A dynamic pandemic model evaluating reopening strategies amid COVID-19.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Zhong L
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7996987 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC8564904 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Objectives This study reports on the readiness of Palestinian dentists to re-open their practices for routine care during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Methods A cross-sectional study targeted dentists in the West Bank area of Palestine using an on-line survey during the first two weeks of May, 2020. Questions mainly asked about dentists’ perception of the risks of COVID-19, readiness to reopen their clinics for routine care, and the level of confidence in dealing with suspected COVID-19 patients. Results Four hundred and forty-eight dentists completed the survey. Almost 60% believed that they were not ready to re-open their practices. Almost 13% had “no confidence” in dealing with COVID-19 patients, while 64% had “little to moderate” confidence. Confidence was correlated negatively with increased fear of getting infected (?=-0.317, p<0.0001) and positively with years of practice (?=1.7, p< 0.0001). Dentists who received updated training on infection control or on COVID-19 reported higher levels of confidence (X2 =53.8,p<0.0001, X2=26.8, p<0.0001 respectively). Although 88% preferred not to treat COVID-19 patients, 40% were willing to provide care to them. Almost 75% reported that they were already facing financial hardships and couldn't survive financially until the end of the current month. Conclusions Ethical and financial reasons were the main drivers for dentists in this sample to re-open their practices for routine care. Data from this study highlights the fragility of private dental practice in emergency situations. Ethical, health and financial challenges that emerged during COVID-19 require dentists to adapt and be better prepared to face future crises.
| S-EPMC7881762 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectivesSchool closure during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in a negative impact on children. Serial testing of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been proposed as a measure for safety school reopening. We aimed to study the usefulness of SARS-CoV-2 surveillance by saliva testing and performing wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 in a day school in a resource-limited setting.MethodsWe conducted a cluster randomized study to investigate the potential use of saliva antigen testing compared to saliva pooling for nucleic acid detection in a primary school in Thailand from December 2021 to March 2022. Wastewater surveillance in the school was also performed.ResultsA total of 484 participants attended the study. SARS-CoV-2 was detected in two participants from the tests provided by the study (one in the pool nucleic acid test arm, and another in the quantitative antigen test arm). Additional ten participants reported positive results on an additional rapid antigen test (RAT) performed by nasal swab when they had symptoms or household contact. There was no difference among arms in viral detection by intention-to-treat and per protocol analysis (p = 0.304 and 0.894, respectively). We also investigated the feasibility of wastewater surveillance to detect the virus in this setting. However, wastewater surveillance could not detect the virus.ConclusionsIn a low COVID-19 prevalence, serial saliva testing and wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 rarely detected the virus in a day school setting. Performing RAT on nasal swabs when students, teachers or staff have symptoms or household contact might be more reasonable.
| S-EPMC10010048 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Reopening schools is an urgent priority as the COVID-19 pandemic drags on. To explore the risks associated with returning to in-person learning and the value of mitigation measures, we developed stochastic, network-based models of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission in primary and secondary schools. We find that a number of mitigation measures, alone or in concert, may reduce risk to acceptable levels. Student cohorting, in which students are divided into two separate populations that attend in-person classes on alternating schedules, can reduce both the likelihood and the size of outbreaks. Proactive testing of teachers and staff can help catch introductions early, before they spread widely through the school. In secondary schools, where the students are more susceptible to infection and have different patterns of social interaction, control is more difficult. Especially in these settings, planners should also consider testing students once or twice weekly. Vaccinating teachers and staff protects these individuals and may have a protective effect on students as well. Other mitigations, including mask wearing, social distancing, and increased ventilation, remain a crucial component of any reopening plan.
| S-EPMC8488607 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Reopening amid the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a battle on social media. The supporters perceived that the lockdown policy could damage the economy and exacerbate social inequality. By contrast, the opponents believed it was necessary to contain the spread and ensure a safe environment for recovery. Anatomy into the battle is of importance to address public concerns, beliefs, and values, thereby enabling policymakers to determine the appropriate solutions to implement reopening policy. To this end, we investigated over 1.5 million related Twitter postings from April 17 to May 30, 2020. With the aid of natural language processing (NLP) techniques and machine learning classifiers, we classified each tweet into either a "supporting" or "opposing" class and then investigated the public perception from temporal and spatial perspectives. From the temporal dimension, we found that both political and scientific news that were extensively discussed on Twitter led to the perception of opposing reopening. Further, being the first mover with full reopen adversely affected the public reaction to reopening policy, while being the follower or late mover resulted in positive responses. From the spatial dimension, the correlation and regression analyses suggest that the state-level perception was very likely to be associated with political affiliation and health value.
| S-EPMC8277023 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Drawing from resource dependence theory, this study explores the extent to which international student enrollment related to institutional decisions to shift to in-person instructional strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus our study particularly on July 2020, a time during which tensions around international students' legal status in the US were especially high. Our results suggest that leaders at private not-for-profit institutions were significantly more likely to shift instructional strategies to include more in-person instruction, thus allowing more international students to enroll but also placing at risk the health of individuals on their campuses and in their local communities. A similar result was not found for public institutions. These results speak to the extent to which private institutions in the US have become financially dependent on international students' tuition and have clear implications for the financial futures of US higher education institutions.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10734-021-00768-7.
| S-EPMC8492823 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The massive shift from face-to-face classes to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic made the assessment of students' capacity to regulate their learning more important. The researchers conducted an explanatory sequential mixed methods design with validation of a five-point 24-item Likert scale questionnaire called the online self-regulated learning questionnaire (OSLQ) for use with Filipino students. The OSLQ was disseminated using cross-sectional survey method through Google Forms and 301 preservice teachers in the Philippines responded. To substantiate the data from the survey, the researchers conducted an interview with the selected participants (n = 10) and faculty members (n = 5) determined through intensity sampling. The confirmatory factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha estimates revealed that the OSLQ is valid and reliable (α = 0.921). The results showed that the participants' self-regulated learning (SRL) skills and strategies are above average, with high levels of environment structuring and goal setting but low on task and help-seeking strategies. They encountered several challenges in employing SRL in online courses. The findings of the study signify the need to use the validated OLSQ for Filipino preservice teachers in various context and to innovate activities that promote SRL skills and strategies.
| S-EPMC10009473 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We combine COVID-19 case data with mobility data to estimate a modified susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) model in the United States. In contrast to a standard SIR model, we find that the incidence of COVID-19 spread is concave in the number of infectious individuals, as would be expected if people have inter-related social networks. This concave shape has a significant impact on forecasted COVID-19 cases. In particular, our model forecasts that the number of COVID-19 cases would only have an exponential growth for a brief period at the beginning of the contagion event or right after a reopening, but would quickly settle into a prolonged period of time with stable, slightly declining levels of disease spread. This pattern is consistent with observed levels of COVID-19 cases in the US, but inconsistent with standard SIR modeling. We forecast rates of new cases for COVID-19 under different social distancing norms and find that if social distancing is eliminated there will be a massive increase in the cases of COVID-19.
| S-EPMC7683602 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic required significant public health interventions from local governments. Although nonpharmaceutical interventions often were implemented as decision rules, few studies evaluated the robustness of those reopening plans under a wide range of uncertainties. This paper uses the Robust Decision Making approach to stress-test 78 alternative reopening strategies, using California as an example. This study uniquely considers a wide range of uncertainties and demonstrates that seemingly sensible reopening plans can lead to both unnecessary COVID-19 deaths and days of interventions. We find that plans using fixed COVID-19 case thresholds might be less effective than strategies with time-varying reopening thresholds. While we use California as an example, our results are particularly relevant for jurisdictions where vaccination roll-out has been slower. The approach used in this paper could also prove useful for other public health policy problems in which policymakers need to make robust decisions in the face of deep uncertainty.
| S-EPMC8547648 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infected over 5 million United States (US) residents resulting in more than 180,000 deaths by August 2020. To mitigate transmission, most states ordered shelter-in-place orders in March and reopening strategies varied.ObjectiveTo estimate excess COVID-19 cases and deaths after reopening compared with trends prior to reopening for two groups of states: (1) states with an evidence-based reopening strategy, defined as reopening indoor dining after implementing a statewide mask mandate, and (2) states reopening indoor dining rooms before implementing a statewide mask mandate.DesignInterrupted time series quasi-experimental study design applied to publicly available secondary data.ParticipantsFifty United States and the District of Columbia.InterventionsReopening indoor dining rooms before or after implementing a statewide mask mandate.Main measuresOutcomes included daily cumulative COVID-19 cases and deaths for each state.Key resultsOn average, the number of excess cases per 100,000 residents in states reopening without masks is ten times the number in states reopening with masks after 8 weeks (643.1 cases; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 406.9, 879.2 and 62.9 cases; CI = 12.6, 113.1, respectively). Excess cases after 6 weeks could have been reduced by 90% from 576,371 to 63,062 and excess deaths reduced by 80% from 22,851 to 4858 had states implemented mask mandates prior to reopening. Over 50,000 excess deaths were prevented within 6 weeks in 13 states that implemented mask mandates prior to reopening.ConclusionsAdditional mitigation measures such as mask use counteract the potential growth in COVID-19 cases and deaths due to reopening businesses. This study contributes to the growing evidence that mask usage is essential for mitigating community transmission of COVID-19. States should delay further reopening until mask mandates are fully implemented, and enforcement by local businesses will be critical for preventing potential future closures.
| S-EPMC7537575 | biostudies-literature