodemic, due to the amount of information, true and false, circulating around this topic. Research shows that, in social media, falsehood is shared far more than evidence-based information. However, there is less research analyzing the circulation of false and evidence-based information during health emergencies. Thus, the present study aims at shedding new light on the type of tweets that circulated on Twitter around the COVID-19 outbreak for two days, in order to analyze how false and true information was shared. To that end, 1000 tweets have been analyzed. Results show that false information is tweeted more but retweeted less than science-based evidence or fact-checking tweets, while science-based evidence and fact-checking tweets capture more engagement than mere facts. These findings bring relevant insights to inform public health policies.

scholarly journals Population simulations of COVID-19 outbreaks provide tools for risk assessment and continuity planning

JAMIA Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo Peng ◽  
Rowland W Pettit ◽  
Christopher I Amos
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Emergency Response ◽  
Robustness Analysis ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Command Line ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Continuity Planning ◽  
Quantitative Estimates ◽  
Community Infection

Abstract Objectives We developed COVID-19 Outbreak Simulator (https://ictr.github.io/covid19-outbreak-simulator/) to quantitatively estimate the effectiveness of preventative and interventive measures to prevent and battle COVID-19 outbreaks for specific populations. Materials and methods Our simulator simulates the entire course of infection and transmission of the virus among individuals in heterogeneous populations, subject to operations and influences, such as quarantine, testing, social distancing, and community infection. It provides command-line and Jupyter notebook interfaces and a plugin system for user-defined operations. Results The simulator provides quantitative estimates for COVID-19 outbreaks in a variety of scenarios and assists the development of public health policies, risk-reduction operations, and emergency response plans. Discussion Our simulator is powerful, flexible, and customizable, although successful applications require realistic estimation and robustness analysis of population-specific parameters. Conclusion Risk assessment and continuity planning for COVID-19 outbreaks are crucial for the continued operation of many organizations. Our simulator will be continuously expanded to meet this need.

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