medixcel
With cases soaring across the globe, the Covid-19 pandemic is nowhere near its end, but with three vaccines reporting trial data and two apparently nearing approval by the US FDA, it may be reaching a pivot point.
In what feels like a moment of drawing breath and taking stock, international researchers are turning their attention from the present back to the start of the pandemic, aiming to untangle its origin and asking what lessons can be learned to keep this from happening again.
Two efforts are happening in parallel. On November 5, the World Health Organization quietly published the rules of engagement for a long-planned and months-delayed mission that creates a multinational team of researchers who will pursue how the virus leaped species. Meanwhile, last week, a commission created by The Lancet and headed by the economist and policy expert Jeffrey Sachs announced the formation of its own international effort, a task force of 12 experts from nine countries who will undertake similar tasks.
Both groups will face the same complex problems. It has been approximately a year since the first cases of a pneumonia of unknown origin appeared in Wuhan, China, and about 11 months since the pneumonia’s cause was identified as a novel coronavirus, probably originating in bats.
The experts will have to retrace a chain of transmission—one or multiple leaps of the virus from the animal world into humans—using interviews, stored biological samples, lab assays, environmental surveys, genomic data, and the thousands of papers published since the pandemic began, all while following a trail that may have gone cold.
The point is not to look for patient zero, the first person infected—or even a hypothetical bat zero, the single animal from which the novel virus jumped.
It’s likely neither of those will ever be found. The goal instead is to elucidate the ecosystem—physical, but also viral—in which the spillover happened and ask what could make it likely to happen again.
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Web-based technology has dramatically improved our ability to detect communicable disease outbreaks, with the potential to reduce morbidity and mortality because of swift public health action.
Apps accessible through the internet and on mobile devices create an opportunity to enhance our traditional indicator-based surveillance systems, which have high specificity but issues with timeliness.
Objective: The aim of this study is to describe the literature on web-based apps for indicator-based surveillance and response to acute communicable disease outbreaks in the community with regard to their design, implementation, and evaluation.
Results: Apps were primarily designed to improve the early detection of disease outbreaks, targeted government settings, and comprised either complex algorithmic or statistical outbreak detection mechanisms or both.
We identified a need for these apps to have more features to support secure information exchange and outbreak response actions, with a focus on outbreak verification processes and staff and resources to support app operations.
Conclusions: Public health officials designing new or improving existing disease outbreak web-based apps should ensure that outbreak detection is automatic and signals are verified by users, the app is easy to use, and staff and resources are available to support the operations of the app and conduct rigorous and holistic evaluations.
read the study at https://publichealth.jmir.org/2021/4/e24330
Lire l'article complet sur : publichealth.jmir.org