Zika Virus Seroprevalence in Two Districts of Chincha, Ica, Peru: A Cross-Sectional Study

In 2017, a major outbreak of Zika virus (ZIKV) infection took place in Chincha Province, Peru, where arboviral circulation had never been reported before. We conducted a cross-sectional survey (March–May 2019) in two districts of Chincha Province: Pueblo Nuevo and Chincha Baja. We included residents who were 20 to 40 years old and who had lived in these districts for at least 1 year. Serological testing combined screening with a commercial NS1 protein-based Zika IgG ELISA, and confirmation by a cytopathic effect-based virus neutralization test (VNT). Prevalence ratios (PRs) were calculated using Poisson regression with robust error variance. Four hundred participants, divided equally among districts, were enrolled. Anti-ZIKV IgG ELISA was positive for 42 participants (10.5%) and borderline for 12 (3%). Fifty-two of these 54 samples were confirmed positive by ZIKV VNT (13% of the total population). The Pueblo Nuevo district exhibited a greater ZIKV seroprevalence based on VNT results than the Chincha Baja district (23.5% versus 2.5%), with participants from the Pueblo Nuevo district being 9.4 times more likely to have a positive ZIKV VNT result. Average monthly income greater than the minimum wage and adequate water storage were found to be protective factors (PR, 0.29 and 0.24, respectively). In multivariate analysis, living in the Pueblo Nuevo district and a personal history of fever and rash were strong predictors of ZIKV positivity by VNT. The low ZIKV seroprevalence should prompt health authorities to stimulate interventions to prevent potential future outbreaks. In the Pueblo Nuevo district, the seroprevalence was greater but presumably not sufficient to ensure protective herd immunity.

Return Migration: The Second Major Outbreak due to COVID-19 in India

COVID-19 pandemic made a severe impact on the developing countries. According to the “World Economic Situation and Prospects” report by the United Nations, as of mid-2021, this global crisis has clearly worsened poverty and within-country inequality, and it is expected that it will leave long-lasting scars on labor markets while reversing progress on poverty and income inequality in many economies. The context in India, in this sense, is complex. The article corresponds to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on internal migration. The rapid spread of the pandemic shook nations across the world, bringing about a broad lockdown that cinched down on versatility, business exercises, and social communications. In India, the pandemic encouraged an extreme emergency of portability, with transient workers in many significant urban areas looking to get back to the places where they were initially from. Their frantic attempts to get back using any and all means accessible delivered the lockdown incapable in a few regions, provoking conflicts with authorities, last-minute approaches, alleviation, and, in the end, unplanned transport measures. This paper expects to reveal insight into the weakness of India's internal migrants as far as their gender, mobility, and emotional wellbeing. As COVID-19 was India’s first significant outbreak in 2020, the “reverse migration” proves to be the second major outbreak.

Four Flu Pandemics: Lesson that Cannot be Learned

This article explores the history of influenza, focusing on the four major flu pandemics in the last century and a half, outbreaks starting in 1889, 1918, 1957, and 1968. The article looks closely at flu etiology and the historical puzzles over which flu subtype was responsible for each major outbreak. Some mysteries regarding pandemic influenza remain, with core questions stubbornly refusing to yield answers. This article seeks to explore the history of flu in the hope that we can take away some lessons learned as we try to get ready for potential future flu pandemics.

Niger's humanitarian situation looks set to worsen

Significance On Niger’s side of the border, by September 27 there were over 5,000 cases across six of the country’s eight regions -- numbers exceeding those of the country’s last major outbreak in 2018. The outbreak compounds Niger’s existing health, natural disaster, food security and displacement challenges, all in the world’s poorest country. Impacts The public health crises and other strains add to the worsening insecurity and COVID-19 burdens. Endemic malaria places the rudimentary health system under permanent strain, leaving it ill-equipped to deal with disease outbreaks. Rising levels of displacement could slow down efforts to stem the cholera outbreak.

Vaccination and testing of the border workforce for COVID-19 and risk of community outbreaks: a modelling study

Throughout 2020 and the first part of 2021, Australia and New Zealand have followed a COVID-19 elimination strategy. Both countries require overseas arrivals to quarantine in government-managed facilities at the border. In both countries, community outbreaks of COVID-19 have been started via infection of a border worker. This workforce is rightly being prioritized for vaccination. However, although vaccines are highly effective in preventing disease, their effectiveness in preventing infection with and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is less certain. There is a danger that vaccination could prevent symptoms of COVID-19 but not prevent transmission. Here, we use a stochastic model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission and testing to investigate the effect that vaccination of border workers has on the risk of an outbreak in an unvaccinated community. We simulate the model starting with a single infected border worker and measure the number of people who are infected before the first case is detected by testing. We show that if a vaccine reduces transmission by 50%, vaccination of border workers increases the risk of a major outbreak from around 7% per seed case to around 9% per seed case. The lower the vaccine effectiveness against transmission, the higher the risk. The increase in risk as a result of vaccination can be mitigated by increasing the frequency of routine testing for high-exposure vaccinated groups.

Sub-acute and chronic musculoskeletal manifestations in chikungunya fever: experience in a tertiary care hospital of Bangladesh

Background: Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne viral disease and presentation usually follows 3 phases: acute, sub-acute and chronic. Erratic, relapsing and incapacitating arthritis is the hallmark of chikungunya and many patients go on to develop post-chikungunya arthritis. Bangladesh experienced a major outbreak of chikungunya since April-May of 2017 which created a mass panic among people. The present study aimed to evaluate the course and pattern of musculoskeletal manifestations of patients who had been diagnosed as a case of chikungunya fever Methods: It was a prospective observational study, conducted in Department of Internal Medicine, BIRDEM General Hospital from October, 2017 to August, 2018. Total 100 patients suffering from chikungunya were selected and data were collected by interview using a semi-structured questionnaire and medical records analysis. These patients were followed up after 3 weeks and 3-months of symptom onset and musculoskeletal features were recorded. Results: A total 100 patients were studied and among them female patients were 54%. Mean age of the patients was 49.7 years. Eighty-three patients were managed from outpatient department. All of the patients had history of fever and joint pain at the onset. Among 100 patients, musculoskeletal symptoms resolved in 23 patients within the acute phase and 77% went through sub-acute phase. Twenty six percent patients entered into chronic phase. Conclusion: Study revealed that for one-fourth patients, musculoskeletal manifestations resolved in acute phase, three-fourth patients entered in sub-acute phase and one-fourth patients entered in chronic phase. BIRDEM Med J 2021; 11(3): 166-171

Comprehensive analysis of SARS-COV-2 drug targets and pharmacological aspects in treating the COVID-19

: Corona viruses are enveloped, single-stranded RNA (Ribonucleic acid) viruses and they cause pandemic diseases having a devastating effect on both human healthcare and the global economy. To date, six corona viruses have been identified as pathogenic organisms which are significantly responsible for the infection and also cause severe respiratory diseases. Among them, the novel SARS-CoV-2 (Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) caused a major outbreak of corona virus diseases 2019 (COVID-19). Coronaviridae family members can affects both humans and animals. In human, corona viruses cause severe acute respiratory syndrome with mild to severe outcomes. Several structural and genomics have been investigated, and the genome encodes about 28 proteins most of them with unknown function though it shares remarkable sequence identity with other proteins. There is no potent and licensed vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 and several trials are underway to investigate the possible therapeutic agents against viral infection. However, some of the antiviral drugs that have been investigated against SARS-CoV-2 are under clinical trials. In the current review we comparatively emphasize the emergence and pathogenicity of the SARS-CoV-2 and their infection and discuss the various putative drug targets of both viral and host receptors for developing effective vaccines and therapeutic combinations to overcome the viral outbreak.

Dynamical analysis of the infection status in diverse communities due to COVID-19 using a modified SIR model

In this article, we model and study the spread of COVID-19 in Germany, Japan, India and highly impacted states in India, i.e., Delhi, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Kerala and Karnataka. We consider recorded data published in Worldometers and COVID-19 India websites from April 2020 to July 2021, including periods of interest where these countries and states were hit severely by the pandemic. Our methodology is based on the classic susceptible-infected-removed (SIR) model and can track the evolution of infections in communities, i.e., in countries, states or groups of individuals, where we (a) allow for the susceptible and infected populations to be reset at times where surges, outbreaks or secondary waves appear in the recorded data sets, (b) consider the parameters in the SIR model that represent the probability of the infection and recovery rates to be functions of time and (c) estimate the number of deaths by combining the model solutions with the recorded data sets to approximate them between consecutive surges, outbreaks or secondary waves, providing a more accurate estimate. We report on the status of the current infections in these countries and states, and the infections and deaths in India and Japan in the end of August 2021, assuming a major outbreak occurs in early August 2021 in India and in mid-July 2021 in Japan. Our model can adapt to the recorded data and can be used to explain them and importantly, to forecast the number of infected, recovered, removed and dead individuals, as well as to estimate the probability of the infection and recovery rates as functions of time, assuming an outbreak occurs at a given time. The latter information can be used to forecast the future basic reproduction number and together with the forecast on the number of infected and dead individuals, our approach can further be used to suggest the implementation of intervention strategies and mitigation policies to keep at bay the number of infected and dead individuals. This, in conjunction with the implementation of vaccination programs worldwide, can help reduce significantly the impact of the spread around the world and improve the wellbeing of people.

SARS-CoV-2 infection in UK university students: lessons from September–December 2020 and modelling insights for future student return

In this paper, we present work on SARS-CoV-2 transmission in UK higher education settings using multiple approaches to assess the extent of university outbreaks, how much those outbreaks may have led to spillover in the community, and the expected effects of control measures. Firstly, we found that the distribution of outbreaks in universities in late 2020 was consistent with the expected importation of infection from arriving students. Considering outbreaks at one university, larger halls of residence posed higher risks for transmission. The dynamics of transmission from university outbreaks to wider communities is complex, and while sometimes spillover does occur, occasionally even large outbreaks do not give any detectable signal of spillover to the local population. Secondly, we explored proposed control measures for reopening and keeping open universities. We found the proposal of staggering the return of students to university residence is of limited value in terms of reducing transmission. We show that student adherence to testing and self-isolation is likely to be much more important for reducing transmission during term time. Finally, we explored strategies for testing students in the context of a more transmissible variant and found that frequent testing would be necessary to prevent a major outbreak.