Articles: pandemics.
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COVID-19 was initially considered a primary respiratory disorder associated with various short- and long-term complications, affecting many patients and imposing a significant burden. Patients who have dementia are especially vulnerable to the SARS-CoV2 infection, which is associated with an increased risk for neuropsychiatric complications. These patients need a unique approach to managing ethical issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including autonomy, veracity, non-maleficence, justice, compassion, and dignity. ⋯ We will further explore its principal axes, namely compassion, creating a humane and purposeful environment, employing persuasion to meet the person's essential needs, exerting a certain degree of mild restraint to meet the person's critical needs, minimizing harm in terminal care, and justice, through the lens of people who had dementia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying this principle in clinical practice requires significant commitment from all healthcare workers. New approaches to the analysis of dignity, such as through the Ring Theory of Personhood, may facilitate its understanding by practitioners and aid its implementation in populations with multiple vulnerabilities, such as dementia patients, during an infectious outbreak that generates significant social and medical changes.
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Observational Study
Real-time surveillance of international SARS-CoV-2 prevalence using systematic traveller arrival screening: An observational study.
Effective Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) response relies on good knowledge of population infection dynamics, but owing to under-ascertainment and delays in symptom-based reporting, obtaining reliable infection data has typically required large dedicated local population studies. Although many countries implemented Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) testing among travellers, it remains unclear how accurately arrival testing data can capture international patterns of infection, because those arrival testing data were rarely reported systematically, and predeparture testing was often in place as well, leading to nonrepresentative infection status among arrivals. ⋯ As well as elucidating previously unmeasured infection dynamics in these countries, our analysis provides a proof-of-concept for scalable and accurate leading indicator of global infections during future pandemics.
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• Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) drug resistance has implications for antiretroviral treatment strategies and for containing the HIV pandemic because the development of HIV drug resistance leads to the requirement for antiretroviral drugs that may be less effective, less well-tolerated, and more expensive than those used in first-line regimens. • HIV drug resistance studies are designed to determine which HIV mutations are selected by antiretroviral drugs and, in turn, how these mutations affect antiretroviral drug susceptibility and response to future antiretroviral treatment regimens. • Such studies collectively form a vital knowledge base essential for monitoring global HIV drug resistance trends, interpreting HIV genotypic tests, and updating HIV treatment guidelines. • Although HIV drug resistance data are collected in many studies, such data are often not publicly shared, prompting the need to recommend best practices to encourage and standardize HIV drug resistance data sharing. • In contrast to other viruses, sharing HIV sequences from phylogenetic studies of transmission dynamics requires additional precautions as HIV transmission is criminalized in many countries and regions. • Our recommendations are designed to ensure that the data that contribute to HIV drug resistance knowledge will be available without undue hardship to those publishing HIV drug resistance studies and without risk to people living with HIV.
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Kitchen-related burn injuries are common and preventable. To limit the spread of COVID-19, public health orders encouraged the public to stay at home which may have led to an increase in kitchen-related burn injuries. ⋯ Over 1/3 of burns at the outpatient burn clinic were kitchen-related. About 94 % of these were treated as outpatient only. The incidence of kitchen-related burns did not change during the COVID-19 pandemic, but we found significant differences in ethnic distribution. These results provide a unique opportunity to focus on communication and education and set up preventative measures.
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The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented conditions for clinicians providing end-of-life care in acute care settings, yet almost 2 years since the start of the pandemic, little is known about its impact on clinicians. ⋯ The findings highlight the sustained and cumulative emotional challenges and burden clinicians are still shouldering more than 2 years after the start of the pandemic.