Publications by authors named "Marc Kc Chong"
Article Synopsis
- This study evaluates the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine in a population of 1120 patients experiencing influenza-like illness in Xinjiang, China, during early 2024.
- The overall vaccine effectiveness (VE) was found to be 54.7%, with specific effectiveness rates of 62.3% for influenza A and 51.2% for influenza B.
- Despite the moderate levels of effectiveness, the findings emphasize that vaccination is still the best method to prevent influenza in communities.
Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has become a major public health threat. This study aims to evaluate the effect of virus mutation activities and policy interventions on COVID-19 transmissibility in Hong Kong.
Methods: In this study, we integrated the genetic activities of multiple proteins, and quantified the effect of government interventions and mutation activities against the time-varying effective reproduction number R.
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic poses serious threats to public health globally, and the emerging mutations in SARS-CoV-2 genomes has become one of the major challenges of disease control. In the second epidemic wave in Nigeria, the roles of co-circulating SARS-CoV-2 Alpha (ie, B.1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- The study investigates how seasonal influenza viruses, specifically H3N2, evolve and evade immunity due to genetic mutations called effective mutations (EMs).
- A new statistical and computational method was developed to analyze the dynamics of these mutations and their impact on population immunity over time, known as effective mutation periods (EMPs).
- The research identified 46 key mutations in the influenza virus's hemagglutinin gene, which could help improve vaccine design, showing that these major variants last longer in Southeast Asia compared to temperate regions.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emerged by end of 2019, and became a serious public health threat globally in less than half a year. The generation interval and latent period, though both are of importance in understanding the features of COVID-19 transmission, are difficult to observe, and thus they can rarely be learnt from surveillance data empirically. In this study, we develop a likelihood framework to estimate the generation interval and incubation period simultaneously by using the contact tracing data of COVID-19 cases, and infer the pre-symptomatic transmission proportion and latent period thereafter.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn intervention of active TB case finding among smokers attending routine primary care facilities in China: an exploratory study.
Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg
September 2015
Background: Smoking is an important risk factor of TB. However, no studies have been conducted to identify TB cases from smokers. We assessed the process and initial impact of active case finding among smokers at primary care facilities in a setting with high smoking rates and TB burden.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF