Early warning indicators of COVID-19 burden for a prosilient European pandemic response.

Background: The European Union has been criticized for responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in a reactive, rather than prosilient manner. For the EU bloc to be prosilient, it needs to have the right early warning indicators to allow short-term healthcare system preparedness and agile planning of the public health response.

Method: The association of COVID-19 disease burden, as measured by mortality (COVID-19 and all-cause), hospital and ICU occupancy, with incidence rate (IR), total positivity rate (TPR) and adjusted TPR as proposed by Vong and Kakkar, was investigated using Poisson regression analysis.

WASP (write a scientific paper): An introduction to set-theoretic methods and qualitative comparative analysis.

This paper provides an introduction to set-theoretic methods with respect to their application to research in the qualitative paradigm, as part of a series of papers on qualitative research being featured in Early Human Development. It discusses the philosophical assumptions underlying set-theoretic methods and the properties that make them well-suited for use in the analysis of qualitative data. It also takes a closer look at qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), a cross-case analysis method that has arguably been most widely applied among the set-theoretic methods and has also been gaining ground in the health field.

WASP (write a scientific paper): Sampling in qualitative research.

This paper outlines key concepts and considerations pertaining to sampling in qualitative research as part of a series of articles on qualitative research methods aimed at a medical and health sciences audience with a predominantly quantitative background. Planning of the sampling approach, including within-case sampling, multiple-case sampling, sample size considerations and qualitative sampling strategies are addressed. Concepts specific to the qualitative paradigm, including the iterative approach and saturation are discussed and a framework for evaluating the rigour of qualitative sampling strategies is presented.