Publications by authors named "M A Varia"
Objectives: The objective of this study was to explore how Ontario Public Health Units (PHUs) partnered with faith-based organizations (FBOs) and other community-based organizations (CBOs) to promote COVID-19 vaccination among ethnoracial groups made structurally vulnerable during the pandemic, and to understand how PHUs perceive the effectiveness of these partnerships with these organizations.
Methods: Between June to December 2022, we distributed a cross-sectional survey to 34 PHUs in Ontario to explore how PHUs were engaging and partnering with FBOs and CBOs.
Results: Responses were received from 28 of 34 (82.
Article Synopsis
- - The study explored the factors that facilitated or hindered the collection of sociodemographic data (SDD) during COVID-19 management in Ontario's public health units.
- - Researchers conducted 16 focus groups and 8 interviews to gather insights from staff about the enablers (like legal mandates and technological support) and barriers (such as user-unfriendly systems and time constraints) to SDD collection.
- - The findings suggest that enhancing SDD collection requires both provincial and local strategies, including improved data systems and training, to make it a standard practice beyond the pandemic.
Article Synopsis
- - Wastewater surveillance has proven effective in tracking the spread of SARS-CoV-2, including its variants, particularly at transportation hubs like Toronto Pearson International Airport.
- - Canadian municipalities, including WWTPs in Ontario, use techniques like qPCR and whole genome sequencing to monitor the virus in wastewater.
- - Findings from wastewater samples at the airport often identified new viral lineages 1-4 weeks before clinical cases were reported, highlighting the potential for early detection in pandemic response.
In the current COVID-19 pandemic, various Automated Exposure Notification (AEN) systems have been proposed to help quickly identify potential contacts of infected individuals. All these systems try to leverage the current understanding of the following factors: transmission risk, technology to address risk modeling, system policies and privacy considerations. While AEN holds promise for mitigating the spread of COVID-19, using short-range communication channels (Bluetooth) in smartphones to detect close individual contacts may be inaccurate for modeling and informing transmission risk.
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