scholarly journals SARS-CoV-2 PCR and antibody testing for an entire rural community: methods and feasibility of high-throughput testing procedures

2021 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayesha Appa ◽  
Gabriel Chamie ◽  
Aenor Sawyer ◽  
Kimberly Baltzell ◽  
Kathryn Dippell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rural Community ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
High Volume ◽  
Medical Personnel ◽  
Blood Collection ◽  
Sample Collection ◽  
Antibody Testing ◽  
Testing Procedures

Abstract Background Early in the pandemic, inadequate SARS-CoV-2 testing limited understanding of transmission. Chief among barriers to large-scale testing was unknown feasibility, particularly in non-urban areas. Our objective was to report methods of high-volume, comprehensive SARS-CoV-2 testing, offering one model to augment disease surveillance in a rural community. Methods A community-university partnership created an operational site used to test most residents of Bolinas, California regardless of symptoms in 4 days (April 20th – April 23rd, 2020). Prior to testing, key preparatory elements included community mobilization, pre-registration, volunteer recruitment, and data management. On day of testing, participants were directed to a testing lane after site entry. An administrator viewed the lane-specific queue and pre-prepared test kits, linked to participants’ records. Medical personnel performed sample collection, which included finger prick with blood collection to run laboratory-based antibody testing and respiratory specimen collection for polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Results Using this 4-lane model, 1,840 participants were tested in 4 days. A median of 57 participants (IQR 47–67) were tested hourly. The fewest participants were tested on day 1 (n = 338 participants), an intentionally lower volume day, increasing to n = 571 participants on day 4. The number of testing teams was also increased to two per lane to allow simultaneous testing of multiple participants on days 2–4. Consistent staffing on all days helped optimize proficiency, and strong community partnership was essential from planning through execution. Conclusions High-volume ascertainment of SARS-CoV-2 prevalence by PCR and antibody testing was feasible when conducted in a community-led, drive-through model in a non-urban area.

scholarly journals SARS-CoV-2 PCR and antibody testing for an entire rural community: methods and feasibility of high-throughput testing procedures

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayesha Appa ◽  
Gabriel Chamie ◽  
Aenor Sawyer ◽  
Kimberly Baltzell ◽  
Kathryn Dippell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rural Community ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
High Volume ◽  
Antibody Testing ◽  
Testing Procedures ◽  
Technical Platform

High-volume, community-wide ascertainment of SARS-CoV-2 prevalence by PCR and antibody testing was successfully performed using a community-led, drive-through model with strong operational support, well-trained testing units, and an effective technical platform

scholarly journals Beyond simple charts: Design of visualizations for big health data

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oluwakemi Ola ◽  
Kamran Sedig
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Health Management ◽  
High Volume ◽  
Health Data ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Interactive Visualizations ◽  
Scatter Plots ◽  
At Risk Populations

Health data is often big data due to its high volume, low veracity, great variety, and high velocity. Big health data has the potential to improve productivity, eliminate waste, and support a broad range of tasks related to disease surveillance, patient care, research, and population health management. Interactive visualizations have the potential to amplify big data’s utilization. Visualizations can be used to support a variety of tasks, such as tracking the geographic distribution of diseases, analyzing the prevalence of disease, triaging medical records, predicting outbreaks, and discovering at-risk populations. Currently, many health visualization tools use simple charts, such as bar charts and scatter plots, that only represent few facets of data. These tools, while beneficial for simple perceptual and cognitive tasks, are ineffective when dealing with more complex sensemaking tasks that involve exploration of various facets and elements of big data simultaneously. There is need for sophisticated and elaborate visualizations that encode many facets of data and support human-data interaction with big data and more complex tasks. When not approached systematically, design of such visualizations is labor-intensive, and the resulting designs may not facilitate big-data-driven tasks. Conceptual frameworks that guide the design of visualizations for big data can make the design process more manageable and result in more effective visualizations. In this paper, we demonstrate how a framework-based approach can help designers create novel, elaborate, non-trivial visualizations for big health data. We present four visualizations that are components of a larger tool for making sense of large-scale public health data. 

scholarly journals The promise of direct-to-consumer COVID-19 testing: ethical and regulatory issues

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louiza Kalokairinou ◽  
Patricia J Zettler ◽  
Ashwini Nagappan ◽  
Moira A Kyweluk ◽  
Anna Wexler
Keyword(s):  
Diagnostic Testing ◽  
Medical Personnel ◽  
Test Accuracy ◽  
Sample Collection ◽  
Antibody Testing ◽  
Serological Tests ◽  
Direct To Consumer ◽  
Healthcare Settings ◽  
Commercial Laboratory ◽  
The Usa

Abstract Widespread diagnostic and serological (antibody) testing is one key to mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic. While at first, the majority of COVID-19 diagnostic testing in the USA took place in healthcare settings, quickly a direct-to-consumer (DTC) testing market also emerged. In these DTC provision models, the test is initiated by a consumer and the sample collection occurs at home or in a commercial laboratory. Although the provision of DTC tests has potential benefits—such as expanding access to testing and reducing the risk of exposure for consumers and medical personnel—it also raises significant ethical and regulatory concerns. This article reviews these challenges and shows how they parallel and also diverge from prior concerns raised in the DTC health testing arena. The first part of this paper provides an overview of the landscape of diagnostic and serological tests for COVID-19, anticipating how provision models are likely to evolve in the future. The second part discusses five primary issues for DTC COVID-19 tests: test accuracy; potential misinterpretation of results; misleading claims and other misinformation; privacy concerns; and fair allocation of scarce resources. We conclude with recommendations for regulators and companies that aim to ensure ethically marketed DTC COVID-19 tests.

scholarly journals Evaluation of dried blood spots as alternative sampling material for serological detection of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies using established ELISAs

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heike Weisser ◽  
Katja Steinhagen ◽  
Ralf Höcker ◽  
Viola Borchardt-Lohölter ◽  
Özlem Anvari ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Correlation Coefficients ◽  
Dried Blood Spots ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Sample Collection ◽  
Antibody Testing ◽  
Serum Samples ◽  
Perfect Agreement ◽  
Blood Spots ◽  
Paired Samples

Abstract Objectives During the current pandemic, antibody testing based on venous serum helps to determine whether the tested person has been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2. Alternatively, capillary blood can be taken via a finger prick (dried blood spots, DBS). In this study, paired DBS and venipuncture samples were tested using two serological assays to evaluate the usability of DBS for the detection of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Methods Paired samples of DBS and venous serum were collected from 389 volunteers, of whom 75 had a recent PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, and tested for anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies against both viral S1 and nucleocapsid protein (NCP) antigens using two ELISAs. Degree of agreement and correlation coefficients between ELISA results based on the two sampling methods were calculated. Results Results of DBS showed almost perfect agreement and high correlations with results from corresponding serum samples in both the S1-based ELISA and the NCP-based ELISA. Conclusions ELISA results derived from DBS showed very high agreement to those obtained with serum, supposing adequate usability and robustness of DBS as sample material for detection of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. In the near future, large-scale epidemiological screening for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 will be carried out. Since DBS reduce the strain on healthcare institutions regarding sample collection, they have a potential to facilitate efficient community- and population-based screening in the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

scholarly journals Remote fingerstick blood collection for SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilfredo F. Garcia-Beltran ◽  
Tyler E. Miller ◽  
Grace Kirkpatrick ◽  
Andrea Nixon ◽  
Michael G. Astudillo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Throughput ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Dynamic Range ◽  
Venous Blood ◽  
Blood Collection ◽  
Antibody Testing ◽  
Antibody Assay ◽  
Serum Samples ◽  
Blood Draw ◽  
Serological Tests

ABSTRACTThe rapid worldwide spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection has propelled the accelerated development of serological tests that can detect anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. These have been used for studying the prevalence and spread of infection in different populations, helping establish a recent diagnosis of COVID-19, and will likely be used to confirm humoral immunity after infection or vaccination. However, nearly all lab-based high-throughput SARS-CoV-2 serological assays require a serum sample from venous blood draw, limiting their applications and scalability. Here, we present a method that enables large scale SARS-CoV-2 serological studies by combining self or office collection of fingerprick blood with a volumetric absorptive microsampling device (Mitra, Neoteryx, LLC) with a high-throughput electrochemiluminescence-based SARS-CoV-2 total antibody assay (Roche Elecsys, Roche Diagnostics, Inc.) that is EUA approved for use on serum samples and widely used by clinical laboratories around the world. We found that the Roche Elecsys assay has a high dynamic range that allows for accurate detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in serum samples diluted 1:20 as well as contrived dried blood extracts. Extracts of dried blood from Mitra devices acquired in a community seroprevalence study showed near identical sensitivity and specificity in detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies as compared to neat sera using predefined thresholds for each specimen type. Overall, this study affirms the use of Mitra dried blood collection device with the Roche Elecsys SARS-CoV-2 total antibody assay for remote or at-home testing as well as large-scale community seroprevalence studies.

scholarly journals Abattoir-Based Serological Surveillance for Transboundary and Zoonotic Diseases in Cattle and Swine in Cambodia: A Pilot Study in Phnom Phen Province During 2019 and 2020.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jarunee Siengsanan-Lamont ◽  
Sothyra Tum ◽  
Lida Kong ◽  
Paul W. Selleck ◽  
Laurence J. Gleeson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Q Fever ◽  
Significant Risk ◽  
Zoonotic Diseases ◽  
P Value ◽  
Surveillance Program ◽  
Sample Collection ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Antibody Elisa

Abstract A pilot animal disease surveillance program was implemented at four abattoirs in Phnom Penh, Cambodia between October 2019 to January 2020. A total of 1,141 samples were collected from 477 cattle and 664 swine. Serological testing was performed using commercial antibody ELISA kits for zoonotic and high impact animal diseases, namely brucellosis, Q fever, CSF, PRRS and ASF. Only two samples tested positive for brucella antibodies (0.2% (0.4, 0.6), n = 1,141). The seroprevalences of Q fever was 0.8% (0.3, 2.1, n = 477) in the cattle samples while CSF, PRRS and ASF in pigs were 55.4% (51.6, 59.2, n = 655), 81.2% (78.1, 84.0, n = 655) and 2.6% (1.6, 4.1, n = 664), respectively. All 38 doubtful and 17 positive ASF antibody ELISA samples were negative when tested by real-time PCR. Statistical analyses demonstrated that the factors that were significantly associated with positive results of Q fever was sampling date (p-value = 0.04), and for ASF was the location of the abattoir (p-value = 0.002). Significant risk factors for both CSF and PRRS were the province of origin of the animals (CSF: p-value = 0.002; PRRS: p-value = 0.004) and sample collection month (CSF: p-value = 1.6 x 10− 6 ; PRRS: p-value = 4.8 x 10− 13). In conclusion, the prevalence of zoonotic diseases tested for in this study were very low. The high prevalences of CSF and PRRS antibodies were most likely the result of vaccination. All ASF seropositive pigs, including those that gave equivocal results, originated from large-scale Cambodian-based commercial farms, as well as Thailand, which raises questions about possible illegal vaccination or low-pathogenicity ASF variants. The pilot abattoir serosurveillance program described here has the potential to provide a sentinel for incursions of novel and endemic pathogens although further work is required to demonstrate its capacity to provide information on the longitudinal disease trends.

Engineering in the time of cholera: overcoming institutional and political challenges to rebuild Zimbabwe's water and sanitation infrastructure in the aftermath of the 2008 cholera epidemic

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clarissa Brocklehurst ◽  
Murtaza Malik ◽  
Kiwe Sebunya ◽  
Peter Salama
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Rapid Improvement ◽  
Cholera Epidemic ◽  
Rapid Action ◽  
Water And Sanitation Infrastructure ◽  
Urban Rehabilitation

A devastating cholera epidemic swept Zimbabwe in 2008, causing over 90,000 cases, and leaving more than 4,000 dead. The epidemic raged predominantly in urban areas, and the cause could be traced to the slow deterioration of Zimbabwe's water and sewerage utilities during the economic and political crisis that had gripped the country since the late 1990s. Rapid improvement was needed if the country was to avoid another cholera outbreak. In this context, donors, development agencies and government departments joined forces to work in a unique partnership, and to implement a programme of swift improvements that went beyond emergency humanitarian aid but did not require the time or massive investment associated with full-scale urban rehabilitation. The interventions ranged from supply of water treatment chemicals and sewer rods to advocacy and policy advice. The authors analyse the factors that made the programme effective and the challenges that partners faced. The case of Zimbabwe offers valuable lessons for other countries transitioning from emergency to development, and particularly those that need to take rapid action to upgrade failing urban systems. It illustrates that there is a ‘middle path’ between short-term humanitarian aid delivered in urban areas and large-scale urban rehabilitation, which can provide timely and highly effective results.

scholarly journals Clinical Evaluation of the Torq Zero Delay Centrifuge System for Decentralized Blood Collection and Stabilization

Diagnostics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1019
Author(s):  
Kyungjin Hong ◽  
Gabriella Iacovetti ◽  
Ali Rahimian ◽  
Sean Hong ◽  
Jon Epperson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Chemistry ◽  
Blood Collection ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Sample Collection ◽  
Rapid Separation ◽  
Cell Counts ◽  
Collection Device ◽  
Precision Study ◽  
Clinically Significant ◽  
Blood Specimens

Blood sample collection and rapid separation—critical preanalytical steps in clinical chemistry—can be challenging in decentralized collection settings. To address this gap, the Torq™ zero delay centrifuge system includes a lightweight, hand-portable centrifuge (ZDrive™) and a disc-shaped blood collection device (ZDisc™) enabling immediate sample centrifugation at the point of collection. Here, we report results from clinical validation studies comparing performance of the Torq System with a conventional plasma separation tube (PST). Blood specimens from 134 subjects were collected and processed across three independent sites to compare ZDisc and PST performance in the assessment of 14 analytes (K, Na, Cl, Ca, BUN, creatinine, AST, ALT, ALP, total bilirubin, albumin, total protein, cholesterol, and triglycerides). A 31-subject precision study was performed to evaluate reproducibility of plasma test results from ZDiscs, and plasma quality was assessed by measuring hemolysis and blood cells from 10 subject specimens. The ZDisc successfully collected and processed samples from 134 subjects. ZDisc results agreed with reference PSTs for all 14 analytes with mean % biases well below clinically significant levels. Results were reproducible across different operators and ZDisc production lots, and plasma blood cell counts and hemolysis levels fell well below clinical acceptance thresholds. ZDiscs produce plasma samples equivalent to reference PSTs. Results support the suitability of the Torq System for remotely collecting and processing blood samples in decentralized settings.

scholarly journals Modeling Spatiotemporal Population Changes by Integrating DMSP-OLS and NPP-VIIRS Nighttime Light Data in Chongqing, China

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 284
Author(s):  
Dan Lu ◽  
Yahui Wang ◽  
Qingyuan Yang ◽  
Kangchuan Su ◽  
Haozhe Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
Relative Error ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Population Distribution ◽  
Spatial Optimization ◽  
Distribution Data ◽  
Mountainous Areas ◽  
Mean Relative Error ◽  
Nighttime Light

The sustained growth of non-farm wages has led to large-scale migration of rural population to cities in China, especially in mountainous areas. It is of great significance to study the spatial and temporal pattern of population migration mentioned above for guiding population spatial optimization and the effective supply of public services in the mountainous areas. Here, we determined the spatiotemporal evolution of population in the Chongqing municipality of China from 2000–2018 by employing multi-period spatial distribution data, including nighttime light (NTL) data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program’s Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP-VIIRS). There was a power function relationship between the two datasets at the pixel scale, with a mean relative error of NTL integration of 8.19%, 4.78% less than achieved by a previous study at the provincial scale. The spatial simulations of population distribution achieved a mean relative error of 26.98%, improved the simulation accuracy for mountainous population by nearly 20% and confirmed the feasibility of this method in Chongqing. During the study period, the spatial distribution of Chongqing’s population has increased in the west and decreased in the east, while also increased in low-altitude areas and decreased in medium-high altitude areas. Population agglomeration was common in all of districts and counties and the population density of central urban areas and its surrounding areas significantly increased, while that of non-urban areas such as northeast Chongqing significantly decreased.

The Economic Imperative: Cities Need Migrants

2021 ◽  
pp. 001946622110132
Author(s):  
Astha Agarwalla ◽  
Errol D’Souza
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Market Failure ◽  
Jel Classification ◽  
Industry Concentration ◽  
Wage Curve ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
Reverse Migration ◽  
Local Labour

The policy responses to Covid-19 have triggered large-scale reverse migration from cities to rural areas in developing countries, exposing the vulnerability of migrants living precarious lives in cities, giving rise to debates asserting to migration as undesirable and favouring policy options to discourage the process. However, the very basis of spatial concentration and formation of cities is presence of agglomeration economies, benefits accruing to economic agents operating in cities. Presence of these agglomeration benefits in local labour markets manifests themselves in the form of an upward sloping wage curve in urban areas. We estimate the upward sloping wage curve for various size classes of cities in Indian economy and establish the presence of positive returns to occupation and industry concentration at urban locations. Controlling for worker-specific characteristics influencing wages, we establish that higher the share of an industry or an occupation in local employment as compared to national economy, the desirability of firms to pay higher wages increases. For casual labourers, occupational concentration results in higher wages. However, impact of industry concentration varies across sectors. Results supporting presence of upward sloping urban wage curve, therefore, endorse policies to correct the market failure in cities and promote migration as a desirable process. JEL Classification Codes: J2, R2

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