JMIR public health and surveillance
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Sep 2020
Global Changes and Factors of Increase in Caloric/Salty Food Intake, Screen Use, and Substance Use During the Early COVID-19 Containment Phase in the General Population in France: Survey Study.
The international outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has led many countries to enforce drastic containment measures. It has been suggested that this abrupt lockdown of populations will foster addiction-related habits such as caloric/salty food intake, screen use, and substance use. ⋯ The early phase of COVID-19 containment in France led to widespread increases in addiction-related habits in the general population. Reduced well-being and increased stress were universal factors of increase. More specific factors were associated with increases in each of the explored habits.
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Sep 2020
Association Between Public Knowledge About COVID-19, Trust in Information Sources, and Adherence to Social Distancing: Cross-Sectional Survey.
The success of behavioral interventions and policies designed to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic depends on how well individuals are informed about both the consequences of infection and the steps that should be taken to reduce the impact of the disease. ⋯ During pandemics such as the COVID-19 outbreak, policy makers should carefully consider the quality of information disseminated through private sources and social networks. Furthermore, when disseminating urgent health information, a variety of information sources should be used to ensure that diverse populations have timely access to critical knowledge.
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Sep 2020
CommentAdoption of a Contact Tracing App for Containing COVID-19: A Health Belief Model Approach.
To track and reduce the spread of COVID-19, apps have been developed to identify contact with individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 and warn those who are at risk of having contracted the virus. However, the effectiveness of these apps depends highly on their uptake by the general population. ⋯ Initiatives to stimulate the uptake of contact tracing apps should enhance perceived benefits and self-efficacy. A perceived barrier for some potential users is privacy concerns. Therefore, when developing and launching an app, clarification on how individuals' privacy will be protected is needed. To sustain perceived benefits in the long run, supplementary options could be integrated to inform and assist users.
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Aug 2020
Big Data, Natural Language Processing, and Deep Learning to Detect and Characterize Illicit COVID-19 Product Sales: Infoveillance Study on Twitter and Instagram.
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is perhaps the greatest global health challenge of the last century. Accompanying this pandemic is a parallel "infodemic," including the online marketing and sale of unapproved, illegal, and counterfeit COVID-19 health products including testing kits, treatments, and other questionable "cures." Enabling the proliferation of this content is the growing ubiquity of internet-based technologies, including popular social media platforms that now have billions of global users. ⋯ Results from this study provide initial insight into one front of the "infodemic" fight against COVID-19 by characterizing what types of health products, selling claims, and types of sellers were active on two popular social media platforms at earlier stages of the pandemic. This cybercrime challenge is likely to continue as the pandemic progresses and more people seek access to COVID-19 testing and treatment. This data intelligence can help public health agencies, regulatory authorities, legitimate manufacturers, and technology platforms better remove and prevent this content from harming the public.
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Aug 2020
Real-Time Digital Contact Tracing: Development of a System to Control COVID-19 Outbreaks in Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care Facilities.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) can spread rapidly in nursing homes and long-term care (LTC) facilities. Symptoms-based screening and manual contact tracing have limitations that render them ineffective for containing the viral spread in LTC facilities. Symptoms-based screening alone cannot identify asymptomatic people who are infected, and the viral spread is too fast in confined living quarters to be contained by slow manual contact tracing processes. ⋯ Digital contact tracing systems show promise as an effective tool to control COVID-19 outbreaks in LTC facilities. As facilities prepare to relax restrictions and reopen to outside visitors, such tools will allow them to do so in a surgical, cost-effective manner that controls outbreaks while safely giving residents back the life they once had before this pandemic hit.