The impact of passive smoking in infancy on respiratory morbidity during covid-19 pandemic: a birth-cohort study

Objective: To evaluate the role of passive smoking (PS) on the incidence of wheezing and overall respiratory morbidity in infants born during the first peak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, compared to infants born during the preceding year. Method(s): We used data collected in our recently published retrospective birth cohort study of 588 infants, 294 in each group, born in February-March 2020 (COVID-19 group) compared to a control group born in February-March 2019 (pre-COVID-19 group), at one year of age, using parental, telephone questionnaires. The primary outcome of wheezing/bronchodilator were similarly decreased, in PS and in non-PS (NPS)1. We further, conducted a post-hoc subgroup analysis of the respiratory outcomes: recurrent wheezing, emergency-room (ER) visits, pneumonia and admissions due to lower-respiratory-tract-infections (LRTI), to account for PS exposure. Atopy, daycare attendance, breastmilk, cesarean-section, siblings and gestational age were included in logistic regression models. Result(s): Demographic, perinatal, and atopic characteristics were similar between the groups. In NPS, secondary outcomes, including wheezing (OR 0.43, 95%CI 0.24-0.76), LRTI admissions (OR 0.1, 95%CI 0.01-0.89), recurrent wheezing (OR 0.28, 95%CI 0.11-0.7), ER admissions (OR 0.32, 95%CI 0.13-0.8) and pneumonia (OR 0.16, 95%CI 0.04-0.57) showed significant decreases during the COVID-19 first year pandemic. However, in PS, we did not observe these decreases in the respiratory morbidities. Conclusion(s): This study uncovers the overwhelming hazard of PS in abolishing the effect of the first year of COVID19 pandemic lock-downs, on infant's major respiratory morbidities.

Challenge of forecasting demand of medical resources and supplies during a pandemic: A comparative evaluation of three surge calculators for COVID-19.

Ever since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a pandemic, there has been a public health debate concerning medical resources and supplies including hospital beds, intensive care units (ICU), ventilators and protective personal equipment (PPE). Forecasting COVID-19 dissemination has played a key role in informing healthcare professionals and governments on how to manage overburdened healthcare systems. However, forecasting during the pandemic remained challenging and sometimes highly controversial. Here, we highlight this challenge by performing a comparative evaluation for the estimations obtained from three COVID-19 surge calculators under different social distancing approaches, taking Lebanon as a case study. Despite discrepancies in estimations, the three surge calculators used herein agree that there will be a relative shortage in the capacity of medical resources and a significant surge in PPE demand if the social distancing policy is removed. Our results underscore the importance of implementing containment interventions including social distancing in alleviating the demand for medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic in the absence of any medication or vaccine. The paper also highlights the value of employing several models in surge planning.