Publications by authors named "M A Sinnathamby"
Article Synopsis
- The mean standard deviation (MSD) method was created to measure COVID-19 activity levels.
- It was tested against the established moving epidemic method (MEM) for influenza, yielding similar results.
- The MSD method is useful for assessing activity levels of respiratory viruses, especially when there's limited historical data or when multiple viruses are present.
Background: By March, 2023, 54 countries, areas, and territories (hereafter CAT) in the WHO European Region had reported more than 2·2 million COVID-19-related deaths to the WHO Regional Office for Europe. Here, we estimated how many lives were directly saved by vaccinating adults in the WHO European Region from December, 2020, to March, 2023.
Methods: In this retrospective surveillance study, we estimated the number of lives directly saved by age group, vaccine dose, and circulating variant-of-concern (VOC) period, regionally and nationally, using weekly data on COVID-19 mortality and infection, COVID-19 vaccination uptake, and SARS-CoV-2 virus characterisations by lineage downloaded from The European Surveillance System on June 11, 2023, as well as vaccine effectiveness data from the literature.
Article Synopsis
- * The WHO published the first COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update on August 17, 2020, and continued until the final edition on September 1, 2023, after which updates transitioned to a comprehensive format every 4 weeks.
- * The article reviews the WEU's data collection and publication process, its global impact, and offers recommendations to improve collaboration and information sharing for future health crises.
Seasonal and inter-seasonal RSV activity in the European Region during the COVID-19 pandemic from autumn 2020 to summer 2022.
Influenza Other Respir Viruses
November 2023
Article Synopsis
- The study analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the epidemiology of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in Europe from October 2020 to September 2022.
- Data from multiple surveillance systems showed a significant drop in RSV detections during the 2020/21 season, followed by a gradual increase in 2021 and notable peaks in 2021/22.
- Despite increased testing, RSV patterns were disrupted, with unusual circulation trends observed, indicating that normalization of RSV activity had not been achieved by the 2022/23 season.