Frontiers in public health
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The COVID-19 outbreak was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) as global pandemic in March 2020. Considering the necessity to implement rapid response to control the pandemic and the fragility and the state of need of low income countries, it will be mandatory to develop a global approach in order to reduce the spread of infection and the creation of community viral reservoirs. So far, we could hypothesize a worst case scenario in which when the COVID-19 outbreak hits a peak in Africa and in low-income countries, the majority of such countries will be unprepared, with low resources allocated for affording the viral emergency and the consequences will be catastrophic with no lesson learnt. In the best case scenario, the COVID-19 will not affect Africa or South America on a large scale and, if the prevention measures will be implemented, we could register a lower incidence of hygiene linked diseases that still represent leading causes of death.
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Front Public Health · Jan 2020
Designing Futuristic Telemedicine Using Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in the COVID-19 Era.
Technological innovations such as artificial intelligence and robotics may be of potential use in telemedicine and in building capacity to respond to future pandemics beyond the current COVID-19 era. Our international consortium of interdisciplinary experts in clinical medicine, health policy, and telemedicine have identified gaps in uptake and implementation of telemedicine or telehealth across geographics and medical specialties. This paper discusses various artificial intelligence and robotics-assisted telemedicine or telehealth applications during COVID-19 and presents an alternative artificial intelligence assisted telemedicine framework to accelerate the rapid deployment of telemedicine and improve access to quality and cost-effective healthcare. We postulate that the artificial intelligence assisted telemedicine framework would be indispensable in creating futuristic and resilient health systems that can support communities amidst pandemics.
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Front Public Health · Jan 2020
Lessons From Italy's and Sweden's Policies in Fighting COVID-19: The Contribution of Biomedical and Social Competences.
We start (section The COVID-19 Pandemic and Italy's Response to It) by focusing on Italy's "tough" response to COVID-19 pandemic, which included total lockdown with very limited possibility of movement for over 60 million individuals. We analyse (section Sweden's Softer Approach) Sweden's softer approach, which is based on relatively lax measures and tends to safeguard fundamental constitutional rights. We problematise (section General Disagreement Among Experts: A Pressing Epistemic Problem) around the stalemate that arises as a consequence of the implementation of these different approaches, both epistemically grounded and equally justified, in the face of an unknown virus, in society. ⋯ On these grounds (section The Need of More Public Discourse in Fighting Covid-19) we call for an increase role of different types of expertise in public debates thus for the inclusion of ethicists, bioethicists, economists, psychologists, moral and legal philosophers in any scientific committee responsible for taking important decisions for public health, especially during situations like pandemics. Likewise, in the interest of public reason and representativeness, we also claim that it may be fruitful to bring in non-experts, or experts whose expertise is not based solely on "epistemic status," but rather on either experience or political advocacy, of either the homeless, the immigrant, or other disenfranchised groups. This, in expanding the epistemic-expert pool, may also make it "more representative of society as a whole."
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Front Public Health · Jan 2020
Knowledge and Information Sources About COVID-19 Among University Students in Jordan: A Cross-Sectional Study.
Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has rapidly spread worldwide, and it was officially declared to be a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. Most countries over the entire globe have reported some COVID-19 cases. The current study aimed to assess student knowledge about COVID-19 at different Jordanian universities and determine where they sourced their information. ⋯ Scientific websites and articles were used more commonly by medical and postgraduate students. Conclusions:The COVID-19 pandemic is a major challenge to the health of the world population; therefore, these results assessing students' knowledge provide an important baseline for planning required educational interventions such as contact tracing and self-quarantine. These results may also help public health authorities by engaging communities in implementation of protective health measures, including positive hygienic practices such as hand washing to reduce the risk of COVID-19.
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Front Public Health · Jan 2020
COVID-19 Infection Process in Italy and Spain: Are Data Talking? Evidence From ARMA and Vector Autoregression Models.
COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) has spread successfully worldwide in a matter of weeks. After the example of China, all the affected countries are taking hard-confinement measures to control the infection and to gain some time to reduce the significant amount of cases that arrive at the hospital. Although the measures in China reduced the percentages of new cases, this is not seen in other countries that have taken similar measures, such as Italy and Spain. ⋯ The forecast advanced a significant increase in the ICU needs for Spain surpassing 8,000 units by the end of April, but for Italy, ICU needs would decrease in the same period, according to the model. We present the following predictions to inform political leaders because they have the responsibility to maintain the national health systems away from collapsing. We are confident these data could help them into decision-taking and place the capitals (from hospital beds to human resources) into the right place.