The Promise of Disease Detection Dogs in Pandemic Response: Lessons Learned From COVID-19.

One of the lessons learned from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is the utility of an early, flexible, and rapidly deployable disease screening and detection response. The largely uncontrolled spread of the pandemic in the United States exposed a range of planning and implementation shortcomings, which, if they had been in place before the pandemic emerged, may have changed the trajectory. Disease screening by detection dogs show great promise as a noninvasive, efficient, and cost-effective screening method for COVID-19 infection. We explore evidence of their use in infectious and chronic diseases; the training, oversight, and resources required for implementation; and potential uses in various settings. Disease detection dogs may contribute to the current and future public health pandemics; however, further research is needed to extend our knowledge and measurement of their effectiveness and feasibility as a public health intervention tool, and efforts are needed to ensure public and political support.

Analyzing Social Media Messaging on Masks and Vaccines: A Case Study on Misinformation During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Misinformation and disinformation during infectious disease outbreaks can hinder public health responses. This analysis examines comments about masks and COVID-19 vaccines on Twitter during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted a content analysis of 6,600 randomly selected English-language tweets, examining tweets for health, political, of societal frames; inclusion of true information, false information, partially true/misleading information, and/or opinion; political components; risk frames; and use of specific types of rumor. We found false and partially false information in 22% of tweets in which we were able to assess veracity. Tweets with misinformation were more likely to mention vaccines, be political in nature, and promote risk elevating messages (p<0.5). We also found false information about vaccines as early as January 2020, nearly a year before COVID-19 vaccines became widely available. These findings highlight a need for new policies and strategies aimed to counter harmful and misleading messaging.

Using prediction polling to harness collective intelligence for disease forecasting.

BACKGROUND: The global spread of COVID-19 has shown that reliable forecasting of public health related outcomes is important but lacking. METHODS: We report the results of the first large-scale, long-term experiment in crowd-forecasting of infectious-disease outbreaks, where a total of 562 volunteer participants competed over 15 months to make forecasts on 61 questions with a total of 217 possible answers regarding 19 diseases. RESULTS: Consistent with the "wisdom of crowds" phenomenon, we found that crowd forecasts aggregated using best-practice adaptive algorithms are well-calibrated, accurate, timely, and outperform all individual forecasters. CONCLUSIONS: Crowd forecasting efforts in public health may be a useful addition to traditional disease surveillance, modeling, and other approaches to evidence-based decision making for infectious disease outbreaks.

Longitudinal Risk Communication: A Research Agenda for Communicating in a Pandemic.

In this paper, we present a research agenda for longitudinal risk communication during a global pandemic. Starting from an understanding that traditional approaches to risk communication for epidemics, crises, and disasters have focused on short-duration events, we acknowledge the limitations of existing theories, frameworks, and models for both research and practice in a rapidly changing communication environment. We draw from scholarship in communication, sociology, anthropology, public health, emergency management, law, and technology to identify research questions that are fundamental to the communication challenges that have emerged under the threat of COVID-19. We pose a series of questions focused around 5 topics, then offer a catalog of prior research to serve as points of departure for future research efforts. This compiled agenda offers guidance to scholars engaging in practitioner-informed research and provides risk communicators with a set of substantial research questions to guide future knowledge needs.

Operational Toolkit for Businesses Considering Reopening or Expanding Operations in COVID-19

From the Webpage: This operational toolkit has been developed to help business owners who are considering reopening or expanding their operations to determine their establishments' risk of transmission of COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] and how to reduce it. As displayed in the figure below, the Operational Toolkit consists of 3 parts: an instruction manual;a business risk worksheet;and an assessment calculator.COVID-19 (Disease);Disaster recovery;Disaster recovery--Plans

Filling in the Blanks: National Research Needs to Guide Decisions About Reopening Schools in the United States

From the Document: In this report, we briefly summarize key findings of a selection of published pediatric COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] literature, and we provide recommendations for areas where Filling in the Blanks: National Research Needs to Guide Decisions about Reopening Schools in the US 6 additional study and expedited research are needed. Recognizing that many countries are opening schools now, we summarize the approaches and plans of several countries in their efforts to resume in-classroom education, as it will be important to observe whether and how these measures ultimately affect disease transmission. This report focuses primarily on research needed to improve the evidence base relating to children, teachers, and other staff in daycare and in schools serving pre-K through 12th grade. This report does not include a focus on boarding schools, colleges, or universities because the congregate living arrangements common to these settings present different challenges. Those settings are outside the scope of this report and deserve their own strategies and lines of research.COVID-19 (Disease);Day care centers;School closings;Disaster recovery