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Topic: Public Health Policy and Practice
April 29, 2020
American Geriatrics Society (AGS) Policy Brief: COVID-19 and Assisted Living Facilities
This policy brief sets forth the American Geriatrics Society’s (AGS’s) recommendations to guide federal, state, and local governments when making decisions about care for older adults in assisted living facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. It outlines need for PPE, access to testing, public health support for infection control, and workforce training. This brief is based…
April 28, 2020
Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Residents of a Large Homeless Shelter in Boston
Universal SARS-CoV-2 PCR testing of an adult homeless shelter in Boston shortly after a case cluster was identified yielded a prevalence of 36%, with a majority of newly identified infections being asymptomatic. Symptom screening in homeless shelters may not be adequate to capture the extent of disease transmission in this setting. Baggett et al. (April…
Exposure to a Surrogate Measure of Contamination from Simulated Patients by Emergency Department Personnel Wearing Personal Protective Equipment
The authors ran patient care simulations to assess updated PPE recommendations from WHO and CDC on use of N95 respirators, eye protection, isolation gowns, and gloves during aerosol-generating procedures. Despite PPE, fluorescent markers were found on the uncovered skin, hair, and shoes of participants. These findings indicate that current recommendations for PPE may not fully…
Predictors of adherence to public health instructions during the COVID-19 pandemic
This cross-sectional study of 654 Israeli participants found that male gender, not having children, smoking, ADHD symptoms, low pro-sociality, past risk-taking behavior, current psychological distress, low perceived risk of COVID-19 exposure, low exposure to instructions, and low perceived efficacy of instructions were associated with non-adherence to instructions. The findings suggest that in setting out and…
April 27, 2020
Contact Tracing: a game of big numbers in the time of COVID-19
Kim and Paul studied the characteristics of automated contact tracing and its effectiveness for mapping the spread of SARS-CoV-2. They highlight the infrastructure and social structures required for automated contact tracing to work, and further display vulnerabilities of the strategy to sufficiently determine significant contact with infected individuals. They conclude that a strong reliance on…
An Interactive Online Dashboard for Tracking COVID-19 in U.S. Counties, Cities, and States in Real Time
Wissel et al have created an interactive online dashboard for tracking COVID-19 outbreaks in U.S. counties, cities, and states in real time. It uses R Shiny application to aggregate data from multiple resources that track COVID-19 and visualizes them through an interactive, online dashboard. It displays COVID-19 data from every county and 188 metropolitan areas…
Metropolitan Wastewater Analysis for COVID‐19 Epidemiological Surveillance
Randazzo et al used RTqPCR for SARS‐CoV‐2 detection in a series of longitudinal wastewater samples collected during the earliest stages of the epidemic in Valencia, Spain. The team consistently detected SARS‐CoV‐2 RNA in samples taken when cases in that region were only incipient. They note that wastewater viral RNA context increased rapidly and anticipated the…
April 24, 2020
A guide to chatbots for COVID-19 screening at pediatric healthcare facilities
The COVID-19 outbreak has required healthcare institutions to rapidly adapt to changing public health circumstances, including switching to novel healthcare delivery modes such as use of chatbots to offer digital health and telehealth services. Chatbots are one digital health tool that can help evolve triage and screening processes in a scalable manner. Espinoza et al…
Scalable and Resilient SARS-CoV2 testing in an Academic Centre
This article provides a roadmap instructing how a research institute can be repurposed in the midst of this crisis, in collaboration with partner hospitals and an established diagnostic laboratory. Existing expertise in virus handling, robotics, PCR and data science can be harnessed to create a rapid, high throughput diagnostic pipeline for detecting SARS-CoV-2 in patients…
Healthcare worker mask reuse in a global pandemic: Using idle resources to create an inexpensive, scalable, and accessible UV system for N95 sterilization
This article describes how to modify existing, or create custom light fixtures compatible with common UV-C bulbs to sterilize N95 masks. This system is scalable and can be created for less than 50 US dollars, on site, at the point of need, and leverages resources that are currently untapped and sitting unused in public and…
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