Curating the Evidence About COVID-19 for Frontline Public Health and Clinical Care: The Novel Coronavirus Research Compendium

2021 ◽  
pp. 003335492110587
Author(s):  
Andrew D. Redd ◽  
Lauren S. Peetluk ◽  
Brooke A. Jarrett ◽  
Colleen Hanrahan ◽  
Sheree Schwartz ◽  
...  

The public health crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a deluge of scientific research aimed at informing the public health and medical response to the pandemic. However, early in the pandemic, those working in frontline public health and clinical care had insufficient time to parse the rapidly evolving evidence and use it for decision-making. Academics in public health and medicine were well-placed to translate the evidence for use by frontline clinicians and public health practitioners. The Novel Coronavirus Research Compendium (NCRC), a group of >60 faculty and trainees across the United States, formed in March 2020 with the goal to quickly triage and review the large volume of preprints and peer-reviewed publications on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 and summarize the most important, novel evidence to inform pandemic response. From April 6 through December 31, 2020, NCRC teams screened 54 192 peer-reviewed articles and preprints, of which 527 were selected for review and uploaded to the NCRC website for public consumption. Most articles were peer-reviewed publications (n = 395, 75.0%), published in 102 journals; 25.1% (n = 132) of articles reviewed were preprints. The NCRC is a successful model of how academics translate scientific knowledge for practitioners and help build capacity for this work among students. This approach could be used for health problems beyond COVID-19, but the effort is resource intensive and may not be sustainable in the long term.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew D. Redd ◽  
Lauren Peetluk ◽  
Brooke Jarrett ◽  
Colleen Hanrahan ◽  
Sheree Schwartz ◽  
...  

AbstractThe public health crisis created by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has spurred a deluge of scientific research aimed at informing public health and medical response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, those working in frontline public health and clinical care had insufficient time to parse the rapidly evolving evidence and use it for decision making. Academics in public health and medicine were well-placed to translate the evidence for use by frontline clinicians and public health practitioners. The Novel Coronavirus Research Compendium (NCRC), a group of >50 faculty and trainees, began in March 2020 with the goal to quickly triage and review the large volume of preprints and peer-reviewed publications on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, and to summarize the most important, novel evidence to inform pandemic response. From April 6, 2020 through January 1, 2021, 54,192 papers and preprints were screened by NCRC teams and 527 were selected for review and uploaded to the NCRC website for public consumption. The majority of papers reviewed were peer-reviewed publications (n=395, 75%), published in 102 journals; 25% (n=132) of papers reviewed were of preprints. The NCRC is a successful model of how academics can support practitioners by translating scientific knowledge into action and help to build capacity among students for this work. This approach could be used for health problems beyond COVID-19, but the effort is resource intensive and may not be sustainable over the long term.


European View ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-163
Author(s):  
Nad’a Kovalčíková ◽  
Ariane Tabatabai

As governments and citizens around the world have struggled with the novel coronavirus, the information space has turned into a battleground. Authoritarian countries, including Russia, China and Iran, have spread disinformation on the causes of and responses to the pandemic. The over-abundance of information, also referred to as an ‘infodemic’, including manipulated information, has been both a cause and a result of the exacerbation of the public health crisis. It is further undermining trust in democratic institutions, the independent press, and facts and data, and exacerbating the rising tensions driven by economic, political and societal challenges. This article discusses the challenges democracies have faced and the measures they have adopted to counter information manipulation that impedes public health efforts. It draws seven lessons learned from the information war and offers a set of recommendations on tackling future infodemics related to public health.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 462-468
Author(s):  
Latika kothari ◽  
Sanskruti Wadatkar ◽  
Roshni Taori ◽  
Pavan Bajaj ◽  
Diksha Agrawal

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a communicable infection caused by the novel coronavirus resulting in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV). It was recognized to be a health crisis for the general population of international concern on 30th January 2020 and conceded as a pandemic on 11th March 2020. India is taking various measures to fight this invisible enemy by adopting different strategies and policies. To stop the COVID-19 from spreading, the Home Affairs Ministry and the health ministry, of India, has issued the nCoV 19 guidelines on travel. Screening for COVID-19 by asking questions about any symptoms, recent travel history, and exposure. India has been trying to get testing kits available. The government of India has enforced various laws like the social distancing, Janata curfew, strict lockdowns, screening door to door to control the spread of novel coronavirus. In this pandemic, innovative medical treatments are being explored, and a proper vaccine is being hunted to deal with the situation. Infection control measures are necessary to prevent the virus from further spreading and to help control the current situation. Thus, this review illustrates and explains the criteria provided by the government of India to the awareness of the public to prevent the spread of COVID-19.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tao Hu ◽  
Siqin Wang ◽  
Wei Luo ◽  
Mengxi Zhang ◽  
Xiao Huang ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed a large, initially uncontrollable, public health crisis both in the US and across the world, with experts looking to vaccines as the ultimate mechanism of defense. The development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines have been rapidly advancing via global efforts. Hence, it is crucial for governments, public health officials, and policy makers to understand public attitudes and opinions towards vaccines, such that effective interventions and educational campaigns can be designed to promote vaccine acceptance OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to investigate public opinion and perception on COVID-19 vaccines by investigating the spatiotemporal trends of their sentiment and emotion towards vaccines, as well as how such trends relate to popular topics on Twitter in the US METHODS We collected over 300,000 geotagged tweets in the US from March 1, 2020 to February 28, 2021. We examined the spatiotemporal patterns of public sentiment and emotion over time at both national and state scales and identified three phases along the pandemic timeline with the significant changes of public sentiment and emotion, further linking to eleven key events and major topics as the potential drivers to induce such changes via cloud mapping of keywords and topic modelling RESULTS An increasing trend of positive sentiment in parallel with the decrease of negative sentiment are generally observed in most states, reflecting the rising confidence and anticipation of the public towards vaccines. The overall tendency of the eight types of emotion implies the trustiness and anticipation of the public to vaccination, accompanied by the mixture of fear, sadness and anger. Critical social/international events and/or the announcements of political leaders and authorities may have potential impacts on the public opinion on vaccines. These factors, along with important topics and manual reading of popular posts on eleven key events, help identify underlying themes and validate insights from the analysis CONCLUSIONS The analyses of near real-time social media big data benefit public health authorities by enabling them to monitor public attitudes and opinions towards vaccine-related information in a geo-aware manner, address the concerns of vaccine skeptics and promote the confidence of individuals within a certain region or community, towards vaccines


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 967-981 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Gollust ◽  
Rebekah H. Nagler ◽  
Erika Franklin Fowler

Abstract The coronavirus public health crisis is also a political-communication and health-communication crisis. In this article, the authors describe the key communication-related phenomena and evidence of concerning effects manifested in the United States during the initial response to the pandemic. The authors outline the conditions of communication about coronavirus that contribute to deleterious outcomes, including partisan cueing, conflicting science, downplayed threats, emotional arousal, fragmented media, and Trump's messaging. The authors suggest these have contributed to divergent responses by media sources, partisan leaders, and the public alike, leading to different attitudes and beliefs as well as varying protective actions taken by members of the public to reduce their risk. In turn, these divergent communication phenomena will likely amplify geographic variation in and inequities with COVID-19 disease outcomes. The authors conclude with some suggestions for future research, particularly surrounding communication about health inequity and strategies for reducing partisan divergence in views of public health issues in the future.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (03) ◽  
pp. 366-369
Author(s):  
Rooh Ullah ◽  
Muhammad Suleman Rana ◽  
Mehmood Qadir ◽  
Muhammad Usman ◽  
Niaz Ahmed

Pandemic of novel Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections in China is now become global public health crisis. At present 87.64% of the world is infected by this deadly illness. The risk from this epidemic depends on the nature of the virus, including how well it transmits from person to person, and the complications resulting from this current illness. The novel coronavirus has killed thousands of people in China and other countries as well; its rate of mortality is increasing day by day. There is an urgent need to control the virus by developing vaccine or any other antiviral drugs to save the world from this deadly viral infection.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. e0254127
Author(s):  
Sara Kazemian ◽  
Sam Fuller ◽  
Carlos Algara

Pundits and academics across disciplines note that the human toll brought forth by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the United States (U.S.) is fundamentally unequal for communities of color. Standing literature on public health posits that one of the chief predictors of racial disparity in health outcomes is a lack of institutional trust among minority communities. Furthermore, in our own county-level analysis from the U.S., we find that counties with higher percentages of Black and Hispanic residents have had vastly higher cumulative deaths from COVID-19. In light of this standing literature and our own analysis, it is critical to better understand how to mitigate or prevent these unequal outcomes for any future pandemic or public health emergency. Therefore, we assess the claim that raising institutional trust, primarily scientific trust, is key to mitigating these racial inequities. Leveraging a new, pre-pandemic measure of scientific trust, we find that trust in science, unlike trust in politicians or the media, significantly raises support for COVID-19 social distancing policies across racial lines. Our findings suggest that increasing scientific trust is essential to garnering support for public health policies that lessen the severity of the current, and potentially a future, pandemic.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muneeba Azmat

The pandemic of the 2019 novel Coronavirus has seen unprecedented exponential growth. Within three months, 192 countries have been affected, crossing more than 1 million confirmed cases and over 60 thousand deaths until the first week of April. Decision making in such a pandemic becomes difficult due to limited data on the nature of the disease and its propagation, course, prevention, and treatment. The pandemic response has varied from country to country and has resulted in a heterogeneous timeline for novel Coronavirus propagation. We compared the public health measures taken by various countries and the potential impact on the spread. We studied 6 countries including China, Italy, South Korea, Singapore, United Kingdom(UK), United States(US), and the special administrative region of Hong Kong. All articles, press releases, and websites of government entities published over a five-month period were included. A comparison of the date of the first diagnosed case, the spread of disease, and time since the first case and major public health policy implemented for prevention and containment and current cases was done. An emphasis on early and aggressive border restriction and surveillance of travelers from infected areas, use of information technology, and social distancing is necessary for control of the novel pandemic. Moving forwards, improvement in infrastructure, and adequate preparedness for pandemics is required.


2021 ◽  
pp. e1-e7
Author(s):  
William Riley ◽  
Kailey Love ◽  
Jeffrey McCullough

The COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated an acute blood shortage for medical transfusions, exacerbating an already tenuous blood supply system in the United States, contributing to the public health crisis, and raising deeper questions regarding emergency preparedness planning for ensuring blood availability. However, these issues around blood availability during the pandemic are related primarily to the decline in supply caused by reduced donations during the pandemic rather than increased demand for transfusion of patients with COVID-19. The challenges to ensure a safe blood supply during the pandemic will continue until a vaccine is developed, effective treatments are available, or the virus goes away. If this virus or a similar virus were capable of transmission through blood, it would have a catastrophic impact on the health care system, causing a future public health emergency that would jeopardize the national blood supply. In this article, we identify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on blood supply adequacy, discuss the public health implications, propose recovery strategies, and present recommendations for preparing for the next disruption in blood supply driven by a public health emergency. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print March 18, 2021: e1–e7. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306157 )


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 205873922110029
Author(s):  
Areeg M Dabbish ◽  
Nouran Yonis ◽  
Mohamed Salama ◽  
Musthafa M Essa ◽  
M Walid Qoronfleh

The public health crisis of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is alarming since January 2020. COVID-19 genome (SARS-CoV-2) is related to other highly pathogenic coronaviruses SARS-CoV (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus) and MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus). Amino acid substitutions in some of SARS-CoV-2 proteins resulted in mutations proposing more virulent and contagious properties for this novel virus. Coronavirus penetrates the host cell via endocytosis and once infected, immune responses are triggered to fight against the pathogen. Innate immune response activates major transcription factors to secrete proinflammatory cytokines and type 1 interferon response (T1INF) to induce antiviral immunity. While adaptive immunity initiates cascade of B-cells antibody mediated and T-cells cellular mediate immunities, several mechanisms are raised by SARS-CoV-2 to evade host immune response. Consequently, a surge of proinflammatory cytokines, known as cytokine storm (CS) are released. Failure to manage CS results in several pathological complications as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Although researches have not discovered an effective treatment against SARS-CoV-2, recent therapeutic approaches recommending the use of anti-inflammatories in combination with antivirals and some repurposed drugs for COVID-19 patients. Future medications should be designed to target essential hallmarks in the CS to improve clinical outcomes.


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