JMIR public health and surveillance
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Dec 2020
Anxiety and Sleep Disturbances Among Health Care Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic in India: Cross-Sectional Online Survey.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has become a serious concern among the global medical community and has resulted in an unprecedented psychological impact on health care workers, who were already working under stressful conditions. ⋯ The COVID-19 pandemic has potentially caused significant levels of anxiety and sleep disturbances among health care workers, particularly associated with the female gender, younger age group, and inadequate availability of personal protective equipment. These factors put health care workers at constant risk of contracting the infection themselves or transmitting it to their families. Early identification of at-risk health care workers and implementation of situation-tailored mitigation measures could help alleviate the risk of long-term, serious psychological sequelae as well as reduce current anxiety levels among health care workers.
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Dec 2020
Evaluating the Need for Routine COVID-19 Testing of Emergency Department Staff: Quantitative Analysis.
As the number of COVID-19 cases in the US continues to increase and hospitals experience shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), health care workers have been disproportionately affected. However, since COVID-19 testing is now easily available, there is a need to evaluate whether routine testing should be performed for asymptomatic health care workers. ⋯ Periodic COVID-19 testing for emergency department staff in regions that are heavily affected by COVID-19 or are facing resource constraints may significantly reduce COVID-19 transmission among health care workers and previously uninfected patients.
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Nov 2020
Leveraging a Cloud-Based Critical Care Registry for COVID-19 Pandemic Surveillance and Research in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed limitations in real-time surveillance needed for responsive health care action in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The Pakistan Registry for Intensive CarE (PRICE) was adapted to enable International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infections Consortium (ISARIC)-compliant real-time reporting of severe acute respiratory infection (SARI). The cloud-based common data model and standardized nomenclature of the registry platform ensure interoperability of data and reporting between regional and global stakeholders. ⋯ The PRICE network is now being recruited to international multicenter clinical trials regarding COVID-19 management, leveraging the registry platform. Systematic and standardized reporting of SARI is feasible in LMICs. Existing registry platforms can be adapted for pandemic research, surveillance, and resource planning.
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Nov 2020
Predicting spatial and temporal responses to non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 growth rates across 58 counties in New York State: A prospective event-based modeling study on county-level sociological predictors.
Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been implemented in the New York State since the COVID-19 outbreak on March 1, 2020 to control the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Socioeconomic heterogeneity across counties closely manifests differences in the post-NPIs growth rate of incidence, which is a crucial indicator to guide future infectious control policy making. Few studies, however, examined the geospatial and sociological variations in the epidemic growth across different time points of NPIs. ⋯ There are geospatial differences in COVID-19 incidence after implementing different NPIs. Socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, and healthcare resource disparities at the structural and historical levels across counties need to be considered in infection control policymaking to narrow the unequal health impact on vulnerable populations effectively.