Information Disclosed in Patent Documents being the Source to Address Emergencies: A Strategy to Achieve Technological Developments Addressing COVID-19.

BACKGROUND: Face COVID-19 pandemic, a need for accurate information on SARS-CoV-2 virus is urgent and scientific reports have been published on a daily basis to enable effective technologies to fight the disease progression. However, at the initial occurrence of Pandemic, no information on the matter was known and technologies to fight the Pandemic were not readily available. However, searches in patent databases, if strategically designed, can offer quick responses to new pandemics. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study is aiming to provide existing information in patent documents useful for the developmentof technologies addressing COVID-19. Considering the emergency situation the world was facing and the knowledge of COVID-19 available until April, 2020, this work presents an analysis of the main characteristics of the technological information in patent documents worldwide, related to coronaviruses and the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). METHODS: Regions of concentration of such technologies, the number of available documents and their technological fields are disclosed in three approaches: 1) a wide search, retrieving technologies on SARS or coronaviruses; 2) a targeted search, retrieving documents additionally referring to Angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE2), which is used by SARS- CoV-2 to enter a cell and 3) a punctual search, which retrieved patents disclosing aspects related to SARS- CoV-2 available at that time. RESULTS: Results show the high-level technology involved in these developments and a monopoly tendency of such technologies, also evidencing that it is possible to find answers to new problems in patent documents. CONCLUSION: This work, then, aims to contribute to scientific and technological development by raising the awareness of what should be considered when searching for technologies developed for other matters that could provide solutions for a new problem.

COVID-19 Case Investigation and Contact Tracing in the US, 2020.

Importance: Contact tracing is a multistep process to limit SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Gaps in the process result in missed opportunities to prevent COVID-19. Objective: To quantify proportions of cases and their contacts reached by public health authorities and the amount of time needed to reach them and to compare the risk of a positive COVID-19 test result between contacts and the general public during 4-week assessment periods. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cross-sectional study took place at 13 health departments and 1 Indian Health Service Unit in 11 states and 1 tribal nation. Participants included all individuals with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 and their named contacts. Local COVID-19 surveillance data were used to determine the numbers of persons reported to have laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 who were interviewed and named contacts between June and October 2020. Main Outcomes and Measures: For contacts, the numbers who were identified, notified of their exposure, and agreed to monitoring were calculated. The median time from index case specimen collection to contact notification was calculated, as were numbers of named contacts subsequently notified of their exposure and monitored. The prevalence of a positive SARS-CoV-2 test among named and tested contacts was compared with that jurisdiction's general population during the same 4 weeks. Results: The total number of cases reported was 74 185. Of these, 43 931 (59%) were interviewed, and 24 705 (33%) named any contacts. Among the 74 839 named contacts, 53 314 (71%) were notified of their exposure, and 34 345 (46%) agreed to monitoring. A mean of 0.7 contacts were reached by telephone by public health authorities, and only 0.5 contacts per case were monitored. In general, health departments reporting large case counts during the assessment (≥5000) conducted smaller proportions of case interviews and contact notifications. In 9 locations, the median time from specimen collection to contact notification was 6 days or less. In 6 of 8 locations with population comparison data, positive test prevalence was higher among named contacts than the general population. Conclusions and Relevance: In this cross-sectional study of US local COVID-19 surveillance data, testing named contacts was a high-yield activity for case finding. However, this assessment suggests that contact tracing had suboptimal impact on SARS-CoV-2 transmission, largely because 2 of 3 cases were either not reached for interview or named no contacts when interviewed. These findings are relevant to decisions regarding the allocation of public health resources among the various prevention strategies and for the prioritization of case investigations and contact tracing efforts.

Conditional transparency: Differentiated news framings of COVID-19 severity in the pre-crisis stage in China.

Transparency of Chinese media coverage became an international controversy when the COVID-19 outbreak initially emerged in Wuhan, the eventual crisis epicenter in China. Unlike studies characterizing mass media in authoritarian contexts as government mouthpieces during a crisis, this study aims to disaggregate Chinese media practices to uncover differences in when, where, and how the severity of COVID-19 was reported. We examine differences in how media institutions reported the severity of the COVID-19 epidemic in China during the pre-crisis period from 1 January 2020 to 20 January 2020 in terms of both the "vertical" or hierarchical positions of media institutions in the Chinese media ecosystem and the "horizontal" positions of media institutions' social proximity to Wuhan in terms of geographical human traffic flows. We find that the coverage of crisis severity is negatively associated with the media's social proximity to Wuhan, but the effect varies depending on the positional prominence of a news article and situation severity. Implications of the institutions' differentiated reporting strategies on future public health reporting in an authoritarian context are also discussed.

Effect of Information Disclosure Policy on Control of Infectious Disease: MERS-CoV Outbreak in South Korea.

This study examined the effect of disclosing a list of hospitals with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) patients on the number of laboratory-confirmed MERS-CoV cases in South Korea. MERS-CoV data from 20 May 2015 to 5 July 2015 were from the Korean Ministry of Health & Welfare website and analyzed using segmented linear autoregressive error models for interrupted time series. This study showed that the number of laboratory-confirmed cases was increased by 9.632 on 5 June (p < 0.001). However, this number was significantly decreased following disclosure of a list of hospitals with MERS-CoV cases (Estimate = -0.699; p < 0.001). Disclosing the list of hospitals exposed to MERS-CoV was critical to the prevention of further infection. It reduced the number of confirmed MERS-CoV cases. Thus, providing accurate and timely information is a key to critical care response.