JMIR public health and surveillance
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Apr 2020
Data Mining and Content Analysis of the Chinese Social Media Platform Weibo During the Early COVID-19 Outbreak: Retrospective Observational Infoveillance Study.
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which began in Wuhan, China in December 2019, is rapidly spreading worldwide with over 1.9 million cases as of mid-April 2020. Infoveillance approaches using social media can help characterize disease distribution and public knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors critical to the early stages of an outbreak. ⋯ The results of this study provide initial insight into the origins of the COVID-19 outbreak based on quantitative and qualitative analysis of Chinese social media data at the initial epicenter in Wuhan City. Future studies should continue to explore the utility of social media data to predict COVID-19 disease severity, measure public reaction and behavior, and evaluate effectiveness of outbreak communication.
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Apr 2020
The Role of YouTube and the Entertainment Industry in Saving Lives by Educating and Mobilizing the Public to Adopt Behaviors for Community Mitigation of COVID-19: Successive Sampling Design Study.
Effective community mitigation through voluntary behavior change is currently the best way to reduce mortality caused by coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This study builds on our prior study based on the scientific premise that YouTube is one of the most effective ways to communicate and mobilize the public in community mitigation to reduce exposure to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). ⋯ This study demonstrates the incredible reach of YouTube and the potential value of partnership with the entertainment industry for communicating and mobilizing the public about community mitigation to reduce mortality from the COVID-19 viral pandemic.
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Infodemiology (ie, information epidemiology) uses web-based data to inform public health and policy. Infodemiology metrics have been widely and successfully used to assess and forecast epidemics and outbreaks. ⋯ In the past, infodemiology metrics in general and data from Google Trends in particular have been shown to be useful in tracking and forecasting outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics as, for example, in the cases of the Middle East respiratory syndrome, Ebola, measles, and Zika. With the COVID-19 pandemic still in the beginning stages, it is essential to explore and combine new methods of disease surveillance to assist with the preparedness of health care systems at the regional level.
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Apr 2020
Global Preparedness Against COVID-19: We Must Leverage the Power of Digital Health.
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has revealed many areas of public health preparedness that are lacking, especially in lower- and middle-income countries. Digital interventions provide many opportunities for strengthening health systems and could be vital resources in the current public health emergency. We provide several use cases for infection control, home-based diagnosis and screening, empowerment through information, public health surveillance and epidemiology, and leveraging crowd-sourced data. A thoughtful, concerted effort-leveraging existing experience and robust enterprise-grade technologies-can have a substantive impact on the immediate and distal consequences of COVID-19.
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Apr 2020
A Case for Participatory Disease Surveillance of the COVID-19 Pandemic in India.
The coronavirus disease pandemic requires the deployment of novel surveillance strategies to curtail further spread of the disease in the community. Participatory disease surveillance mechanisms have already been adopted in countries for the current pandemic. India, with scarce resources, good telecom support, and a not-so-robust heath care system, makes a strong case for introducing participatory disease surveillance for the prevention and control of the pandemic. ⋯ This will supplement the existing Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme in India by finding missing cases and having faster aggregation, analysis of data, and prompt response measures. This newly created platform empowers communities with the right information and guidance, enabling protection from infection and reducing unnecessary contact with the overburdened health care system. However, caution needs to be exercised to address participation from digitally isolated populations, ensure the reliability of data, and consider ethical concerns such as maintaining individual privacy.