Cross-Pandemics - Turning Something Bad into Something Good

Intro: COVID-19 the most notorious Public Health Emergency (PHE), changed the way we practice medicine and taught us important lessons. The most effective measures to control pandemic are early administration and equitable access to vaccines and treatments. Governmental Public Health Agencies (GPHA) at all levels should have a leading role in coordination and implementation of control measures. Partnership between GPHA and health systems (HS) may significantly impact the scope of provided services. Monkeypox was declared PHE during the COVID-19 pandemic. It provided an opportunity to apply learned lessons that mitigated COVID-19 pandemic. Method(s): Spectrum Health (SH) is a quaternary-care HS based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We will describe SH's response to COVID-19 and how we used our COVID experience to handle the Monkeypox outbreak. Finding(s): In response to COVID, through the phased approach (Picture 1) and collaboration with internal departments and GPHA, we opened a new clinic. Clinic was initially intended for parenteral COVID treatments but gradually evolved into a full COVID treatment center. Within 18 months we treated 12666 patients. Clinic success, efforts made to establish it, and concerns about future pandemics defined the need for a permanent and scalable centralized department which would provide continual community support with a measured response to meet community needs while minimizing impact on hospital resources, thus Community Response Department (CRD) was born. When Monkeypox PHE was declared, CRD responded immediately and efficiently using its resources and established pathways and demonstrated its own utility. Monkeypox treatment and vaccine were available to patients through the CRD within 7 days from governmental approval.Copyright © 2023

A pre-registered short-term forecasting study of COVID-19 in Germany and Poland during the second wave.

Disease modelling has had considerable policy impact during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and it is increasingly acknowledged that combining multiple models can improve the reliability of outputs. Here we report insights from ten weeks of collaborative short-term forecasting of COVID-19 in Germany and Poland (12 October-19 December 2020). The study period covers the onset of the second wave in both countries, with tightening non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and subsequently a decay (Poland) or plateau and renewed increase (Germany) in reported cases. Thirteen independent teams provided probabilistic real-time forecasts of COVID-19 cases and deaths. These were reported for lead times of one to four weeks, with evaluation focused on one- and two-week horizons, which are less affected by changing NPIs. Heterogeneity between forecasts was considerable both in terms of point predictions and forecast spread. Ensemble forecasts showed good relative performance, in particular in terms of coverage, but did not clearly dominate single-model predictions. The study was preregistered and will be followed up in future phases of the pandemic.