ABSTRACT
On January 30 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak as epidemiological emergency. Globally, various guidelines have been published for the safety of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and health personnel working in hemodialysis centers. In Mexico, the prevalence of CKD is 12.2% and 60,000 patients receive some modality of renal replacement therapy at the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS, Mexican Institute for Social Security). This proposal for action is made in the face of suspected and confirmed cases of COVID-19 in intrahospital hemodialysis units.
El 30 de enero de 2020, la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) declaró el brote de COVID-19 como emergencia epidemiológica. A nivel mundial han surgido diversos lineamientos para la seguridad de los pacientes que padecen enfermedad renal crónica (ERC) y el personal de salud que labora en centros de hemodiálisis. En México, la prevalencia de ERC es de 12.2% y 60 000 enfermos reciben alguna modalidad de terapia de reemplazo renal en el Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS). Se realiza esta propuesta de actuación ante casos sospechosos y confirmados de COVID-19 en unidades de hemodiálisis intrahospitalaria.
ABSTRACT
RESEARCH SUMMARY: Priorresearch has produced varied results regarding the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on crime rates, depending on the offenses and time periods under investigation. The current study of weekly offense rates in large U.S. cities is based on a longer time period, a greater number of offenses than prior research, and a varying number of cities for each offense (max = 28, min = 13, md = 20). We find that weekly property crime and drug offense rates, averaged across the cities, fell during the pandemic. An exception is motor vehicle theft, which trended upward after pandemic-related population restrictions were instituted in March 2020. Robbery rates also declined immediately after the pandemic began. Average weekly homicide, aggravated assault, and gun assault rates did not exhibit statistically significant increases after March. Beginning in June 2020, however, significant increases in these offenses were detected, followed by declines in the late summer and fall. Fixed-effects regression analyses disclose significant decreases in aggravated assault, robbery, and larceny rates associated with reduced residential mobility during the pandemic. These results support the routine activity hypothesis that the dispersion of activity away from households increases crime rates. The results for the other offenses are less supportive. POLICY IMPLICATIONS: Quarantines and lockdowns, although necessary to reduce contagious illness, are not desirable crime-control devices. An object lesson of the coronavirus pandemic is to redouble effective crime reduction strategies and improve police-community relations without confining people to their homes.
ABSTRACT
Vaccines represent one of the major advances of modern medicine. Despite the many successes of vaccination, continuous efforts to design new vaccines are needed to fight "old" pandemics, such as tuberculosis and malaria, as well as emerging pathogens, such as Zika virus and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Vaccination aims at reaching sterilizing immunity, however assessing vaccine efficacy is still challenging and underscores the need for a better understanding of immune protective responses. Identifying reliable predictive markers of immunogenicity can help to select and develop promising vaccine candidates during early preclinical studies and can lead to improved, personalized, vaccination strategies. A systems biology approach is increasingly being adopted to address these major challenges using multiple high-dimensional technologies combined with in silico models. Although the goal is to develop predictive models of vaccine efficacy in humans, applying this approach to animal models empowers basic and translational vaccine research. In this review, we provide an overview of vaccine immune signatures in preclinical models, as well as in target human populations. We also discuss high-throughput technologies used to probe vaccine-induced responses, along with data analysis and computational methodologies applied to the predictive modeling of vaccine efficacy.