Infectious Diseases

Background: In March 2020, South Africa implemented strict nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to contain the spread of COVID-19. Over the subsequent 5 months, NPI policies were eased in stages according to a national strategy.

 

COVID-19 spread throughout the country heterogeneously; the case numbers peaked from July to August. A second COVID-19 wave began in late 2020. Data on the impact of NPI policies on social and economic well-being and access to health care are limited.

Objective: We aimed to determine how rural residents in three South African provinces changed their behaviors during the first COVID-19 epidemic wave.

Methods: The South African Population Research Infrastructure Network nodes in the Mpumalanga (Agincourt), KwaZulu-Natal, (Africa Health Research Institute) and Limpopo (Dikgale-Mamabolo-Mothiba) provinces conducted up to 14 rounds of longitudinal telephone surveys among randomly sampled households from rural and periurban surveillance populations every 2-3 weeks. Interviews included questions on the following topics: COVID-19–related knowledge and behaviors, the health and economic impacts of NPIs, and mental health. We analyzed how responses varied based on NPI stringency and household sociodemographics.

Conclusions: South Africans complied with stringent, COVID-19–related NPIs despite the threat of substantial social, economic, and health repercussions. Government-supported social welfare programs appeared to buffer interruptions in income and health care access during local outbreaks. Epidemic control policies must be balanced against the broader well-being of people in resource-limited settings and designed with parallel support systems when such policies threaten peoples’ income and access to basic services.

The spread of SARS-CoV-2, originating in Wuhan, China, was classified as a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020.

 

The governments of affected countries have implemented various measures to limit the spread of the virus. The starting point of this paper is the different government approaches, in terms of promulgating new legislative regulations to limit the virus diffusion and to contain negative effects on the populations.

 

Objective: This paper aims to study how the spread of SARS-CoV-2 is linked to government policies and to analyze how different policies have produced different results on public health.

Methods: Considering the official data provided by 4 countries (Italy, Germany, Sweden, and Brazil) and from the measures implemented by each government, we built an agent-based model to study the effects that these measures will have over time on different variables such as the total number of COVID-19 cases, intensive care unit (ICU) bed occupancy rates, and recovery and case-fatality rates. The model we implemented provides the possibility of modifying some starting variables, and it was thus possible to study the effects that some policies (eg, keeping the national borders closed or increasing the ICU beds) would have had on the spread of the infection.

Conclusions: In line with what we expected, the obtained results showed that the countries that have taken restrictive measures in terms of limiting the population mobility have managed more successfully than others to contain the spread of COVID-19. Moreover, the model demonstrated that herd immunity cannot be reached even in countries that have relied on a strategy without strict containment measures.

 

read the study at https://medinform.jmir.org/2021/4/e24192

 

More than two dozen virologists, epidemiologists, and others responded to STAT's question about what they still most wanted to know.

 

In the 16 months since the SARS-CoV-2 virus burst into the global consciousness, we’ve learned much about this new health threat. People who contract the virus are infectious before they develop symptoms and are most infectious early in their illness. Getting the public to wear masks, even homemade ones, can reduce transmission. Vaccines can be developed, tested, and put into use within months. As they say, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

 

But many key questions about SARS-2 and the disease it causes, Covid-19, continue to bedevil scientists.

 

 

What accounts for the wide variety of human responses to this virus?

 

How much immunity is enough immunity?

 

How often will reinfections happen and what will they be like?

 

how long will immunity last?

 

How are viral variants going to impact the battle against Covid-19?

 

What is long Covid, who is at risk of developing it, and can it be prevented?

 

What’s the deal with Covid and kids?

 

 

How big a role do asymptomatically infected people actually play in SARS-2 transmission?

 

What does the future hold for SARS-2, evolutionarily and otherwise?

 

Can we figure out who might become a superspreader?

 

Can we learn more quicker from the study of the genetic sequences of SARS-2 viruses?

 

What is the impact of the nonpharmaceutical interventions?

 

What are the barriers to compliance of proven public health interventions and how can that problem best be addressed?

 

what are yhe differences between SARS-2 and its older cousin, SARS-1

 

Where did SARS-2 come from?

 

 

Read more at

https://www.statnews.com/2021/04/20/we-know-a-lot-about-covid-19-experts-have-many-more-questions/