ABSTRACT
Background: Shortages of swabs and transport medium for sample collection have made identification of SARS-CoV-2 infections challenging. We examined the agreement in SARS-CoV-2 detection between two types of self-collected samples: nasal swabs (NS) and saliva (SA). Methods: Paired daily self-collected NS and SA samples were collected in May 2020 in an ongoing case-ascertained study of SARS-CoV-2 household transmission in Nashville, TN. After informed consent was obtained, index cases and household members were remotely trained in the self-collection of daily nasal swabs (from both nares and preserved in transport medium) and saliva samples (participants were asked to spit in a sterile urine cup approximately 6 times during a minute). Samples were refrigerated in closed double bags and delivered to the laboratory within ∼72-96 hours of collection. NS and SA samples were tested using qRT-PCR at a research laboratory. We computed the agreement in detections between sample types using the McNemar test and compared median qRT-PCR cycle threshold (CT) values between sample types for 2 targets (SARS-CoV-2-N1 and SARS-CoV-2-N2) using a Wilcoxon signed rank test. Bland-Altman plots were used to visually inspect agreement between NS and SA CT values. Results: Among 144 self-collected samples (72 pairs) from 13 unique participants (5 index cases and 8 household members), there were 30 pairs with concordant positive detections in both sample types, 35 with concordant negative detections in both samples, 1 pair with positive NS only, and 6 pairs with positive SA only. The overall agreement between NS and SA was 90.3% (p=0.1). The median SARS-CoV-2-N1 CT value for NS samples was 33.3 (interquartile range: 30.2-35.3) and for SA samples was 30.5 (29.8-33.3, p=0.04);the median CT value for SARS-CoV-2-N2 was 34.4 (31.5-37.5) and 31.5 (30.4-34.9), respectively (p=0.01). Bland-Altman plots indicated that most observations were contained within the limits of agreement but suggested NS tended to have higher CT values than SA samples (Figures). Conclusion: Self-collection of saliva samples provides a simple, non-invasive, and practical strategy for identification of SARS-CoV-2 infections. (Figure Presented).
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the analysis of the relationship between the coverage of the Family Health Strategy (FHS) and the availability of respirators with the transmission and mortality rate of COVID-19 in the state of Santa Catarina between December 2019 and May 2020. This is an ecological study, which uses computational models of geospatial analysis on the progress of COVID-19 in the state for 295 cities the correlation between the FHS coverage and the number of respirators grouped in the mesoregions was calculated with the transmission and mortality variables of COVID-19. As a result of the analysis. it was found that the state had low infection rates of 0.07% and mortality of 1.72%, when compared to other states in Brazil. There was an increase in cases in smaller cities indicating the interiorization of the pandemic. There was no correlation between FHS coverage with infection and mortality. However, respirators are associated with lower mortality. As conclusions, it can be said that a regional disparity was found in the presence of respirators in the state's micro-regions, suggesting an imbalance in the quality of care for critically ill patients during the pandemic.
ABSTRACT
Software project labs are an important part of computer science education. In 2014, we started to run labs together with industry partners to implement further learning objectives. In this article, we present these learning objectives and our organizational approach to realize a joint lightweight teaching with an industry partner. Furthermore, we report on our experiences with this approach, including the students' point of view. Finally, we discuss what we adapted to conduct our software project lab online during the Covid-19 pandemic. © 2020 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).