PLOS Glob Public Health
July 2023
During national COVID-19 vaccine campaigns, people continuously engaged on Twitter to receive updates on the latest public health information, and to discuss and share their experiences. During this time, the spread of misinformation was widespread, which threatened the uptake of vaccines. It is therefore critical to understand the reasons behind vaccine misinformation and strategies to mitigate it.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSince the early 1990s, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus outbreaks have been reported across various parts of North America, Europe, and Asia. The incursion of PRRS virus (PRRSV) in swine herds could result in various clinical manifestations, resulting in a substantial impact on the incidence of respiratory morbidity, reproductive loss, and mortality. Veterinary experts, among others, regularly analyze the PRRSV open reading frame-5 (ORF-5) for prognostic purposes to assess the risk of severe clinical outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOver the past decades, avian influenza (AI) outbreaks have been reported across different parts of the globe, resulting in large-scale economic and livestock loss and, in some cases raising concerns about their zoonotic potential. The virulence and pathogenicity of H5Nx (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArtificial intelligence (AI) applications are an integral and emerging component of digital agriculture. AI can help ensure sustainable production in agriculture by enhancing agricultural operations and decision-making. Recommendations about soil condition and pesticides or automatic devices for milking and apple picking are examples of AI applications in digital agriculture.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo foster trust on social media during a crisis, messages should implement key guiding principles, including call to action, clarity, conversational tone, compassion and empathy, correction of misinformation, and transparency. This study describes how crisis actors used guiding principles in COVID-19 tweets, and how the use of these guiding principles relates to tweet engagement. Original, English language tweets from 10 federal level government, politician, and public health Twitter accounts were collected between 11 March 2020 and 25 January 2021 ( = 6053).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, health and political leaders have attempted to update citizens using Twitter. Here, we examined the difference between environments that social media has provided for male/female or health/political leaders to interact with people during the COVID-19 pandemic. The comparison was made based on the content of posts and public responses to those posts as well as user-level and post-level metrics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: We identified public sentiments and opinions toward the COVID-19 vaccines based on the content of Twitter.
Materials And Methods: We retrieved 4,552,652 publicly available tweets posted within the timeline of January 2020 to January 2021. Following extraction, we identified vaccine sentiments and opinions of tweets and compared their progression by time, geographical distribution, main themes, keywords, posts engagement metrics and accounts characteristics.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has posed a severe threat to public health worldwide. In this study, we aimed to evaluate several digital data streams as early warning signals of COVID-19 outbreaks in Canada, the US and their provinces and states. Two types of terms including symptoms and preventive measures were used to filter Twitter and Google Trends data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAvian influenza viruses can cause economically devastating diseases in poultry and have the potential for zoonotic transmission. To mitigate the consequences of avian influenza, disease prediction systems have become increasingly important. In this study, we have proposed a framework for the prediction of the occurrence and spread of avian influenza events in a geographical area.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFor years, avian influenza has influenced economies and human health around the world. The emergence and spread of avian influenza virus have been uncertain and sudden. The virus is likely to spread through several pathways such as poultry transportation and wild bird migration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the last several decades, avian influenza virus has caused numerous outbreaks around the world. These outbreaks pose a significant threat to the poultry industry and also to public health. When an avian influenza (AI) outbreak occurs, it is critical to make informed decisions about the potential risks, impact, and control measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSocial media services such as Twitter are valuable sources of information for surveillance systems. A digital syndromic surveillance system has several advantages including its ability to overcome the problem of time delay in traditional surveillance systems. Despite the progress made with using digital syndromic surveillance systems, the possibility of tracking avian influenza (AI) using online sources has not been fully explored.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPorcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (PEDV) emerged in North America in 2013. The first case of PEDV in Canada was identified on an Ontario farm in January 2014. Surveillance was instrumental in identifying the initial case and in minimizing the spread of the virus to other farms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFuture demands for food will place agricultural systems under pressure to increase production. Poultry is accepted as a good source of protein and the poultry industry will be forced to intensify production in many countries, leading to greater numbers of farms that house birds at elevated densities. Increasing farmed poultry can facilitate enhanced transmission of infectious pathogens among birds, such as avian influenza virus among others, which have the potential to induce widespread mortality in poultry and cause considerable economic losses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProbiotics are currently employed for control of pathogens and enhancement of immune response in chickens. In this study, we investigated the underlying immunological mechanisms of the action of probiotics against colonization of the chicken intestine by Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium (Salmonella serovar Typhimurium).
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