Epidemiology and Infection

Automated outbreak detection can enhance infectious disease surveillance by enabling early identification of outbreaks and supporting timely public health measures. However, information on its current use by national public health institutes (NPHI) remains limited. This paper provides an updated and extended overview of automated outbreak detection usage in the European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK). Key findings were gathered through the Joint Action United4Surveillance via an online surve...

BackgroundInitial reports from the Netherlands indicate a decline in routine childhood vaccination uptake during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, with emerging evidence of reduced parental vaccine confidence. This study aimed to evaluate the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on routine childhood vaccination uptake. MethodsWe conducted a retrospective nationwide cohort study including all children born in the Netherlands in 2016-2024. First-dose DTaP-IPV vaccination status by age six mon...

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed major vulnerabilities of hospital capacity and management worldwide, particularly in intensive care units (ICUs) and emergency rooms (ER), imposing prompt adaptation and resource reallocation. Although SARS-CoV-2 is no longer endangering healthcare systems, winter seasons continue to bring recurrent overload of critical care services, primarily due to respiratory infections. In France e.g., this pattern led to the reactivation of the national emergency response plan...

BackgroundMeasles is a highly contagious infectious disease and a leading cause of childhood morbidity and mortality worldwide. In developing country like Ethiopia, effective immunization is a proven strategy for reducing measles related illness and deaths. However, measles second dose vaccination drop out has become a major public health concern. In a densely populated city such as Addis Ababa drop rate tends to be higher than the minimum acceptable threshold, leading to increased number of cas...

BackgroundDengue fever is a major neglected tropical disease with a rapidly rising global burden, and localized outbreaks are increasingly reported in southern subtropical China. Fujian Province, a coastal subtropical region with favorable ecological conditions for Aedes albopictus breeding and frequent cross-border exchanges with dengue-endemic areas, has had continuous local dengue cases for over a decade, raising concerns about the establishment of a stable natural endemic focus. Sustained lo...

Incidence of norovirus has strong seasonality in temperate and continental climates. Many studies have examined its association with climate variables, but evidence remains disparate. We address this gap by performing a systematic review to summarise and interpret the strength and directionality of associations between climate variables and norovirus incidence. Embase, Scopus, Web of Science and PubMed databases were screened for peer-reviewed studies on 2nd of December 2024. Articles were incl...

We describe a fast, noninvasive, low-cost survey method designed to understand the mode of transmission of an emerging pathogen. It is inspired from the standard household prevalence survey consisting in sampling households and counting the total number of people infected in each household, but refines it with the aim of improving diagnosis and estimating more parameters of the model of intra-household transmission. The survey was carried out in May-June 2020, during part of the first national ...

BackgroundSerotype 3 (S3) has remained a major cause of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) despite its inclusion in 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV). In October 2023, a 15-valent PCV (PCV15) including S3 was introduced into the Catalan universal childhood immunization program. MethodsWe conducted a retrospective pre-post surveillance study to compare pediatric IPD incidence in Catalonia during a pre-PCV15 period (October 1, 2022-September 30, 2023) and two post-PCV15 periods (Oct...

BackgroundCampylobacter is a major cause of childhood diarrhoea across Africa and asymptomatic carriage is frequently reported, however risk factors for Campylobacter presence remain poorly defined. This meta-analysis aimed to calculate the pooled prevalence of Campylobacter in diarrhoeic and non-diarrhoeic stool, assess its association with diarrhoea, identify risk factors for Campylobacter presence and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) patterns. MethodEnglish language studies on Campylobacter in...

Incidence patterns of post-acute sequelae, characterised by persistence or delayed onset after the acute phase of an infection, are not well documented after infectious disease outbreaks. Nipah virus was first detected in the 1998-1999 Malaysia outbreak and remains a significant public health concern due to its high epidemic potential and recurrent outbreaks in South Asia. We conducted a systematic review on the prevalence, incidence, duration, and characteristics of post-acute sequelae in survi...

BackgroundThe never-ending emergence of superbugs casts a shadow over the victorious age of antibiotics. In fact, the triumph of antibiotics was previously viewed in retrospection as our final victory over bacteria. Bacteria like Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Escherichia coli are now raising an alarming number of infections across hospitals and communities around the globe. The objective was to evaluate the implications for antimicrobial stewardship based on identifying the...

BackgroundSocial determinants of health (SDOH)--including socioeconomic, demographic, and geographic factors--are closely linked to HIV/AIDS outcomes. This study assessed the association between SDOH and in-hospital AIDS-related mortality among low-income individuals in Brazil. MethodsWe conducted a cohort study using data from the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort, which includes individuals who applied for government social programs (2008-2018), linked to national HIV/AIDS hospitalization and mort...

Vector-borne diseases represent a growing public health issue nationwide. Nebraska reports a sustained burden of mosquito-borne diseases and expanding tick-borne disease risk. This study aims to assess trends in vector abundance, vector infection rates, and human vector-borne disease reports using retrospective surveillance data and to examine the relationship between vector factors and human risk across the state. Vector abundance and pathogen infection rates were mapped alongside presence and ...

We evaluated the probability of need for public health action against trachoma in Esmeraldas province, Ecuador. Compared to global references, seroconversion rates to Chlamydia trachomatis Pgp3 in children suggest high probability of action needed in rural villages (91%) and lower in more urban areas (32%), motivating further trachoma assessment.

ObjectiveTo estimate dengue virus (DENV) seroprevalence and assess parental vaccine perceptions among children in the US Virgin Islands (USVI). MethodsA cross-sectional serosurvey was conducted during April-May 2022 among 372 children aged 8-16 years from 15 schools across USVI. Past DENV infection was determined using a dengue IgG rapid diagnostic test. Data on demographics, dengue knowledge, and vaccine acceptance were collected from parents. Catalytic models estimated annual DENV force of in...

AbstractsO_ST_ABSBackgroundC_ST_ABSAccurate dengue forecasting is vital for public health preparedness. Despite a surge in forecasting approaches, a quantitative ranking of the relative performance and practical utility of dengue forecasting is lacking. MethodsA systematic review and Network Meta-Analysis (NMA) of studies comparing dengue forecasting methods (2014-2024) was conducted. Models were categorised into five groups: Time Series, Deep Learning (DL), Machine Learning (excluding DL), Hyb...

BackgroundDengue virus (DENV) is an increasingly recognized cause of febrile illness in sub-Saharan Africa, yet its epidemiology in Nigeria remains incompletely characterized due to fragmented surveillance and diagnostic variability. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate marker-specific seroprevalence and to evaluate geographic variation, seasonal patterns, and environmental risk factors associated with DENV infection in Nigeria between 2014 and 2024. MethodsFollowing P...

BackgroundWe recently developed a general egg count framework to support cost-efficient survey design choices to inform soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH) control programs. Yet, the interpretation and the application was not always intuitive for program managers. MethodsWe first adapted the existing framework to make the interpretation of risks of incorrect decision making more intuitive and to allow for prior information. Then, we assessed the impact of the allowable risk of incorrect decisi...

Malaria remains a major public health challenge in Nigeria, and increasing climate variability poses substantial threats to recent gains in control. However, malaria transmission does not respond uniformly to climate drivers across epidemiological settings, highlighting the need to explore climate-malaria dynamics within heterogeneous contexts. This study examined the non-stationary temporal dynamics of malaria incidence and two key climatic drivers--rainfall and temperature--in Lagos and Zamfar...

With significant population fractions in many societies who refuse vaccines, it is important to reconsider how vaccination is incorporated into compartmental epidemiology models. It is still most common to apply the vaccination rate to the entire class of susceptibles, rather than to use the more realistic assumption that the vaccination rate function should depend only on the population of susceptibles who are willing and able to receive a vaccination. This study uses a simple generic disease m...