vaccination campaigns
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Healthcare ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Jung-Fa Tsai ◽  
Tai-Lin Chu ◽  
Edgar Hernan Cuevas Brun ◽  
Ming-Hua Lin

Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne disease that has rapidly spread throughout the last few decades. Most preventive mechanisms to deal with the disease focus on the eradication of the vector mosquito and vaccination campaigns. However, appropriate mechanisms of response are indispensable to face the consequent events when an outbreak takes place. This study applied single and multiple objective linear programming models to optimize the allocation of patients and additional resources during an epidemic dengue fever outbreak, minimizing the summation of the distance travelled by all patients. An empirical study was set in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. Data provided by a privately run health insurance cooperative was used to verify the applicability of the models in this study. The results can be used by analysts and decision makers to solve patient allocation problems for providing essential medical care during an epidemic dengue fever outbreak.


2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendrik Nunner ◽  
Arnout van de Rijt ◽  
Vincent Buskens

AbstractA twenty-year-old idea from network science is that vaccination campaigns would be more effective if high-contact individuals were preferentially targeted. Implementation is impeded by the ethical and practical problem of differentiating vaccine access based on a personal characteristic that is hard-to-measure and private. Here, we propose the use of occupational category as a proxy for connectedness in a contact network. Using survey data on occupation-specific contact frequencies, we calibrate a model of disease propagation in populations undergoing varying vaccination campaigns. We find that vaccination campaigns that prioritize high-contact occupational groups achieve similar infection levels with half the number of vaccines, while also reducing and delaying peaks. The paper thus identifies a concrete, operational strategy for dramatically improving vaccination efficiency in ongoing pandemics.


Viruses ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Gowri Yale ◽  
Marwin Lopes ◽  
Shrikrishna Isloor ◽  
Jennifer R. Head ◽  
Stella Mazeri ◽  
...  

Oral rabies vaccines (ORVs) have been in use to successfully control rabies in wildlife since 1978 across Europe and the USA. This review focuses on the potential and need for the use of ORVs in free-roaming dogs to control dog-transmitted rabies in India. Iterative work to improve ORVs over the past four decades has resulted in vaccines that have high safety profiles whilst generating a consistent protective immune response to the rabies virus. The available evidence for safety and efficacy of modern ORVs in dogs and the broad and outspoken support from prominent global public health institutions for their use provides confidence to national authorities considering their use in rabies-endemic regions. India is estimated to have the largest rabies burden of any country and, whilst considerable progress has been made to increase access to human rabies prophylaxis, examples of high-output mass dog vaccination campaigns to eliminate the virus at the source remain limited. Efficiently accessing a large proportion of the dog population through parenteral methods is a considerable challenge due to the large, evasive stray dog population in many settings. Existing parenteral approaches require large skilled dog-catching teams to reach these dogs, which present financial, operational and logistical limitations to achieve 70% dog vaccination coverage in urban settings in a short duration. ORV presents the potential to accelerate the development of approaches to eliminate rabies across large areas of the South Asia region. Here we review the use of ORVs in wildlife and dogs, with specific consideration of the India setting. We also present the results of a risk analysis for a hypothetical campaign using ORV for the vaccination of dogs in an Indian state.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimiter Toshkov

Attitudes towards vaccination have proven to be a major factor determining the pace of national COVID-19 vaccination campaigns throughout 2021. In Europe, large differences in levels of vaccine hesitancy and refusal have emerged, which are highly correlated with actual vaccination levels. This article explores attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination in 27 European countries based on data from Eurobarometer (May 2021). The statistical analyses show that demographic variables have complex effects on vaccine hesitancy and refusal. Trust in different sources of health-related information has significant effects as well, with people who trust the Internet, social networks and ‘people around’ in particular being much more likely to express vaccine skepticism. As expected, beliefs in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines have large predictive power, but – more interestingly – net of these two beliefs, the effects of trust in Internet, online social networks and people as sources of health information are significantly reduced. This study shows that the effects of demographic, belief-related and other individual-level factors on vaccine hesitancy and refusal are context-specific. Yet, explanations of the differences in vaccine hesitancy across Europe need to consider primarily different levels of trust and vaccine-relevant beliefs, and to a lesser extent their differential effects.


2022 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 796
Author(s):  
Anett Hudák ◽  
Gábor Veres ◽  
Annamária Letoha ◽  
László Szilák ◽  
Tamás Letoha

Emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants pose threats to vaccination campaigns against COVID-19. Being more transmissible than the original virus, the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617 lineage, named the Delta variant, swept through the world in 2021. The mutations in the Delta’s spike protein shift the protein towards a net positive electrostatic potential. To understand the key molecular drivers of the Delta infection, we investigate the cellular uptake of the Delta spike protein and Delta spike-bearing SARS-CoV-2 pseudoviruses. Specific in vitro modification of ACE2 and syndecan expression enabled us to demonstrate that syndecan-4, the syndecan isoform abundant in the lung, enhances the transmission of the Delta variant by attaching its mutated spike glycoprotein and facilitating its cellular entry. Compared to the wild-type spike, the Delta one shows a higher affinity towards heparan sulfate proteoglycans than towards ACE2. In addition to attachment to the polyanionic heparan sulfate chains, the Delta spike’s molecular interactions with syndecan-4 also involve syndecan-4’s cell-binding domain that mediates cell-to-cell adhesion. Regardless of the complexity of these interactions, exogenously added heparin blocks Delta’s cellular entry as efficiently as syndecan-4 knockdown. Therefore, a profound understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying Delta infections enables the development of molecularly targeted yet simple strategies to reduce the Delta variant’s spread.


2022 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. e2142725
Author(s):  
Thomas N. Vilches ◽  
Seyed M. Moghadas ◽  
Pratha Sah ◽  
Meagan C. Fitzpatrick ◽  
Affan Shoukat ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
The Us ◽  

Author(s):  
Enrico Bentivegna ◽  
Silvia Di Meo ◽  
Anita Carriero ◽  
Nadia Capriotti ◽  
Alberto Barbieri ◽  
...  

With the advent of vaccines, the world has a chance to see a real end to the COVID-19 pandemic. To make this possible, however, it is necessary that all groups of people are considered. Contexts of informal settlements and populations such as the homeless and migrants are often forgotten by vaccination campaigns. In this study, carried out as a result of a collaboration with MEDU, a non-profit association aimed at bringing healthcare to vulnerable populations, we provide important data related to the vaccination campaign carried out in the informal settlements of Rome. The objectives of this work are to (1) evaluate vaccination coverage in these contexts, (2) assess the gap with the vaccination coverage of the Italian population and try to hypothesize the causes, and (3) provide recommendations for how humanitarian associations can respond to reduce this gap. We observed important differences in vaccination coverage depending on the type of settlement. The percentage of vaccinated people in these contexts at the beginning of October range between 14.4% and 55.5%, underlining an important gap with the vaccination rate of Italy’s population, which is close to 80%. The data also show that particular attention must be paid to the transiting and irregular people as they are more at risk for a lack of access to vaccination. With this study, in which we provide recommendations that integrate MEDU’s fieldwork experience with the advice of the Framework report, we hope we can help those who work in similar contexts, to carry out a fair and effective vaccination campaign.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karlijn van der Straten ◽  
Denise Guerra ◽  
Marit van Gils ◽  
Ilja Bontjer ◽  
Tom G Caniels ◽  
...  

Large-scale vaccination campaigns have prevented countless SARS-CoV-2 infections, hospitalizations and deaths. However, the emergence of variants that escape from immunity challenges the effectiveness of current vaccines. Given this continuing evolution, an important question is when and how to update SARS-CoV-2 vaccines to antigenically match circulating variants, similar to seasonal influenza viruses where antigenic drift necessitates periodic vaccine updates. Here, we studied SARS-CoV-2 antigenic drift by assessing neutralizing activity against variants-of-concern (VOCs) of a unique set of sera from patients infected with a range of VOCs. Infections with ancestral or Alpha strains induced the broadest immunity, while individuals infected with other VOCs had more strain-specific responses. Omicron was substantially resistant to neutralization by sera elicited by all other variants. Antigenic cartography revealed that all VOCs preceding Omicron belong to one antigenic cluster, while Omicron forms a new antigenic cluster associated with immune escape and likely requiring vaccine updates to ensure vaccine effectiveness.


2022 ◽  
Vol 78 (02) ◽  
pp. 6619-2022
Author(s):  
WIESŁAW NIEDBALSKI

The article reviews the history of BT occurrence in Europe and its present status. It describes the distribution of BT in Europe before 1998, the emergence of BTV in southern and eastern Europe in 1998-2006 and the epidemiology of BT in north-western Europe after 2006. Up to 1998, sporadic cases of BT were noted in Cyprus, on the Iberian Peninsula and on several Greek islands. However, since 1998, probably due to climatic changes, BTV has spread northwards into the Mediterranean Basin, where five BTV serotypes (1, 2, 4, 9 and 16) have been identified. In August 2006, BTV passed for the first time latitude 50°N, and BT outbreaks caused by BTV serotype 8 occurred in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France and Luxembourg. Mass vaccination campaigns implemented in Europe in the spring of 2008 quickly limited the spread of disease caused by BTV-8, and it was eradicated by 2011. However, after a 3-year break, in September 2015, BTV-8 re-emerged in Europe, in central France, and subsequently spread throughout the entire country. In the following years, BTV-8 outbreaks were found in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Spain. In addition to BTV-8 outbreaks, BTV serotypes 1, 2, 4, 9 and 16 have recently circulated in Europe. As revealed by phylogeographic inference, the recent spread of BTV in Europe is a consequence of climatic, landscape and vertebrate host factors


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