Publications by authors named "Maureen Horn"
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.
Immigrants traveling to their birth countries to visit friends or relatives are disproportionately affected by travel-related infections, in part because most preventive travel health services are not publicly funded. To help identify cost-effective policies to reduce this disparity, we measured the medical costs (in 2015 Canadian dollars) of 3 reportable travel-related infectious diseases (hepatitis A, malaria, and enteric fever) that accrued during a 3-year period (2012-2014) in an ethnoculturally diverse region of Canada (Peel, Ontario) by linking reportable disease surveillance and health administrative data. In total, 318 case-patients were included, each matched with 2 controls.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn ongoing challenge of estimating the burden of infectious diseases known to disproportionately affect migrants (e.g. malaria, enteric fever) is that many health information systems, including reportable disease surveillance systems, do not systematically collect data on migrant status and related factors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImmigrant travelers who visit friends and relatives (VFR travelers) experience substantially higher rates of travel-related infections than other travelers, in part due to low uptake of pretravel health advice. While barriers to accessing advice have been identified, better characterization is needed to inform targeted interventions. We sought to understand how South Asian VFR travelers perceived and responded to travel-related health risks by conducting group interviews with 32 adult travelers from an ethnoculturally diverse Canadian region.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Understanding transmission dynamics of the pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus in various exposure settings and determining whether transmissibility differed from seasonal influenza viruses was a priority for decision making on mitigation strategies at the beginning of the pandemic. The objective of this study was to estimate household secondary attack rates for pandemic influenza in a susceptible population where control measures had yet to be implemented.
Methods: All Ontario local health units were invited to participate; seven health units volunteered.