Federated causal inference based on real-world observational data sources: application to a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine effectiveness assessment.

Introduction: Causal inference helps researchers and policy-makers to evaluate public health interventions. When comparing interventions or public health programs by leveraging observational sensitive individual-level data from populations crossing jurisdictional borders, a federated approach (as opposed to a pooling data approach) can be used. Approaching causal inference by re-using routinely collected observational data across different regions in a federated manner, is challenging and guidance is currently lacking.

The direct disease burden of COVID-19 in Belgium in 2020 and 2021.

Background: Burden of disease estimates have become important population health metrics over the past decade to measure losses in health. In Belgium, the disease burden caused by COVID-19 has not yet been estimated, although COVID-19 has emerged as one of the most important diseases. Therefore, the current study aims to estimate the direct COVID-19 burden in Belgium, observed despite policy interventions, during 2020 and 2021, and compare it to the burden from other causes.

Assessing potential determinants of the stagnating trend in human infections in Europe and options for intervention: A multi-criteria decision analysis.

Background: After years of significant decline, the incidence of serotype Enteritidis (SE) human infections in Europe has started stagnating in recent years. The reasons for this stagnation remain largely unclear and are possibly multifactorial and interconnected in nature. We assessed and ranked several potential determinants of the stagnating SE trend in Europe, as well as different options for intervention at the level of poultry health and production, public health (infra)structure, and pathogen biology.

Homologous and Heterologous Prime-Boost Vaccination: Impact on Clinical Severity of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Infection among Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients in Belgium.

We investigated effectiveness of (1) mRNA booster vaccination versus primary vaccination only and (2) heterologous (viral vector-mRNA) versus homologous (mRNA-mRNA) prime-boost vaccination against severe outcomes of BA.1, BA.2, BA.