Spatiotemporal prevalence of COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 variants in Africa.

Introduction: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused significant public health and socioeconomic crises across Africa; however, the prevalent patterns of COVID-19 and the circulating characteristics of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants in the continent remain insufficiently documented.

Methods: In this study, national data on case numbers, infection incidences, mortality rates, the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 variants, and key health indexes were collected from various official and professional sources between January 2020 and December 2023 were analyzed with SaTScan and geographically weighted regression (GWR).

Results: The prevalent profiles and circulating features of SARS-CoV-2 across the African continent, including its five regions and all African countries, were analyzed.

Dissemination of Antibiotic Resistance Genes Among Patients with Diarrhea - Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2018.

What Is Already Known About This Topic?: Antibiotic resistance (AR) is a serious public health threat worldwide. However, the AR and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) data from West Africa, especially from Sierra Leone, are limited.

What Is Added By This Report?: The study revealed ARGs' common dissemination, and multiplex antibiotic resistance genes in one sample.

Molecular diagnostics and next-generation sequencing reveal real etiological characteristics of invasive infection in febrile illness in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Invasive infection, which can cause typhoid/paratyphoid fever and invasive non-typhoidal salmonellosis, is a public health burden in Africa. Accurate diagnosis and etiological characterization are required to conduct prevalence and risk estimations for infection; however, the utilization of optimal techniques and surveillance data are still insufficient. In this study, we performed a laboratory-based survey in Freetown, which is the biggest city in Sierra Leone with a high burden of typhoid fever, by using blood culture and molecular methods but not the Widal test, to estimate the prevalence and aetiology of invasive infection among fever patients.