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Background: Vaccine hesitancy has been recognized as a public health issue which needs to be addressed urgently. With reopening of school unvaccinated children might become major carriers of COVID-19. An assessment of the determinants of vaccine hesitancy will aid in the acceleration of vaccine administration among children. Objective: This study aims to explore parental COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Surat and determine factors associated with it. Methodology: This is a cross sectional study in Surat among 250 participants selected from Rural and Urban field practice area by Systematic Random Sampling. Data collection was done by data collectors in an interview during the month of January and February, 2022. Univariate analysis was done, followed by Chi square test to establish associations. Predictors were determined by Binomial Logistic Regression. Results: Mean age of population was 31.3 + 10.7 years. Vaccine Hesitancy was recorded in 154 (61.6%) participants. Urban address (p=0.013), Full Vaccination status of parents (<0.001) and Perceived Benefits of vaccine to the child (p=0.001) were significant predictors of Vaccine Hesitancy. Conclusion: High proportion of Vaccine hesitancy was found in this study. Interventions can be planned on the basis of factors affecting Vaccine Hesitancy. © The Authors retain the copyrights of this article.
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Background: In each geographic region, risk of new cases of COVID19 are driven by internal factors such as agent, host, and environment characteristics, as well as external factors, such as population mobility and cross border transmission of disease. COVID19 control measures are best implemented when local governments and health teams are well aware of these internal and external risks. These risks are dynamic in nature and hence need to be reviewed at regular intervals. The study conducted to develop a composite spatiotemporal Hazard Index comprising of three factors – presence of susceptible population, population density and presence of active cases with corresponding growth rates, to rank areas within an administrative boundary by their fortnightly risk of active COVID19 cases. Methods: Using Principal Component Analysis, the weights of each of these factors were determined and applied to transformed values of factors in the districts of Gujarat state for months of January to July 2021. Hazard Index thus obtained was used to rank the districts. Results: Spearman correlation between the Hazard Index and number of active cases 15 days later was moderate and significant (p<0.01) throughout the study period. Conclusion: Hazard Index can predict Districts at highest risk of active cases in the given time period. These districts with high Hazard Index would require different control measures, depending on the factor that resulted in higher index value. © 2022, MedSci Publications. All rights reserved.
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Introduction: For the diagnosis of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)disease,Real-TimeReverseTranscriptase-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) is a laboratory-based technique and is considered a gold standard test, but is time consuming. A Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) is used for screening which is an immunoassay that identifies the presence of a viral antigen causing infection at the point of care. The RAT is quick, inexpensive, easily accessible and doesn’t need lab handling or sample preprocessing. Aim: To measure the sensitivity, specificity, Negative Predictive Value (NPV) and Positive Predictive Value (PPV) of RAT in comparison to RT-PCR. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study was conducted in Department of Community Medicine at Government Medical College (tertiary care centre), Surat, Gujarat, India, using secondary data from 1st July 2020 to 5th Dec 2020. The samples were collected from all the patients of Acute Respiratory Illness (ARI), Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI), Influenza Like Illness (ILI), the suspected COVID-19 cases and all walk in patients for testing or treatment purposes. A total of 264 participants enrolled in the study underwent both the RAT and RT-PCR tests. The sensitivity, specificity, Positive Predictive Value (PPV) and Negative Predictive Value (NPV) were calculated using MS Excel Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.0. Results: Total 264 cases were analysed, amongst which 161 (60.9%) were males and 103 (39.1%) were females and the mean age of the patient was 41.6 years and 36.8 years for males and females, respectively. The overall sensitivity was 52.47%, specificity was 87.11%, PPV was 71.62% and the NPV was 74.73%. While among symptomatic patients sensitivity was 55.55%, specificity was 88.54%, PPV was 76.97% and NPV was 74.35%. Conclusion: Because of the low sensitivity of the RAT, if used alone a high number of false negative cases will be resulted. Hence, it is employed in community and clinical settings as sequential screening in conjunction with RT-PCR, which results in improved net gain and aids in disease transmission control.
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In India, the nationwide lockdown was implemented from March to May 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic. As of March 2020, there were 13.08 lakh PLHIV availing ART free of cost from Government run ART centres, To maintain the continuum of care, National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) of India adopted Multi Months Dispensation (MMD) through ART centres and Community Dispensation of ART through the various Targeted Interventions (TI) and Community Based Organizations (CBO). A mixed methods study was designed, with desk review of programmatic data, semi qualitative interviews of 250 PLHIV and 15 In-Depth Interviews of ART centre and TI/CBO staff to document the process, strengths and challenges of these strategies in Surat city of South Gujarat. While administrative, technical and networking strengths were documented, manpower constraints, interrupted laboratory services, migration and relatively passive role of PLHIV in availing services were major challenges described in this study among several others.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , HIV Infections , COVID-19/epidemiology , Communicable Disease Control , HIV Infections/epidemiology , Humans , India/epidemiology , PandemicsABSTRACT
Introduction: India has highest burden of tuberculosis cases both drug sensitive as well as drug resistance in the world. Covid-19 pandemic had affected infectious diseases like TB, HIV, Malaria in developing countries like India. Here, we aimed to study the impact of lockdown on diagnosis and management of tuberculosis in Surat, Gujarat, India due to SARS-Cov-2. Method: Cross sectional survey of Tuberculosis patients regarding problems faced during lockdown involving all 18 TB unit of Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) was done, 15 patients were randomly selected by simple random sampling of line list of patients of each unit and secondary data analysis, data was collected from District Tuberculosis centre for rural part and SMC for urban part.