Article Summary
January 19, 2021
Communications in the Time of a Pandemic: The Readability of Documents for Public Consumption
A majority of COVID-19-related documents produced by the WHO, UK, US and Australian governments were shown to be at or above recommended readability levels. Though the study suggests that the included US documents (n=10) are easiest to read among all the documents, the mean Flesch Reading Ease Score of US documents was a 53.1, which…
Public’s Understanding of Swab Test Results for SARS-CoV-2: An Online Behavioural Experiment during the April 2020 Lockdown
Among 566 Italian residents, 90% reported that they considered a swab test for SARS-CoV-2 to be useful, but only 67% understood the impact of test diagnostic accuracy and infection prevalence on test predictive value. Participants underestimated the specificity and overestimated the sensitivity of the test. They also tended to overestimate the positive predictive value and…
Optimal SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Allocation Using Real-Time Seroprevalence Estimates in Rhode Island and Massachusetts
Vaccine allocation models parametrized to the seroprevalence estimates of Rhode Island and Massachusetts show that allocating >75% of the vaccine supply to individuals ≥70 years old optimally reduces total cumulative deaths through mid-2021. Although not explicitly modelled, allocating a majority of the supply to other high-risk groups will yield the same effect. Vaccinating seronegative individuals…
Evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Mitigation Strategies on a University Campus Using an Agent-Based Network Model
A SARS-CoV-2 transmission model parametrized to the University of California San Diego showed that reducing on-campus housing occupancy to single residents and implementing a hybrid instruction format (only 12% of sections in-person) with a class size cap of 50 could substantially reduce the basic reproduction number, R0. However, the addition of masking and physical distancing…
Evolution of Antibody Immunity to SARS-CoV-2
Serological analysis in a cohort of 87 SARS-CoV-2 recovered individuals show that between 1.3 and 6.2 months after infection, IgM and IgG anti-spike receptor binding domain (RBD) antibody titers decrease, and neutralizing activity declines by 5-fold. In contrast, levels of RBD-specific memory B cells remain largely unchanged. Antibodies expressed by the memory B cells at…
Black-White Disparities in 2009 H1N1 Vaccination among Adults in the United States: A Cautionary Tale for the COVID-19 Pandemic
National US survey data (n=45,000) show disparities in beliefs about the safety and efficacy of the H1N1 influenza vaccine across sex and race, which the authors suggest could be relevant for the uptake of COVID-19 vaccines. While H1N1 vaccine uptake was low across groups, Black respondents were more likely than white respondents to express safety…
Evaluation of Abbott BinaxNOW Rapid Antigen Test for SARS-CoV-2 Infection at Two Community-Based Testing Sites — Pima County, Arizona, November 3–17, 2020
The sensitivity of the BinaxNOW antigen test, compared to RT-PCR, was lower when testing specimens from asymptomatic (35.8%) than from symptomatic (64.2%) persons, based on 3,419 paired specimens from community testing in Arizona. Specificity was near 100% for both groups. Sensitivity was higher among the 96 specimens positive for viral culture (92.6% and 78.6% for…
Secondary Attack Rate in Household Contacts of COVID-19 Paediatric Index Cases: A Study from Western India
A cross-sectional study in Western India estimated a SARS-CoV-2 household attack rate from pediatric index cases of 2%, based on 72 pediatric index COVID-19 cases and 287 household contacts. Index cases were mostly male (94%) and between the ages of 12-18 (74%). Households of index cases with secondary infections were larger than those without secondary…
COVID-19 Dynamics in an Ohio Prison
A retrospective study of the April 2020 outbreak at the Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio showed rapid, widespread infection, with nearly 80% of inmates infected within three weeks of the first reported case. The authors suggest three scenarios that could have given rise to the outbreak: 1) a single initially infected inmate with a basic…
Household Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and Risk Factors for Susceptibility and Infectivity in Wuhan: A Retrospective Observational Study
A retrospective cohort study using contact tracing records from more than 27,000 households in Wuhan, China through April 18 estimated an overall SARS-CoV-2 attack rate among people living in the same household of 16%, assuming a mean incubation period of 5 days and a maximum infectious period of 22 days. Individuals ≥60 years old were…
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