The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the University of Oxford today announced the launch of a new project to initiate early development of prototype vaccines against the Junn virus, selected as an exemplar of the Arenavirus family which is responsible for multiple deadly hemorrhagic fevers with epidemic and pandemic potential. The data and materials generated by this project could give the world a head start in rapidly developing safe and effective vaccines against Arenaviruses within 100 days of their identification, potentially stopping a future pandemic in its tracks.
CEPI will provide up to $25 million to Oxford for preclinical and Phase I clinical development of a vaccine against the Junn virus using Oxford's ChAdOx platform - the basis for Oxford's COVID-19 vaccine, which saved 6.3 million lives in the first year of the global vaccine rollout - and other rapid response platforms. Endemic to the Pampas of South America, a large region of over a million square kilometers which includes Buenos Aires, Junn virus can cause Argentine Haemmorhagic Fever, with symptoms including muscular pain, dizziness, rashes, and a 15-30% case fatality.
The Oxford team was able to develop a COVID-19 vaccine with unprecedented speed, in part because of their prior work to develop a vaccine against MERS which is a closely related virus from the coronavirus family. This gave the team a significant head start when COVID-19 emerged because they had solved many of the critical vaccinology problems for coronaviruses in advance.
CEPI and Oxford now aim to replicate this approach for the Arenavirus family by generating crucial knowledge about vaccine design and biological mechanisms linked to protection against the Junn virus which could significantly accelerate vaccine development against other viruses within the Arenavirus family. The viral family comprises New World Arenaviruses, a distinctive group within the Arenavirus family that includes viruses like Junn, as well as Old World Arenaviruses like Lassa fever, one of CEPI's priority pathogens which are listed on the WHO R&D Blueprint as needing urgent R&D action.
COVID-19 was a wake-up call to the world, highlighting the critical need to be better prepared for future viral threats. This new project will harness the University of Oxford's extensive vaccinology experience and its innovative ChAdOx vaccine technology - one of only a handful of vaccine platforms proven to work at speed, scale, and low cost - to expand the world's scientific knowledge on Arenavirus vaccines. The project will generate vital resources for the proposed Global Vaccine Library helping accelerate efforts to reduce vaccine development timelines to 100 days when faced with future threats."
Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI
Professor Teresa Lambe, lead of the project and Calleva Head of Vaccine Immunology and a Professor of Vaccinology & Immunology based in the Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG), and investigator at the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford, said: "In this new project, scientists here in Oxford and in Latin America will develop and test candidate vaccines for Junn virus using both viral vector and mRNA technology.
"Our work will not only inform best-in-class vaccines against the Junn virus, but it will also support vaccine development for the broader group of Arenaviruses. It is this wider impact that could crucially help the world develop and manufacture safe, affordable vaccines at speed, preparing us for future pandemic threats."
The prototype vaccines, data, and knowledge about Arenaviruses that are generated through this research could make a vital contribution to the proposed Global Vaccine Library: a global repository of vaccine resources, capabilities, and data which can be pulled 'off the shelf' and quickly adapted in response to a future outbreak, accelerating the development of life-saving vaccines.
As part of the project, the University of Oxford's team of scientists (Professors Teresa Lambe, Sandy Douglas, Thomas Brown, and Sue Ann Costa Clemens) will also explore improving vaccine manufacturing processes to accelerate the speed and increase the scale of production of vaccines on their ChAdOx platform. The aim is to provide 'proof-of-concept' that the technology could dramatically accelerate vaccine development timelines from sequence to manufacturing of clinical trial materials, in alignment with the timeframes set out to achieve the 100 Days Mission for fast vaccine rollout during an outbreak.
CEPI and the University of Oxford are committed to enabling equitable access to the outputs of this partnership in line with CEPI's Equitable Access Policy so that vaccines are first available, at affordable prices, to populations when and where they are needed to end an outbreak or curtail an epidemic or pandemic, regardless of ability to pay. CEPI and the University of Oxford will also assess potential technology transfer to manufacturers in the Global South should the vaccine be successful in clinical trials.
Clinical trial data and results generated as part of this project will be published for open access for the benefit of the global scientific community.
This is the first project to be initiated under a strategic partnership between CEPI and the University of Oxford announced in August 2023. Through the partnership, CEPI will provide a total of up to US$80 million to support multiple projects in the design, manufacture, and vaccination strategies for globally accessible vaccines against known and unknown outbreak pathogens (Disease X) in pursuit of the 100 Days Mission. Embraced by the G7 and G20, the global goal aims to accelerate vaccine development timelines to a third of the time taken to develop COVID-19 vaccines. Additional projects which fall under the remit of the strategic partnership will be announced in the coming months.
Shahan Rizvis father, Amir, died in August 2020 of COVID-induced pneumonia.
Rizvi, who lives in Columbia, spoke Friday during a ceremony to officially break ground on a new COVID-19 memorial at Meadowbrook Park and Athletic Complex in Ellicott City, to honor all those in the county affected by the pandemic.
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My family had to watch my father take his final breaths over FaceTime, as the hospital policy at the time did not allow us to visit someone that had the virus, Rizvi said.
Amir Rizvi, 73, worked as an accountant for more than 30 years and also served on the Howard County Board of Educations budget committee, the Howard County Muslim Council and the Howard County police board, his son said. He also established sewing schools in his native Pakistan, where women learned how to build their own businesses.
Im grateful to have this memorial where we can cherish the memory and legacy my dad left behind, Rizvi said.
Howard County Executive Calvin Ball and Howard County Recreation and Parks Director Nicholas Mooneyhan unveiled plans for the memorial, which will include three main elements a grove of 42 birch trees, a seating area surrounding a water fountain and a sculpture, according to a news release.
The first tree was planted Friday during the ceremony and another 15 will be planted later this month by contractor Environmental Maintenance, according to a news release.
The remaining trees will be planted by May 1. The benches, fountain and walkways are scheduled to be done by early summer, and the sculpture is set for spring 2025.
Balls fiscal 2024 capital improvement budget includes $150,000 for development of the park.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected all of us in ways that we may never be able to adequately express, Ball said in the news release. As we continue to mourn and heal, Howard County residents will now have a quiet space where they can come, reflect, and feel at peace. ... This project is part of the healing process as our community regroups from the tragedies surrounding the pandemic and it empowers us to come together to celebrate all that we have accomplished.
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The fountain will be made of polished black granite and will reflect the trees and surroundings, even when water is not flowing in the winter.
A sculpture will be commissioned and then placed by the path and seating area. It will commemorate all those who were lost to COVID-19 and will honor those who worked hard to bring help, relief and aid.
This memorial incorporates a thoughtful design that focuses on a space for quiet reflection, Mooneyhan said in the release. This space will allow all our residents to reflect upon those we have lost, including our very own Laura Wetherald, while also reminding us that there are brighter days ahead. Wetherald worked for the Department of Recreation and Parks for 34 years. She died in 2021 from complications of COVID-19.
Howard County has reported nearly 66,963 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic in 2020, according to state data. There have been more than 472 confirmed deaths in the county. Additionally, the state has reported more than 1.4 million cases, which has resulted in more than 16,809 deaths.
Personal motivations color people's memories of the COVID-19 pandemic, biasing their assessment of past political actions and complicating emergency-preparedness planning, suggests an analysis of four empirical studies.
For the review, published last week in Nature, a team led by researchersfrom the University of Bamberg in Germany and the University of Chicago evaluated the results of surveys of 10,776 vaccinated and unvaccinated German and Austrian adults about pandemic-related risk perceptions, protective behaviors, and trust in government and science.
Participants were surveyed in 2020 or early 2021 and again in late 2022 or 2023, when they were also asked to recollect their 2020 or 2021 perceptions and behaviors and offered monetary incentives for greater recall.The researchers then generalized the results to 10 countries, again parsing data from vaccinated and unvaccinated participants.
The 10 countries were Australia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
"Beyond simple forgetting, recall and ex-post evaluation are prone to various forms of bias, reflecting differences in motivation and purpose (for example, a wish to conform with one's own or the prevailing opinion)," the study authors wrote. "For instance, people are more likely to remember true or false information from the past depending on pre-existing beliefs or previous behaviours in the context of vaccination, political campaigns, or political riots."
Both vaccinated and unvaccinated respondents remembered their 2020 or 2021 answers inaccurately but in opposite ways. For example, vaccinated participants tended to overestimate their past risk perceptions and trust in science, while unvaccinated respondents underestimated them. The more strongly respondents identified with their vaccination status, the greater distortion in their recall.
"Because the magnitudes of these effects partly decreased when participants were offered money as an incentive for accurate recall, the distortions seem to be motivated by vaccination-related attitudes, and cannot be explained merely by people forgetting the past," the researchers wrote.
Underestimating past risks, behaviors, and trust was related to beliefs about the appropriateness of past political actions and tied to a desire to punish politicians and scientists for their pandemic responses and even to dismantle the political order altogether.
Because the magnitudes of these effects partly decreased when participants were offered money as an incentive for accurate recall, the distortions seem to be motivated by vaccination-related attitudes.
"It was also linked with being less inclined to vote and to comply with future pandemic regulations," the investigators noted. "Appropriateness ratings were also more extreme the more strongly participants identified with their vaccination status."
In the 10-country study, most respondents in all countries overestimated the odds of infection (from 65% in the United Kingdom to 92% in Italy), while most participants in all countries but Japan (24%) and Mexico (42%) underestimated the severity of COVID-19 in 2020 (from 74% in Spain to 97% in the United Kingdom).
Bias related to government-action effectiveness varied by country (from 31% in Italy to 81% in Japan) and by perceptions of COVID-19 severity. "For instance, in some countries, estimating COVID-19 as more severe than it had actually been perceived in the past by a representative country sample was associated with the evaluation of political action as more appropriate (r,0.11 in Australia, 0.13 in Spain, 0.19 in South Korea, and 0.21 in Sweden).
The investigators said the findings show the influence of pride in being vaccinated or unvaccinated on recall, which they fear could lead to sustained societal polarization on pandemic issues and interfere with preparedness planning for future crises.
"Future political responses must consider the long-term consequences for societal cohesion and trust, as well as the immediate public-health implications," they wrote.
The researchers called for studies to confirm how polarization and recall influence each other over time, evaluate between-country differences, and determine whether people with a stronger tendency for biased recall of the pandemic might have had better psychologic function during the crisis.
"Yet, catastrophic events typically require a rapid response, and this works best when people can agree on a way forward," they wrote. "It follows that diverging representations of the past might impede effective future action, and it would be useful to investigate this problem in other crisis contexts, such as climate change."
UofL Hospital is now offering a new COVID-19 booster shot that targets new strains of the virus.The new booster is from Pfizer.Dr. Hugh Shoff, an associate medical officer for UofL Hospital, says the new vaccine will combat against possible changes in the virus.Although COVID-19 is not putting as many people in the hospital, the new strains are more transmissible.People are encouraged to get both their flu shots and COVID-19 shots at the same time."The idea around the new vaccine is almost like the flu. Every year we take a look, or what we have done the past could of years is, at the new variants that are out there to formulate the vaccine to allow your body to create the new antibodies to attack the new variants," said Dr. Shoff.UofL Hospital, primary care and urgent care facilities all carry the new booster.Anyone 6 months and older is eligible.For more information and to schedule an appointment, click here.
UofL Hospital is now offering a new COVID-19 booster shot that targets new strains of the virus.
The new booster is from Pfizer.
Dr. Hugh Shoff, an associate medical officer for UofL Hospital, says the new vaccine will combat against possible changes in the virus.
Although COVID-19 is not putting as many people in the hospital, the new strains are more transmissible.
People are encouraged to get both their flu shots and COVID-19 shots at the same time.
"The idea around the new vaccine is almost like the flu. Every year we take a look, or what we have done the past could of years is, at the new variants that are out there to formulate the vaccine to allow your body to create the new antibodies to attack the new variants," said Dr. Shoff.
UofL Hospital, primary care and urgent care facilities all carry the new booster.
Anyone 6 months and older is eligible.
For more information and to schedule an appointment, click here.
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A study from King's College London, which is published on the pre-print server MedRxiv and has not been peer-reviewed, shows that while two thirds of individuals with post-COVID illness were healthy before infection, individuals with long illness duration were significantly more likely to have similar symptoms one to two months before developing COVID-19.
Most people with COVID-19 recover completely within a few days or weeks. However, some report ongoing symptoms including fatigue, "brain fog," sneezing, a runny nose and headache long after infection. For some individuals, this may manifest as long COVID.
In this study, researchers first analyzed data from over 23,000 ZOE Symptom Study app users, who reported their health (whether healthy or unhealthy) at least once weekly, both before and after they had COVID-19. They found that individuals who had symptoms before they caught SARS-CoV-2 infection were significantly more likely to have a longer illness duration.
The researchers then assessed 1,350 adults who reported long-term symptoms after COVID-19 (at least eight weeks, with nearly a thousand having symptoms for more than 12 weeks), matched with 1,350 individuals whose symptoms had resolved within four weeks.
They found that two-thirds of participants with long illness duration had been well before they experienced COVID-19. However, one third had similar symptoms beforehand, twice as likely as individuals with short illness (32.5% vs. 18.0%).
Consistent with this, individuals with long illness duration were also significantly more likely to have prior physical and mental health comorbidities. This suggests that at least for some individuals, their long symptoms after COVID-19 might be due to other underlying serious illnesses, such as asthma or lung disease, rather than due to SARS-CoV-2 infection itself.
"Individuals with long symptom duration after SARS-CoV-2 need careful and holistic assessment. For many, their symptoms are new, and represent an ongoing legacy after their COVID-19 illness. But for others, their symptoms may be ongoing manifestations of a prior non-COVID illness, such as asthma or depression. It is important that that these other conditions are not missed, as they have well-established and effective treatments," says author Professor Emma Duncan, School of Life Course & Population Sciences
She added, "If all long duration symptoms after COVID-19 are blamed automatically on SARS-CoV-2 infection, then we will miss the opportunity to treat other illnesses appropriately, and to help patients recover as expeditiously as possible."
More information: Carole H. Sudre et al, Symptom experience before vs. after confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection: a population and case control study using prospectively recorded symptom data, MedRxiv (2023). DOI: 10.1101/2023.08.30.23294821
Journal information: medRxiv
Reducing psychological stress is an essential aspect of COVID-19 treatment strategies. Since its appearance, COVID-19 has had a significant impact on people'shealth and quality of life worldwide14. Both the infected and non-infected could be at risk of mental health problems as a result of issues such as widespread anxiety, social isolation, healthcare, and other essential workers stress, and unemployment and financial difficulties15,16,17. Other experiences might be specific to individuals infected with the virus, such as concern over the outcome of their illness18.
While many studies have examined the physical and financial effects of the coronavirus, few have examined the mental health care needs of COVID-19 patients18. Thus, this study was conducted to determine the prevalence of emotional disturbance mental health symptoms as well as the probable correlates of these symptoms among COVID-19 patients in the South Sinai governorate of Egypt. The results revealed a high prevalence of anxiety, depression, and stress among COVID-19-infected patients, with 75.7% having extremely severe anxiety, 46.3% having extremely severe depression, and 19.6% having extremely severe stress.
A cross-sectional study conducted by Li et al.19 in China investigated the prevalence ofanxiety and depression among COVID-19 hospitalized patients during the pandemic and found a mean anxiety score of 6.695.01 and a mean depression score of 8.275.35. Healthcare workers (HCWs) were found to be most likely to experience depression, anxiety, or stress as COVID-19 patients, with 80.2% having extremely severe or severe depression, 86.8% having extremely severe or severe anxiety, and 64.9% having extremely severe or severe stress.
A cross-sectional study in a university hospital in Egypt examined a sample of 270 HCWs employed in COVID-19 isolation units; the DASS revealed a significant frequency of depression disorders, with 28.1% of the HCWs having mild to moderate depressive symptoms and 64.8% having severe symptoms20. Another study conducted in Egypt found a high prevalence of severedepressive symptoms among Egyptian physicians, with 63% having severe or extremely severe depressive symptoms, 77.6% having extremely severe anxiety, and 72% experiencing stress21. In Jordan, a study conducted by Naser et al.22 found a high prevalence of depressive (78.1%) and anxiety (70.8%) symptoms among healthcare professionals. In 2003, a study using the DASS-21 during the SARS outbreak found that 93% of patients had experienced depressive symptoms, with 65% having severe or extremely severe symptoms. Nearly 90% of HCWs who had dealt with SARS patients during the outbreak experienced psychological symptoms. Thus, viruses similar to COVID-19 can be linked to the presence of mental health symptoms among patients and their caregivers23.
HCWs are the first line of defense against highly infectious diseases with unclear outcomes. With a lack of infection control measures and protective equipment, HCWs face a significant amount of stress that may cause them to have a higher prevalence of psychological disorders than ordinary patients24. Li et al. conducted a study in China that demonstrated a substantial positive correlation between depression and anxiety scores using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS); these findings were similar to ours in which the presence of depressive symptoms increased the risk of anxiety and stress symptoms among COVID-19 patients19.
Our linear regression results revealed that hospital admission was the main predictor of depression, anxiety and stress and the duration of hospital stay with extended recovery time from COVID-19 symptoms were significantly affecting appearance of depression after infection. Previous studies have also found psychological problems to be linked to prolonged hospitalization for multiple diseases18,25. Others have linked longer hospital stays with higher levels of anxiety and depression in COVID-19 patients26,27. Elgohary et al.20 identified other predictors affecting the presence and severity of psychological disorders among COVID-19 patients, including young age, decreased sleep hours, being female, a past history of a psychiatric disease, fear of COVID-19 infection in themselves or their relatives, and fear of death from COVID-19 for themselves or their relatives. Similarly, Khanal et al.24 reported that females, divorced people and university students with history of chronic disease and high-income earners (1500 JD) were at greater risk of developing anxiety during their infection with COVID-19.
Patients with longer disease duration were shown to have a more depressive attitude about their condition. Effect of steroid use and grade of dyspnea on development of moderate or severe post-COVID depression and showed that higher grades of dyspnea were associated with higher probability of development of moderate or severe post-COVID depression28.
The present study faced some limitations including being single-centered which affect the representation and generalization of results among all patients infected with COVID-19. Other limitations included the fear of patients to admit having problems during COVID-19 infection and Arabic version of DASS has a lot of similar questions which confuse the patients upon answering.
Expert: Chronic absenteeism 'increasingly getting worse' since COVID-19 pandemic
by JT Fetch & Shawn Robinson
Chronic absenteeism 'increasingly getting worse' since COVID-19 pandemic{ } (Photo: CNYCentral)
(WRGB)
Chronic absence means missing 10 percent or more of school over the course of the year. Since the pandemic, it's been an issue raising alarms for educators.
State Education Department (NYSED) data shows nearly 38 percent of Albany elementary and middle school students are chronically absent. At the high school level, it's nearly 61 percent of students.
In Schenectady, roughly 55 percent for elementary and middle school students and nearly 60 percent for high schoolers.
A NYSED report found this can obviously lead to low academic achievement, but also things like substance abuse.
It also takes teachers away from helping kids who are always there learn when they have to catch up students who skip classes.
Jayne Demsky is an expert on this issue. She's the founder of the School Avoidance Alliance, and says not showing up can snowball into several different issues:
"It leads, usually, to depression. The isolation, the stigmatization of it... The school's gotta try to engage that student, even if they're outside of school, with texts, phone calls, visits... It's gotten even worse since right back to school after COVID. It's just increasingly getting worse, Demsky told CBS 6.
Demsky offers six solutions:
Demsky says when parents notice the issue, they should involve the school immediately, since early intervention is most important. Demsky mentioned schools engaging absent students.
We've done a lot of reporting on Gloversville.
They had a big issue with absenteeism. In just one year, they made progress with a street team of educators and counselors visiting different homes door-to-door.
They've seen attendance nearly two percent in the middle and high schools.
Crisis in the Classroom is a weekly segment in which CBS 6 investigates issues faced by educators, students, and families. Send any tips to our team by emailing or by calling (518) 288-6034.
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Pamela Tomlinson became "a hermit" during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, before vaccinations became available.
"I wouldn't leave the house, and was quite cautious about going out in public," she said.
Now she is back working in the office five days a week, but with all COVID restrictions lifted, that does notmean she's stopped taking her own precautions against the disease.
Ms Tomlinson has an autoimmune condition, which makes her more likely to catch COVID-19.
"I still do check those [weekly] COVID numbers," she said.
"I have a lot of faith in the people that are much smarter than I am to make sure that the vaccinations are still going to protect us to some degree, and that's part of just making sure I'm on top of that."
Ms Tomlinson said if the cases in Canberra continued to go up,she wouldincrease her own personal protections in order to avoid the disease.
"[I'll] pop on a mask when I'm out in public, and maybe the office, and just keep monitoring the severity of the cases that are in the public," she said.
The ACT's reported weekly COVID-19 case numbers have more than doubled, compared to ACT Health's figures from a month ago.
More than 480 cases were reported in the week until November 3, with the death of one woman in her 70s also reported during that period.
One month earlier, there were about170 cases reported across the week.
Most cases are detected on rapid antigen tests (RATs) and it has not been mandatory to report a positive COVID-19 testto health authorities for some time.
But Canberrans have been urged to register positive results via the ACT government's COVID-19 website to help authorities monitor the scale of infection in the community.
As Canberra's case numbers appear to be rising, Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith urged people to "be considerate of others, kind and thoughtful".
"If you're going into an environment where you think you might be coming into contact with people who are immunocompromised, so a hospital for example, please do a rapid antigen test and check you haven't got COVID unknowingly," she said
Ms Stephen-Smith said people should get up to date with their COVID-19 vaccinations, stay home if they are sick, and wear a mask if they will be around vulnerable people.
"And when you're out and about, maintain your cough and hand hygiene," she said.
Ms Stephen-Smith said although COVID-19 restrictions hadbeen wound back for some time, health facilities have continued to monitor the impacts of the virus to assess "whether they do need to reintroduce mask requirements or requirements to test before you visit".
The government said it was not considering wider public health restrictions.
Head of policy for disability support organisation Advocacy for Inclusion, Craig Wallace, saidhe would like to see the government roll out an education campaign to remind the broader community that older or immunocompromised people remained disproportionately at risk.
He said placing the burden of COVID precautions on these at-riskindividuals couldhave horrendous impacts on them.
"I'm hearing frompeople with disabilities who are contemplating taking out their own teeth that they haven't seen a dentist in four years," he said.
"I haven't seen a dentist in five years, and that's because I judge the risk to be too great."
Mr Wallace also said some vulnerable Canberrans who were choosing to wear a mask in public hadexperienced hostility from others.
"We're now in this bizarre situation where, not only are vulnerable people feeling like they're excluded from the community, [they] are being actively harassed and vilified for taking pretty sensible precautions against what is a pretty nasty infection."
Mr Wallace has called for compassion, imploring the public to better consider the plight of "the most vulnerable people in these circumstances, which are older people and those with disabilities".
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A mathematical modeling study today from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) suggests that the risk of hospital death from respiratory illness is higher in warmer, summer months, which may have implications for how hospitals will need to adjust to climate change.
The study is published in The Lancet Regional Health - Europe and is based on data on ambient temperature and in-hospital mortality from respiratory diseases in Madrid and Barcelona from 2006 through 2019.
In Spain, respiratory illness has a winter peak and a summer low. But, the authors wrote, there is little known about seasonal variation in inpatient mortality, a surrogate for hospital performance in relation to severe respiratory events. The study used data on daily hospital admissions, weather, and common air pollutants to compare ambient temperature associations and in-patient mortality.
The investigators found that summer temperatures accounted for 16.2% and 22.3% of overall fatal hospitalizations from respiratory diseases in Madrid and Barcelona, respectively. Though hospital admissions for respiratory illnesses were highest in cold weather months, case-fatality rates (CFR) peaked in August.
"We saw that the higher CFR in the warm season was mainly driven by pneumonia, acute bronchitis and bronchiolitis, COPD, and, especially, respiratory failure," the authors wrote.
The authors said this finding could be consequential in the face of warming daily temperatures.
The increase in acute respiratory outcomes during heat is more related to the aggravation of chronic and infectious respiratory diseases than to the spread of new respiratory infection.
"This suggests that the increase in acute respiratory outcomes during heat is more related to the aggravation of chronic and infectious respiratory diseases than to the spread of new respiratory infections, which usually take several days to cause symptoms," said Hicham Achebak, PhD, first author of the study in an ISGLOBAL press release. "Unless effective adaptation measures are taken in hospital facilities, climate warming could exacerbate the burden of inpatient mortality from respiratory diseases during the warm season."
A new study from researchers at Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes Program (ECHO) at the National Institutes of Health shows how a stress scale developed to identify who was most at-risk of needing mental health support during the pandemic has the potential to evaluate traumatic stress reactions to ongoing large-scale threats.
The study, which describes the Pandemic-Related Traumatic Stress Scale (PTSS), is published in the journal Psychological Assessment. Researchers conducted the study at 47 ECHO cohort study cites across the United States, Puerto Rico, and Washington D.C. The study included 17,839 adults and children.
The nearly 18,000 participants were split into four groups: 1,656 pregnant or postpartum individuals; 11,483 adult caregivers; 1,795 adolescents ages 13 to 21; and 2,896 children ages 3 to 12.
The participants were given surveys on pandemic-related stress, depression and anxiety symptoms, and life satisfaction between April 2020 and August 2021.
The adult caregiver population, which was 98.7% female, had the highest measures of pandemic-related stress, followed by adolescents, pregnant and postpartum participants, and children.
All subgroup distributions were slightly positively skewed, and parent-reported child scores had the highest skewness, the authors said. This was further reflected by 27.6% (n = 800) of 3- to 12-year-olds having the lowest possible score.
For all groups, women were more stressed than men.
There were substantial geographic differences seen in survey responses, with individuals in the South and Midwest reporting lower traumatic stress, and individuals in the Northeast and West reporting higher levels.
Future work examining the predictive power of the tool above and beyond measures of general distress is warranted.
In a conclusion, the authors said, "Future work examining the predictive power of the tool above and beyond measures of general distress is warranted."
In a press release, Courtney Blackwell, PhD, an ECHO Cohort Investigator at Northwestern University. Said, Unlike previous measures that capture traumatic stress reactions to a single event, the PTSS was developed to evaluate potential traumatic stress reactions to ongoing large-scale threats. In the future, the PTSS could be adapted to evaluate reactions to other acute onset stressors with lengthy durations.
