[Use of Information and Communication Technologies and health personnel from Argentine during COVID-19 pandemic]. / Uso de Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación y personal de salud en Argentina durante la pandemia por COVID-19

INTRODUCTION: Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of mental health actions for health personnel was emphasized and the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) was recommended. Given this unprecedented panorama, the objective of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention with ICTs for health personnel from first-level care networks in Berazategui, Buenos Aires, Argentina. METHOD: It was an exploratory qualitative research and evaluative design. The selection of subjects included intervened health personnel who agreed to participate. Satisfaction surveys were implemented, records of the intervening team and their meetings were analyzed. RESULTS: The intervention was effective: improvements in communication and interaction, self-care and a change to a proactive and creative attitude at work, decreased anxiety and stress were detected. As a protective factor, the fact of having a solid socio-affective network was highlighted. The effectiveness was characterized by influencing a repositioning of the health personnel with respect to the context, the task and the work ties. CONCLUSION: The use of ICTs was advantageous, enabled access to mental health care and generated the feeling of continuous support, strengthening the socio-affective network.

Recruitment and retention of participants in longitudinal studies after a natural disaster.

Climate change and population growth will increase vulnerability to natural and human-made disasters or pandemics. Longitudinal research studies may be adversely impacted by a lack of access to study resources, inability to travel around the urban environment, reluctance of sample members to attend appointments, sample members moving residence and potentially also the destruction of research facilities. One of the key advantages of longitudinal research is the ability to assess associations between exposures and outcomes by limiting the influence of sample selection bias. However, ensuring the validity and reliability of findings in longitudinal research requires the recruitment and retention of respondents who are willing and able to be repeatedly assessed over an extended period of time. This study examined recruitment and retention strategies of 11 longitudinal cohort studies operating during the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake sequence which began in September 2010, including staff perceptions of the major impediments to study operations during/after the earthquakes and respondents' barriers to participation. Successful strategies to assist recruitment and retention after a natural disaster are discussed. With the current COVID-19 pandemic, longitudinal studies are potentially encountering some of the issues highlighted in this paper including: closure of facilities, restricted movement of research staff and sample members, and reluctance of sample members to attend appointments. It is possible that suggestions in this paper may be implemented so that longitudinal studies can protect the operation of their research programmes.

Current state of diagnostic, screening and surveillance testing methods for COVID-19 from an analytical chemistry point of view.

Since December 2019, we have been in the battlefield with a new threat to the humanity known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In this review, we describe the four main methods used for diagnosis, screening and/or surveillance of SARS-CoV-2: Real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR); chest computed tomography (CT); and different complementary alternatives developed in order to obtain rapid results, antigen and antibody detection. All of them compare the highlighting advantages and disadvantages from an analytical point of view. The gold standard method in terms of sensitivity and specificity is the RT-PCR. The different modifications propose to make it more rapid and applicable at point of care (POC) are also presented and discussed. CT images are limited to central hospitals. However, being combined with RT-PCR is the most robust and accurate way to confirm COVID-19 infection. Antibody tests, although unable to provide reliable results on the status of the infection, are suitable for carrying out maximum screening of the population in order to know the immune capacity. More recently, antigen tests, less sensitive than RT-PCR, have been authorized to determine in a quicker way whether the patient is infected at the time of analysis and without the need of specific instruments.