204.
Lili Yu, Xiaoying Zhang, etc.,
Obesity & COVID-19: mechanistic insights from adipose tissue, 2022.03.09,
https://doi.org/10.1210/clinem/dgac137 .
Obesity is associated with an increase in morbidity and mortality from COVID-19. The risk is related to the cytokine storm, a major contributor to multiorgan failure and a pathological character of COVID-19 patients with obesity. While the exact cause of the cytokine storm remains elusive, disorders in energy metabolism has provided insights into the mechanism. Emerging data suggest that adipose tissue in obesity contributes to the disorders in several ways. Mitochondrial dysfunction in adipocytes, immune cells and other cell types (endothelial cells and platelets, etc.) is a common cellular mechanism for the development of cytokine storm, which leads to the progression of mild COVID-19 to severe cases with multiorgan failure and high mortality. Correction of energy surplus through various approaches is recommended in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 in the obese patients.
203.
Jasmine R Marcelin, Audrey Pettifor, etc.,
COVID-19 Vaccines and SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in the Era of New Variants: A Review and Perspective, 2022.03.10,,
https://doi.org/10.1093/ofid/ofac124 .
COVID-19 vaccines have yielded definitive prevention and major reductions in morbidity and mortality from SARS-CoV-2 infection, even in the context of emerging and persistent variants-of-concern. Newer variants have revealed less vaccine protection against infection and attenuation of vaccine effects on transmission. COVID-19 vaccines still likely reduce transmission compared to not being vaccinated at all, even with variants of concern, however determining the magnitude of transmission reduction is constrained by challenges of performing these studies, requiring accurate linkage of infections to vaccine status and timing thereof, particularly within households. In this review we synthesize the currently available data on the impact of COVID-19 vaccines on infection, serious illness, and transmission; we also identify the challenges and opportunities associated with policy development based on this data.
202.
M K R Kjøllesdal, S P Juarez, etc.,
Understanding the excess COVID-19 burden among immigrants in Norway, 2022.03.14,
https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdac033 .
We aim to use intermarriage as a measure to disentangle the role of exposure to virus, susceptibility and care in differences in burden of COVID-19, by comparing rates of COVID-19 infections between immigrants married to a native and to another immigrant. Our study suggests that the excess burden of COVID-19 among immigrants is explained by differences in exposure and care rather than susceptibility.
201.
Michael J Plank, Alex James, etc.,
Potential reduction in transmission of COVID-19 by digital contact tracing systems: a modelling study, 2022.03.15,
https://academic.oup.com/imammb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/imammb/dqac002/6548784?searchresult=1 .
Digital tools are being developed to support contact tracing as part of the global effort to control the spread of COVID-19. Evidence on the effectiveness of alternative approaches to digital contact tracing is so far limited. This article uses an age-structured branching process model of the transmission of COVID-19 in different settings to estimate the potential of manual contact tracing and digital tracing systems to help control the epidemic. It concludes that effective manual contact tracing can reduce the effective reproduction number. The addition of a digital tracing system with a high uptake rate over 75% could further reduce the effective reproduction number to around 1.1. Therefore, for digital tracing systems to make a significant contribution to the control of COVID-19, they need be designed in close conjunction with public health agencies to support and complement manual contact tracing by trained professionals.
200.
Erin R Whitehouse, Jesse Bonwitt, etc.,
Clinical and Epidemiological Findings from Enhanced Monkeypox Surveillance in Tshuapa Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo During 2011–2015, 2021.03.01,
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/223/11/1870/6174433?searchresult=1# .
Monkeypox incidence was twice that reported during 1980–1985, an increase possibly linked to declining immunity provided by smallpox vaccination. The high proportion of cases attributed to human exposures suggests changing exposure patterns. Cases were distributed across age and sex, suggesting frequent exposures that follow sociocultural norms.
199.
David L Heymann, Karl Simpson,
The Evolving Epidemiology of Human Monkeypox: Questions Still to Be Answered, 2021.04.01,
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/223/11/1839/6237479?searchresult=1 .
the article adds further understanding to some of the research gaps identified in a June 2019 expert meeting on monkeypox: understanding of the zoonotic hosts, reservoirs, and vectors; identifying the risks associated with transmission; and better defining the natural history and clinical spectrum of infection, including an estimation of the prevalence of monkeypox-specific antibodies in humans.
198.
Harry Ferguson, Sarah Pink, Laura Kelly,
The Unheld Child: Social Work, Social Distancing and the Possibilities and Limits to Child Protection during the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2022.03.01,
https://academic.oup.com/bjsw/article/52/4/2403/6550364?searchresult=1 .
The COVID-19 pandemic changed dramatically the ways social workers engaged with children and families. This article presents findings from our research into the effects of COVID-19 on social work and child protection in England during the first nine months of the pandemic. The article provides new understandings of child protection as embodied, multi-sensorial practices and the ways anxiety and experiences of bodily self-alienation limit practitioners’ capacities to think about and get close to children. Whilst social workers creatively improvised to achieve their goals, coronavirus and social distancing imposed limits to child protection that no amount of innovative practice could overcome in all cases.
197.
Bishoy Louis Zaki, Francesco Nicoli, etc.,
Contagious inequality: economic disparities and excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2022.03.01,
https://academic.oup.com/policyandsociety/article/41/2/199/6550136?searchresult=1 .
In this article, we focus on exploring a territory that remains relatively unchartered on a large scale, namely the relationship between economic inequalities and excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic, using a dataset of 25 European countries spanning 300 regions. Our findings reveal two pathways by which economic asymmetries and inequalities can observably influence excess mortality: labor market structures (capturing concentrations of industrial jobs) and income inequalities (capturing concentrations and asymmetries in income distribution). We leverage our findings to offer recommendations for policymakers toward a more deliberate consideration of the multidimensionality of technically complex, large-scale crises with a high degree of societal embeddedness.
196.
Veronica Q T Li, Liang Ma, Xun Wu,
COVID-19, policy change, and post-pandemic data governance: a case analysis of contact tracing applications in East Asia, 2022.02.01,
https://academic.oup.com/policyandsociety/article/41/1/01/6513795?searchresult=1 .
The development and use of data tools for pandemic control, for example, may have potentially detrimental and irreversible impacts on data governance and, more broadly, society, in the long run. In this paper, we aim to explore the extent to which COVID-19 and digital contact tracing have led to policy change in data governance, if at all, and what the implications of such change would be for a post-COVID world. We compare the use of contact tracing and monitoring applications across mainland China, Hong Kong, and Singapore to illustrate both the enormous benefits and potential risks arising from the design of contact tracing applications and the involvement of stakeholders in the various stages of the policy cycle to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that, while COVID-19 has not changed the nature of issues, such as public trust in data governance, the increasing involvement of big tech in data policies, and data privacy risks, it has exacerbated those issues through the accelerated adoption of data technologies.
195.
Stuart Gietel-Basten, Kira Matus, Rintaro Mori,
COVID-19 as a trigger for innovation in policy action for older persons? Evidence from Asia, 2022.01.01,
https://academic.oup.com/policyandsociety/article/41/1/168/6513587?searchresult=1 .
COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on older people, in terms of their susceptibility to the disease and increased fatality rates, while also by creating barriers to health care access, social isolation, psychological and financial burdens. Policy responses provide an opportunity to understand whether the demands of this crisis have led to the development of policy innovations to meet the needs of aging populations. We analyzed an illustrative corpus of policies collected by HelpAge International across Asia in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Vietnam. We identified different policy types that impacted older persons during the pandemic. We also observed the degree to which these policies support arguments for paradigmatic policy changes by examining different models of intersectoral and multisectoral collaborations, and the kinds of policies where these multiactor arrangements were the most common.
Beijing Interest Group on Global Health and Global Governance
Contact: secretary@bigghgg.cn