Frontiers in Public Health

BackgroundGlobal response to the COVID-19 epidemic presents strengths and weaknesses in national and regional social governance capacities to address public health challenges. The emergence, detection, spread, treatment and containment of infectious diseases shows the considerable political and economic impacts in a highly interconnected world. We aimed to estimate the effects of socioeconomic levels on the spread and treatment of COVID-19 in China. Methods We obtained daily COVID-19 cases at a ...

BackgroundTo analyse the impact of the Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (NCP) outbreak on the facemask shortage in China and provide insight into the development of emergency plans for future infectious disease outbreaks. MethodsPolicy review using government websites and shortage analysis using mathematical modelling based on data obtained from the National Health Commission (NHC), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of...

BackgroundOn 12 March, the World Health Organization Director-General declared that "the threat of a global pandemic has become a reality", and the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19, has become a global concern. Chinese efforts in curbing the virus have widely been recognized. Even the WHO has lauded the efforts of the Chinese government and advised the world to learn from China in fighting the disease. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, to curb the spread of the epidemic, ...

Since COVID-19 emerged in early December, 2019 in Wuhan and swept across China Mainland, a series of large-scale public health interventions, especially Wuhan lock-down combined with nationwide traffic restrictions and Stay At Home Movement, have been taken by the government to control the epidemic. Based on Baidu Migration data and the confirmed cases data, we identified two key factors affecting the later (e.g February 27, 2020) cumulative confirmed cases in non-Wuhan region (y). One is the su...

BackgroundThe novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak is spreading rapidly throughout China and the world. Hence, early surveillance and public health emergency disposal are considered crucial to curb this emerging infectious disease. However, studies that investigated the early surveillance and public health emergency disposal for the prevention and control of the COVID-19 outbreak in China are relatively few. We aimed to compare the strengths and weaknesses of early surveillance and...

During COVID-19 nearly everyone around the globe was monitoring the situation on a daily, if not hourly, basis by tracking a set of numbers that were reported by different institutions through multiple platforms: either official, or informal. Irrespective of the sources from which the data was pulled, many researchers, reporters and professionals made the effort to represent the data in different ways in an effort to explain: what happened, what was happening, and what might happen; with the hop...

An ongoing novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia infection outbreak called COVID-19 started in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, in December 2019. It both spread rapidly to all provinces in China and started spreading around the world quickly through international human movement from January 2020. Currently, the spatiotemporal epidemic transmission patterns, prediction models, and possible risk analysis for the future are insufficient for COVID-19 but we urgently need relevant information, particul...

BackgroundThis study aims to estimate the total number of infected people, evaluate the effects of NPIs on the healthcare system, and predict the expected number of cases, deaths, hospitalizations due to COVID-19 in Turkey. MethodsThis study was carried out according to three dimensions. In the first, the actual number of infected people was estimated. In the second, the expected total numbers of infected people, deaths, hospitalizations have been predicted in the case of no intervention. In th...

The coronavirus disease is spreading continuously worldwide with an unprecedented amount of impact on every human society. In order to reduce the risks of infections and mortality, several interventions such as mobility restrictions for different age groups and vaccination prioritization programs are implemented in the Philippines. Identifying age-sex composition with greater susceptibility, longer hospitalization, and higher fatality is useful to guide the targeted intervention and establish ri...

BackgroundAffected by a Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, Since December 2019, there have been more than 76,000 cases of COVID-19 in China, causing more than 3,000 medical staff infections. Due to COVID-19 spreads quickly, is highly contagious, and can be fatal in severe cases, and there are no specific medicines, it poses a huge threat to the life and health of nurses and has a large impact on their emotional responses and coping strategies. MethodsThis study conducted an online q...

The effect of the COVID-19 outbreak has led policymakers around the world to attempt transmission control. However, lockdown and shutdown interventions have caused new social problems and designating policy resumption for infection control when reopening society remains a crucial issue. We investigated the effects of different resumption strategies on COVID-19 transmission using a modeling study setting. We employed a susceptible-exposed-infectious-removed model to simulate COVID-19 outbreaks un...

The COVID-19 epidemics are differentially progressing in different countries. Here, comparative analyses of daily new cases reveal that 61 most affected countries can be classified into four types: downward (22), upward (20), static-phase (12) and uncertain ones (7). In particular, the 12 static-phase countries including US and UK are characterized by largely constant numbers of daily new cases in the past over 14 days. Furthermore, these static-phase countries are overall significantly lower in...

BackgroundIncidence in children was much less than in adults during the COVID-19 outbreak. Sports and entertainment events were canceled (VEC) in Japan for two weeks during 26 February - 13 March. Most schools were closed (SC). ObjectWe construct a susceptible-infected-recovered model using three age classes and estimate the basic reproduction number (R0) and protection level among children simultaneously. Then we simulate SC and VEC effects. MethodWe used data of patients with symptoms in Jap...

BackgroundAccurate measurement of individuals attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination and pandemic is critical to understand the way that people respond during a major crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. ObjectiveTo develop and validate a questionnaire to assess attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination and pandemic. MethodsWe performed a reliability and validity study in a sample of the general population in Greece. Data were collected online through social media between 15 August and 7 September...

Estimates of Covid-19 excess mortality are often considered to reflect the true death toll of the pandemic. As such, information on excess mortality is urgently needed to better understand the impact of the pandemic and prepare for future crises. This study estimated Covid-19 excess mortality at the provincial, regional, and national levels in China and investigated its associated regional disparities. The analyses were based on population and death rates data published by the national and provi...

The outbreak of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread around the world since it was detected in December 2019. The Chinese government executed a series of interventions to curb the pandemic. The "battle" against COVID-19 in Shenzhen, China is valuable because populated industrial cities are the epic centres of COVID-19 in many regions. We made use of synthetic control methods to create a reference population matching specific characteristics of Shenzhen. With both the synthetic and obs...

Because of the fading immunity to COVID-19 and continuous evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants, the next epidemic wave of COVID-19 is inevitable. The Omicron variant has been the cause of several waves of the COVID-19 epidemics in the majority of countries. Thus, lessons from other countries may provide guidance regarding the timing and magnitude of the next COVID-19 wave of the pandemic in China. In this study, the COVID-19 surveillance data from 189 countries that experienced two or mo...

BackgroundTo avoid exhaustion of medical resources by COVID-19 care, policy-makers must predict care needs, specifically estimating the proportion of severe cases likely to require intensive care. In Osaka prefecture, Japan, the number of these severe cases exceeded the capacity of ICU units prepared for COVID-19 from mid-April, 2021. ObjectiveThis study used a statistical model to elucidate dynamics of severe cases in Osaka and validated the model through prospective testing. MethodsThe study...

BackgroundVaried degrees of lockdown have been imposed for dozens of jurisdictions upon facing the SARS-CoV-2 epidemics during the past two years. Areal lockdown has been demonstrated effective to reduce the morbility and mortality of COVID-19. Even after the strict lockdown the peak of infection will appear around 9-25 days (median 18 days) thereafter. A wave of Omicron variant (BA.2 and BA.2.2) outbreak was seen from March to May 2022, in Shanghai, a megacity in China mainland. Aim To understa...

Backgroud and ObjectiveTo predict the epidemic of COVID-19 based on quarantined surveillance from real world in China by modified SEIR model different from the previous simply mathematical model. Design and MethodsWe forecasted the epidemic of COVID-19 based on current clinical and epidemiological data and built a modified SEIR model to consider both the infectivity during incubation period and the influence on the epidemic from strict quarantined measures. ResultsThe peak time of the curve fo...