Modeling the relative influence of socio-demographic variables on post-acute COVID-19 quality of life.

Importance: Post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2, referred to as "long COVID", are a globally pervasive threat. While their many clinical determinants are commonly considered, their plausible social correlates are often overlooked.

Objective: To compare social and clinical predictors of differences in quality of life (QoL) with long COVID.

The impact of repeated rapid test strategies on the effectiveness of at-home antiviral treatments for SARS-CoV-2.

Regular rapid testing can provide twofold benefilts: identifying infectious individuals and providing positive tests sufficiently early during infection that treatment with antivirals can effectively inhibit development of severe disease. Here, we provide a quantitative illustration of the extent of nirmatrelvir-associated treatment benefits that are accrued among high-risk populations when rapid tests are administered at various intervals. Strategies for which tests are administered more frequently are associated with greater reductions in the risk of hospitalization, with weighted risk ratios for testing every other day to once every 2 weeks ranging from 0.

A nowcasting framework for correcting for reporting delays in malaria surveillance.

Time lags in reporting to national surveillance systems represent a major barrier for the control of infectious diseases, preventing timely decision making and resource allocation. This issue is particularly acute for infectious diseases like malaria, which often impact rural and remote communities the hardest. In Guyana, a country located in South America, poor connectivity among remote malaria-endemic regions hampers surveillance efforts, making reporting delays a key challenge for elimination.

Modeling the impact of racial and ethnic disparities on COVID-19 epidemic dynamics.

Background: The impact of variable infection risk by race and ethnicity on the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 spread is largely unknown.

Methods: Here, we fit structured compartmental models to seroprevalence data from New York State and analyze how herd immunity thresholds (HITs), final sizes, and epidemic risk change across groups.

Results: A simple model where interactions occur proportionally to contact rates reduced the HIT, but more realistic models of preferential mixing within groups increased the threshold toward the value observed in homogeneous populations.

Incorporating equity in infectious disease modeling: Case study of a distributional impact framework for measles transmission.

Introduction: Deterministic compartmental models of infectious diseases like measles typically reflect biological heterogeneities in the risk of infection and severity to characterize transmission dynamics. Given the known association of socioeconomic status and increased vulnerability to infection and mortality, it is also critical that such models further incorporate social heterogeneities.

Methods: Here, we aimed to explore the influence of integrating income-associated differences in parameters of traditional dynamic transmission models.

Estimating internationally imported cases during the early COVID-19 pandemic.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, predictions of international outbreaks were largely based on imported cases from Wuhan, China, potentially missing imports from other cities. We provide a method, combining daily COVID-19 prevalence and flight passenger volume, to estimate importations from 18 Chinese cities to 43 international destinations, including 26 in Africa. Global case importations from China in early January came primarily from Wuhan, but the inferred source shifted to other cities in mid-February, especially for importations to African destinations.

Estimating internationally imported cases during the early COVID-19 pandemic.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, when cases were predominantly reported in the city of Wuhan, China, local outbreaks in Europe, North America, and Asia were largely predicted from imported cases on flights from Wuhan, potentially missing imports from other key source cities. Here, we account for importations from Wuhan and from other cities in China, combining COVID-19 prevalence estimates in 18 Chinese cities with estimates of flight passenger volume to predict for each day between early December 2019 to late February 2020 the number of cases exported from China. We predict that the main source of global case importation in early January was Wuhan, but due to the Wuhan lockdown and the rapid spread of the virus, the main source of case importation from mid February became Chinese cities outside of Wuhan.