Journal of global health
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Journal of global health · Dec 2020
Healthcare worker attendance during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal analysis of fingerprint-verified data from all public-sector secondary and tertiary care facilities in Bangladesh.
The COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed hospitals in several areas in high-income countries. An effective response to this pandemic requires health care workers (HCWs) to be present at work, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where they are already in critically low supply. To inform whether and to what degree policymakers in Bangladesh, and LMICs more broadly, should expect a drop in HCW attendance as COVID-19 continues to spread, this study aims to determine how HCW attendance has changed during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh. ⋯ After a year of significant improvements, HCWs' attendance levels among nurses and other health care staff (who form the majority of Bangladesh's health care workforce) have declined during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. This finding may portend an even greater decrease in attendance if COVID-19 continues to spread in Bangladesh. Policymakers in Bangladesh and similar LMICs should undertake major efforts to achieve high attendance levels among HCWs, particularly nurses, such as by providing sufficient personal protective equipment as well as monetary and non-monetary incentives.
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Journal of global health · Dec 2020
Estimation of unreported SARS-CoV-2 cases in Italy using a Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered-Dead model.
An important epidemiological characteristic that might modulate the pandemic potential of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the proportion of undocumented cases. ⋯ Our findings partially explain the case fatality risk observed in Italy with a high proportion of unreported SARS-CoV-2 cases. Moreover, we underline that the fraction of undocumented infectious individuals is a critical epidemiological characteristic that needs to be taken into for a better understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic.