Family practice
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Pandemics threaten lives and economies. This article addresses the global threat of the anticipated overlap of COVID-19 with seasonal-influenza. ⋯ Results support two affordable preventive measures: (i) to globally increase influenza-vaccination rates, (ii) to limit the number of personal contacts during outbreaks. The authors endorse changing practices and research incentives towards multidisciplinary collaborations. The urgency of the situation is a call for international health policy to promote interdisciplinary modern technologies in public health engineering.
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Primary care has played a central role in the community response to the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. The use of the National Early Warning Score 2 (NEWS2) has been advocated as a tool to guide escalation decisions in the community. The performance of this tool applied in this context is unclear. ⋯ Clinical decisions to escalate care to the hospital did not follow initial guidance written for the COVID-19 outbreak but were demonstrated to be safe.