Jones Albuquerque

UNSTRUCTURED Mathematical modeling of COVID-19 transmission has been instrumental in the global pandemic, particularly to governments in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where empirical data and active surveillance is limited. Simulations can be used to understand disease trajectory and impacts of policy options at little additional cost. We describe an automated, open-source, and web-based dashboard designed to empower Malawi government officials to understand the ramifications of certain policy interventions from a mathematical model of COVID-19 transmission. The dynamic dashboard allows policymakers to simulate scenarios of various COVID responses by allowing them to manipulate model inputs like percentage of population using cloth masks, percentage of population abiding by physical distancing recommendations, and the length of both these interventions in days. The dashboard’s outputs include COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, intensive care unit (ICU) stays, and deaths based on the user-defined parameters and level of interest for the data (i.e., administrative levels like traditional authority-, district-, or national-level). It also compares the outputs from the user-defined simulation with a baseline scenario that conservatively estimates 15% of the population masking and 8% abiding by physical distancing guidelines. Our dynamic dashboard not only generates pertinent outputs to formulating a pandemic policy response, but it also offers an intuitive, streamlined, and real-time user experience to policymakers who may lack backgrounds in epidemiology and programming. LMICs should continue to invest in their country’s data collection, digital infrastructures, and technical training for key stakeholders to support widespread use of these evidence-based, decision-support tools in the future.

The African Region reported the first COVID-19 case on 14 February 2020 in Egypt and, to date, over 4.5 million cases and 120 000 deaths have been documented in all 57 countries in the continent [ 1]. COVID-19 has exposed huge quality gaps in the health systems in both high and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Patient satisfaction with care for normal medical conditions has gone down as a result of long waiting times, limitations in physician to patient contacts, disruption of services or cancellation of services due to newly introduced shift schedules, inadequate personal protective equipment, and indeed, lack of companion in COVID-19 treatment centers [ 2].

Early reports indicate that AKI is common during COVID-19 infection. Different mortality rates of AKI due to SARS-CoV-2 have been reported, based on the degree of organic dysfunction and varying fr...

Objectives: This study aimed to identify, describe and analyze priority areas for COVID-19 testing combining participatory surveillance and traditional surveillance. Design: It was carried out a descriptive transversal study in the city of Caruaru, Pernambuco state, Brazil, within the period of 20/02/2020 to 05/05/2020. Data included all official reports for influenza-like illness notified by the municipality health department and the self-reports collected through the participatory surveillance platform Brasil Sem Corona. Methods: We used linear regression and loess regression to verify a correlation between Participatory Surveillance (PS) and Traditional Surveillance (TS). Also a spatial scanning approach was deployed in order to identify risk clusters for COVID-19. Results: In Caruaru, the PS had 861 active users, presenting an average of 1.2 reports per user per week. The platform Brasil Sem Corona started on March 20 ^th and since then, has been officially used by the Caruaru health authority to improve the quality of information from the traditional surveillance system. Regarding the respiratory syndrome cases from TS, 1,588 individuals were positive for this clinical outcome. The spatial scanning analysis detected 18 clusters and 6 of them presented statistical significance (p-value < 0.1). Clusters 3 and 4 presented an overlapping area that was chosen by the local authority to deploy the COVID-19 serology, where 50 individuals were tested. From there, 32% (n=16) presented reagent results for antibodies related to COVID-19. Conclusion: Participatory surveillance is an effective epidemiological method to complement the traditional surveillance system in response to the COVID-19 pandemic by adding real-time spatial data to detect priority areas for COVID-19 testing.

Background: With the evolution of digital media, areas such as public health are adding new platforms to complement traditional systems of epidemiological surveillance. Participatory surveillance and digital epidemiology have become innovative tools for the construction of epidemiological landscapes with citizens’ participation, improving traditional sources of information. Strategies such as these promote the timely detection of warning signs for outbreaks and epidemics in the region. Objective: This study aims to describe the participatory surveillance platform Guardians of Health, which was used in a project conducted during the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and officially used by the Brazilian Ministry of Health for the monitoring of outbreaks and epidemics. Methods: This is a descriptive study carried out using secondary data from Guardians of Health available in a public digital repository. Based on syndromic signals, the information subsidy for decision making by policy makers and health managers becomes more dynamic and assertive. This type of information source can be used as an early route to understand the epidemiological scenario. Results: The main result of this research was demonstrating the use of the participatory surveillance platform as an additional source of information for the epidemiological surveillance performed in Brazil during a mass gathering. The platform Guardians of Health had 7848 users who generated 12,746 reports about their health status. Among these reports, the following were identified: 161 users with diarrheal syndrome, 68 users with respiratory syndrome, and 145 users with rash syndrome. Conclusions: It is hoped that epidemiological surveillance professionals, researchers, managers, and workers become aware of, and allow themselves to use, new tools that improve information management for decision making and knowledge production. This way, we may follow the path for a more intelligent, efficient, and pragmatic disease control system.

Animal health surveillance programs should be reliable and informative to ensure their effective implementation. As such, the regular assessment of those aiming to demonstrate the absence of disease, as well as the ability to detect outbreaks on time, is of vital importance. Several criteria make it possible to assess the performance of surveillance systems, including timeliness, which represents the speed between steps in a surveillance system. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the variability in the timeliness, within and between states, of the surveillance program of the Brazilian Veterinary Services (BVS) for Foot‐and‐Mouth Disease (FMD), for the notification of vesicular disease. A total of 14 years (2004–2017) of data relating to vesicular syndromes from the Brazilian Continental Information and Surveillance System (SivCont) were included. A categorical variable was created with four classes to group the notified vesicular processes in the SivCont, according to two criteria, the similarity of the symptoms of the diseases reported with FMD and etiology (viral, bacterial, fungal, and non‐infectious). The three timeliness values (TL‐1, TL‐2, and TL‐3) related to different portions of the FMD surveillance system were analyzed as a response in a generalized linear model in which the states of Brazil were the explanatory variables. The analyses were performed separately for each notification class (foot‐and‐mouth disease, vesicular stomatitis, similar symptoms, similar non‐infectious symptoms) and included comparisons within and between states. The study results provide an understanding and evaluation of the timeliness of the Brazilian FMD surveillance system, thereby providing a base of knowledge from which involved agents and decision‐makers can evaluate BVS and reinforce surveillance measures in the states with poorer timeliness than permitted.

Qualis indexed Engineering Journal and Science Journal to publish paper with DOI, NAAS Rating and journal has global recognized indexing

Climate change in Brazil has led to an increase in temperature and changes in the distribution of climatic extremes, such as droughts, droughts, floods and floods. This is potentialized when it comes to the semi-arid Northeast. Environmental studies related to this theme are in constant development. For this, the geotechnologies are of great importance for the environmental studies, since they allow the acquisition and analysis of information of use of the ground, vegetal cover and phenomena of the nature. In the present work, the Vegetation Cover Index was studied using remote sensing and geoprocessing techniques through the digital processing of images acquired in the years 2000 to 2015 of the LANDSAT satellites of three municipalities of Pernambuco to observe the vegetation cover in the said temporal space with the degraded areas possibly resulting from the desertification process in the region. Thus, it was found that the municipalities of Betânia and Itacuruba have very high vulnerability (0.75 and 1, respectively). On the other hand, the municipality of Floresta presented a high vulnerability of ICV (0.5), as the vegetation deficit influences hydrological dynamics, soil protection, climatic stability and thermal influence, corroborating the desertification process.

BACKGROUND With the evolution of digital media, areas such as public health are adding new platforms to complement traditional systems of epidemiological surveillance. Participatory surveillance and digital epidemiology have become innovative tools for the construction of epidemiological landscapes with citizens’ participation, improving traditional sources of information. Strategies such as these promote the timely detection of warning signs for outbreaks and epidemics in the region. OBJECTIVE This study aims to describe the participatory surveillance platform Guardians of Health, which was used in a project conducted during the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and officially used by the Brazilian Ministry of Health for the monitoring of outbreaks and epidemics. METHODS This is a descriptive study carried out using secondary data from Guardians of Health available in a public digital repository. Based on syndromic signals, the information subsidy for decision making by policy makers and health managers becomes more dynamic and assertive. This type of information source can be used as an early route to understand the epidemiological scenario. RESULTS The main result of this research was demonstrating the use of the participatory surveillance platform as an additional source of information for the epidemiological surveillance performed in Brazil during a mass gathering. The platform Guardians of Health had 7848 users who generated 12,746 reports about their health status. Among these reports, the following were identified: 161 users with diarrheal syndrome, 68 users with respiratory syndrome, and 145 users with rash syndrome. CONCLUSIONS It is hoped that epidemiological surveillance professionals, researchers, managers, and workers become aware of, and allow themselves to use, new tools that improve information management for decision making and knowledge production. This way, we may follow the path for a more intelligent, efficient, and pragmatic disease control system.