scholarly journals Addressing COVID-19 Among People Experiencing Homelessness: Description, Adaptation, and Early Findings of a Multiagency Response in Boston

2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis P. Baggett ◽  
Melanie W. Racine ◽  
Elizabeth Lewis ◽  
Denise De Las Nueces ◽  
James J. O’Connell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Care Model ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Symptom Screening ◽  
Contact Investigation ◽  
Health Agencies

People experiencing homelessness are at high risk for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In March 2020, Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, in partnership with city and state public health agencies, municipal leaders, and homeless service providers, developed and implemented a citywide COVID-19 care model for this vulnerable population. Components included symptom screening at shelter front doors, expedited testing at pop-up sites, isolation and management venues for symptomatic people under investigation and for people with confirmed disease, quarantine venues for asymptomatic exposed people, and contact investigation and tracing. Real-time disease surveillance efforts in a large shelter outbreak of COVID-19 during the third week of operations illustrated the need for several adaptations to the care model to better respond to the local epidemiology of illness among people experiencing homelessness. Symptom screening was de-emphasized given the high number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic infections discovered during mass testing; contact tracing and quarantining were phased out under the assumption of universal exposure among the sheltered population; and isolation and management venues were rapidly expanded to accommodate a surge in people with newly diagnosed COVID-19. During the first 6 weeks of operation, 429 of 1297 (33.1%) tested people were positive for COVID-19; of these, 395 people were experiencing homelessness at the time of testing, representing about 10% of the homeless adult population in Boston. Universal testing, as resources permit, is a focal point of ongoing efforts to mitigate the effect of COVID-19 on this vulnerable group of people.

scholarly journals Epidemiology of Lyme Disease

1991 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 58-60
Author(s):  
Dennis J White
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Lyme Disease ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Vector Species ◽  
Potential Vector ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Laboratory Services ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Surveillance Programs ◽  
Risk Of Exposure

Investigation of the epidemiology of Lyme disease depends upon information generated from several sources. Human disease surveillance can be conducted by both passive and active means involving physicians, public health agencies and laboratories. Passive and active tick surveillance programs can document the extent of tick-borne activity, identify the geographic range of potential vector species, and determine the relative risk of exposure to Lyme disease in specific areas. Standardized laboratory services can play an important role in providing data. Epidemiologists can gain a better understanding of Lyme disease through the collection of data from such programs. The interpretation of data and provision of information to the medical and general communities are important functions of public health agencies.

scholarly journals COVID-19 Pandemic & Bureaucracy: The Crisis Inside the Crisis

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katalyn Roßmann ◽  
Heike Wegner ◽  
Hans Stark ◽  
Gerd Großmann ◽  
Andreas Jansen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Public Health Approach ◽  
Outbreak Management ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
German Armed Forces ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Crisis Support ◽  
Second Wave

The Medical Intelligence and Information (MI2) Unit of the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) is experienced in crisis support in military missions since several years. It gained additional experiences during the current coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on different levels of the response to crisis and was requested to share the findings and expertise with the overloaded civil public health agencies inside Germany. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the unit is constantly developing new products for crisis communication, knowledge sharing techniques in new databases, dashboards for leadership, and training for laypersons in contact tracing. Hence, trying to innovate in crisis since the first severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV)-2-disease wave. During the second wave, the unit was requested to evaluate the outbreak management of different national civil public health agencies in southern Germany, and to support the development of dashboards in a comprehensive public health approach as a necessary start toward digitalization.

scholarly journals Phylogenomic Pipeline Validation for Foodborne Pathogen Disease Surveillance

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth E. Timme ◽  
Errol Strain ◽  
Joseph D. Baugher ◽  
Steven Davis ◽  
Narjol Gonzalez-Escalona ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Foodborne Pathogen ◽  
The United States ◽  
Strain Identification ◽  
Outbreak Response ◽  
Entire Genome ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Regulatory Decision ◽  
Health Agencies

ABSTRACT Foodborne pathogen surveillance in the United States is transitioning from strain identification using restriction digest technology (pulsed-field gel electrophoresis [PFGE]) to shotgun sequencing of the entire genome (whole-genome sequencing [WGS]). WGS requires a new suite of analysis tools, some of which have long histories in academia but are new to the field of public health and regulatory decision making. Although the general workflow is fairly standard for collecting and analyzing WGS data for disease surveillance, there are a number of differences in how the data are collected and analyzed across public health agencies, both nationally and internationally. This impedes collaborative public health efforts, so national and international efforts are underway to enable direct comparison of these different analysis methods. Ultimately, the harmonization efforts will allow the (mutually trusted and understood) production and analysis of WGS data by labs and agencies worldwide, thus improving outbreak response capabilities globally. This review provides a historical perspective on the use of WGS for pathogen tracking and summarizes the efforts underway to ensure the major steps in phylogenomic pipelines used for pathogen disease surveillance can be readily validated. The tools for doing this will ensure that the results produced are sound, reproducible, and comparable across different analytic approaches.

scholarly journals Potential reduction in transmission of COVID-19 by digital contact tracing systems

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J Plank ◽  
Alex James ◽  
Audrey Lustig ◽  
Nicholas Steyn ◽  
Rachelle N Binny ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Uptake Rate ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Reproduction Number ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Location Tracking ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Proximity Detection ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Age Structured

Digital tools are being developed to support contact tracing as part of the global effort to control the spread of COVID-19. These include smartphone apps, Bluetooth-based proximity detection, location tracking, and automatic exposure notification features. Evidence on the effectiveness of alternative approaches to digital contact tracing is so far limited. We use an age-structured branching process model of the transmission of COVID-19 in different settings to estimate the potential of manual contact tracing and digital tracing systems to help control the epidemic. We investigate the effect of the uptake rate and proportion of contacts recorded by the digital system on key model outputs: the effective reproduction number, the mean outbreak size after 30 days, and the probability of elimination. We show that effective manual contact tracing can reduce the effective reproduction number from 2.4 to around 1.5. The addition of a digital tracing system with a high uptake rate over 75% could further reduce the effective reproduction number to around 1.1. Fully automated digital tracing without manual contact tracing is predicted to be much less effective. We conclude that, for digital tracing systems to make a significant contribution to the control of COVID-19, they need be designed in close conjunction with public health agencies to support and complement manual contact tracing by trained professionals.

Contact Tracing and Consequences

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Kulldorff
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Agencies

COVID-19 contact tracing programs are eroding trust between the public and public health agencies—with potential dire consequences for future disease outbreaks in which contact tracing could be critical.

scholarly journals Ten years of diphtheria toxin testing and toxigenic cutaneous diphtheria investigations in Alberta, Canada: a highly-vaccinated population

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie C Marshall ◽  
Maulik Baxi ◽  
Clayton MacDonald ◽  
Angela Jacobs ◽  
Christopher A Sikora ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
North America ◽  
Diphtheria Toxin ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Endemic Region ◽  
Travel History ◽  
Cutaneous Infections ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Health Agencies

Abstract Respiratory diphtheria is a potentially-fatal toxin-mediated disease that is rare among highly-vaccinated populations. Cutaneous infections with toxigenic Corynebacterium diphtheriae are most commonly linked to travel to an endemic region, though C. ulcerans has emerged as a predominant, locally-acquired cause of respiratory and cutaneous diphtheria in Western Europe. Recently, public health agencies from several highly-vaccinated regions expanded their guidelines to investigate toxigenic cutaneous diphtheria regardless of travel history. With relatively unknown epidemiology of C. diphtheriae in North America, and increasing diphtheria toxin testing over the last decade, this change could lead to substantial increases in public health investigations with unclear benefits. Therefore, this study examined the diagnostic and public health benefits of toxigenic cutaneous diphtheria investigations in the highly-vaccinated population of Alberta, Canada, where travel history is not required for cutaneous diphtheria investigations. Reviewing all C. diphtheriae isolates collected between 2010–2019, 82% were isolated from cutaneous sites and 5% were toxigenic. Three cases of toxigenic cutaneous disease were identified, none from patients with recent travel. Contact tracing identified asymptomatic C. diphtheriae colonization among 0–26% of close contacts, with identical isolate profiles among colonized contacts and primary cases. Overall, this study supports the exclusion of travel history as a prerequisite for public health investigations in North America. While further studies are needed to assess the prevalence and impact of endemic C. ulcerans in North America, this study suggests differing epidemiology of toxigenic corynebacteria compared to Europe and underscores the importance of including C. ulcerans in changing public health guidelines.

A comparison of risk factors for cigarette and e-cigarette use in the United States adult population.

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1546-1546
Author(s):  
Leo Chen ◽  
Nai Wen Wang ◽  
Winson Y. Cheung
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
The Us ◽  
Quitting Smoking ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
National Trends

1546 Background: The US CDC and public health agencies have reported alarming increases in e-cigarette (ecig) use among youth, even as cigarette (cig) use among youth decline. In this study, other risk factors for cig and ecig use are compared. Methods: This study used data from the Health Information National Trends Survey 5 Cycle 1 survey, conducted in 2017. Univariate survey-weighted logistic regression analyzed responses as a nationally representative US population. Results: Inverted trends included being 35 or older (cig: OR=1.22, p<0.01; ecig: OR=0.79, p<0.01), being a student (cig: OR=0.77, p<0.01; ecig: OR=1.24, p<0.01) or retired (cig: OR=1.09, p<0.01; ecig: OR=0.89, p<0.01) compared to being employed, and being single (cig: OR=0.92, p<0.03; ecig: OR=1.18, p<0.01). Having considered quitting smoking was not significantly associated with ecig use. Conclusions: Segments of the US adult population educated with anti-tobacco campaigns may remain at increased risk for ecig use.[Table: see text]

scholarly journals The Economic Cost of Communicable Disease Surveillance in Local Public Health Agencies

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 2343-2356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Atherly ◽  
Melanie Whittington ◽  
Lisa VanRaemdonck ◽  
Sarah Lampe
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Communicable Disease ◽  
Economic Cost ◽  
Local Public Health ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Health Agencies

Tracing or Tracking? A Preliminary Analysis of COVID-19 Outbreak Tracker Apps on Android and User Privacy (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Akinbi ◽  
Ehizojie Ojie
Keyword(s):  
Preliminary Analysis ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
User Participation ◽  
Memory Storage ◽  
Phone Call ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Privacy Rights ◽  
User Privacy ◽  
Android Apps ◽  
User Data

BACKGROUND Technology using digital contact tracing apps has the potential to slow the spread of COVID-19 outbreaks by recording proximity events between individuals and alerting people who have been exposed. However, there are concerns about the abuse of user privacy rights as such apps can be repurposed to collect private user data by service providers and governments who like to gather their citizens’ private data. OBJECTIVE The objective of our study was to conduct a preliminary analysis of 34 COVID-19 trackers Android apps used in 29 individual countries to track COVID-19 symptoms, cases, and provide public health information. METHODS We identified each app’s AndroidManifest.xml resource file and examined the dangerous permissions requested by each app. RESULTS The results in this study show 70.5% of the apps request access to user location data, 47% request access to phone activities including the phone number, cellular network information, and the status of any ongoing calls. 44% of the apps request access to read from external memory storage and 2.9% request permission to download files without notification. 17.6% of the apps initiate a phone call without giving the user option to confirm the call. CONCLUSIONS The contributions of this study include a description of these dangerous permissions requested by each app and its effects on user privacy. We discuss principles that must be adopted in the development of future tracking and contact tracing apps to preserve the privacy of users and show transparency which in turn will encourage user participation.

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