The COVID-19 preparedness plans by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly underscores the need for efficient and effective testing strategies. This, in turn, calls upon the design and development of statistical sampling and testing of COVID-19 strategies. However, the evaluation of operational details requires a detailed representation of human behaviors in epidemic simulation models. Traditional epidemic simulations are mainly based upon system dynamic models, which use differential equations to study macro-level and aggregated behaviors of population subgroups. As such, individual behaviors (e.g., personal protection, commute conditions, social patterns) can't be adequately modeled and tracked for the evaluation of health policies and action strategies. Therefore, this paper presents a network-based simulation model to optimize COVID-19 testing strategies for effective identifications of virus carriers in a spatial area. Specifically, we design a data-driven risk scoring system for statistical sampling and testing of COVID-19. This system collects real-time data from simulated networked behaviors of individuals in the spatial network to support decision-making during the virus spread process. Experimental results showed that this framework has superior performance in optimizing COVID-19 testing decisions and effectively identifying virus carriers from the population.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/EMBC46164.2021.9629754 | DOI Listing |
Vaccines (Basel)
December 2024
Department of Laboratory Medicine, Changi General Hospital, 2 Simei Street 3, Singapore 529889, Singapore.
Although the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has ended, there are still many important lessons we can learn, as the pandemic profoundly affected every area of laboratory practice. During the pandemic, extensive changes to laboratory staffing had to be implemented, as many healthcare institutions required regular screening of all healthcare staff. Several studies examined the effectiveness of different screening regimens and concluded that repeated testing, even with lower sensitivity tests, could rival the performance of gold-standard RT-PCR testing in the detection of new cases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMetabolites
January 2025
Department of Electrical Engineering, Qatar University, Doha P.O. Box 2713, Qatar.
Respiratory viruses, including Influenza, RSV, and COVID-19, cause various respiratory infections. Distinguishing these viruses relies on diagnostic methods such as PCR testing. Challenges stem from overlapping symptoms and the emergence of new strains.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiosensors (Basel)
January 2025
Laboratory of Electronic Sensors, National Technical University of Athens, 15772 Athens, Greece.
This study investigates the impact of patient stress on COVID-19 screening. An attempt was made to measure the level of anxiety of individuals undertaking rapid tests for SARS-CoV-2. To this end, a galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor that was connected to a microcontroller was used to record the individual stress levels.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Public Health Manag Pract
January 2025
Author Affiliations: Division of Global Migration Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Ms Surpris, Ms Jungerman, Dr Preston, Dr Gertz, Ms Duong, Dr Roy, Ms Morales, Mr Olmstead, Ms Delea, Dr Alvarado-Ramy, Dr Brown, and Dr Chen); Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologist (CSTE) Fellow, Atlanta, Georgia (Mr Olmstead); and University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida (Ms Surpris).
Context: Federal public health travel restrictions (FPHTR) in the United States are implemented for persons who meet specific criteria to prevent spread of communicable diseases of public health concern. FPHTR can mitigate the risk of disease transmission during air travel and mitigating disease translocation between geographic areas.
Objective: To characterize and determine the extent of FPHTR implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While telegenetic counseling has increased substantially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, previous studies reported concerns around building rapport, nonverbal communication, and the patient-counselor relationship. This qualitative evaluation elicited feedback from genetic counselors, referring clinicians, and patients from a single healthcare organization to understand the user-driven reasons for overall satisfaction and experience. We conducted 22 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with participants from all 3 groups between February 2022 and February 2023.
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