The prevalence of self-reported anxiety, depression, and associated factors among Hanoi Medical University's students during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: Medical students are known to have higher levels of these issues than the general population but in Vietnam the effects of the pandemic on medical student mental health was not documented. OBJECTIVES: To estimate the prevalence and identify factors associated with self-reported anxiety disorder, depression, and perception of worsening mental health among Vietnamese medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHOD: A cross-sectional study was conducted from April 7th to 29th, 2020. All students in Doctor of General Medicine, Doctor of Preventive Medicine, and Bachelor of Nursing tracks at Hanoi Medical University (3672 students) were invited to participate. Data were collected using an online questionnaire including demographic characteristics, Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7 items, Patient Health Questionnaire 9 items, Fear of COVID-19 scale, and question about worsening mental health status. Robust Poisson regression was used to assess the association between mental health status and associated factors. RESULTS: Among 1583 students (43.1% response rate), the prevalence of students screened positive for anxiety disorder was 7.3%(95%C.I.:6.0-8.7), depression was 14.5%(95%C.I.:12.8-16.3), and perceiving worsening mental health was 6.9%(95%C.I.:5.7-8.3). In multivariable regression models, significant factors associated with self-reported anxiety disorder included being male (PR = 1.99,95%C.I.:1.35-2.92), difficulty in paying for healthcare services (PR = 2.05,95%C.I.:1.39-3.01), and high level of fear of COVID-19 (Q3:PR = 2.36,95%C.I.:1.38-4.02 and Q4:PR = 4.75,95%C.I.:2.65-8.49). Significant factors associated with self-reported depression were difficulty in paying for healthcare services (PR = 1.78,95%C.I.:1.37-2.30), and high level of fear of COVID-19 (Q3:PR = 1.41,95%C.I.:1.02-1.95 and Q4:PR = 2.23,95%C.I.:1.51-3.29). Significant factors associated with perceived worsening mental health status included having clinical experience (PR = 1.83,95%C.I.:1.17-2.88) and having atypical symptoms of COVID-19 (PR = 1.96,95%C.I.:1.31-2.94). CONCLUSION: The prevalence of self-reported depression, anxiety disorder, and worsening mental health among Vietnamese students during the first wave of COVID-19 was lower than in medical students in other countries. Further investigation is needed to confirm this finding.

Dentist-administered vaccines: An American Dental Association Clinical Evaluators Panel survey.

BACKGROUND: With many states in the United States permitting dentists to administer the COVID-19 vaccine, there is much discussion about their scope of practice in relation to delivering other vaccines. METHODS: Survey questions were developed to assess dentists' awareness about their vaccine administration scope of practice and attitudes and barriers if choosing to incorporate vaccine delivery into their practice scope. The survey was deployed electronically to members of the American Dental Association Clinical Evaluators (ACE) Panel (N = 989) on September 2, 2021, and remained open for 2 weeks. Data were summarized descriptively in Qualtrics and SAS Version 9.4. RESULTS: Of the 330 ACE Panel members who responded to the survey, 42% were not aware of which vaccines their state permits them to deliver. More than one-half (55%) would be willing to administer influenza or COVID-19 vaccines in their practice setting, but at present only 2% of respondents administer vaccines. To overcome vaccine administration barriers, the top 3 resources respondents want access to are the following: training or education, financial support, and access to protocols. Of all the respondents, 91% indicated the dental hygienist should be involved in certain capacities. CONCLUSIONS: Few dentists are administering vaccines, possibly owing to a number of challenges. Dental hygienists may play an integral role in the administration of vaccines in the dental clinic, but few dentists are educating their patients about vaccines. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Although dentists wishing to administer vaccines in their practice may encounter barriers, support at the state, federal, and organizational levels could help them overcome these challenges.

Evaluating COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: A qualitative study from Vietnam.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Vaccine hesitancy is a major threat to COVID-19 vaccination programs. This study aimed to examine the public attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines, the variance of these attitudes, and associated determinants within a large COVID-19 outbreak in Vietnam. METHODS: Two focus group discussions were conducted online with 20 people from different socio-economic and profession backgrounds. Purposive sampling was used to recruit participants. Discussions were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Key themes were extracted using reflexive thematic analysis method. RESULTS: Four distinct, non-static attitudes including acceptance, conditional acceptance, hesitancy, and anti-vaccination were found. Themes identified as determinants of these attitudes were external factors, internal factors, and risk-benefit self-assessment regarding COVID-19 vaccination. CONCLUSIONS: We found mixed, non-static COVID-19 vaccination attitudes. People's vaccination risk-benefit self-assessment greatly determines the variance of their attitudes over time. Given high public trust in the authorities, the government should take the lead to counter COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. To increase acceptance, vaccine advertising campaigns should focus on providing information about the dangers of COVID-19, the ability to manage side-effects at the vaccination centers, and updated, precise information on both the outbreak and vaccines. Future research is needed to identify the public most common COVID-19 information channels to enable effective community education.

Responses to COVID-19 with Probabilistic Programming (preprint)

The COVID-19 pandemic left its unique mark on the 21st century as one of the most significant disasters in history, triggering governments all over the world to respond with a wide range of interventions. However, these restrictions come with a substantial price tag. It is crucial for governments to form anti-virus strategies that balance the trade-off between protecting public health and minimizing the economic cost. This work proposes a probabilistic programming method to quantify the efficiency of major non-pharmaceutical interventions. We present a generative simulation model that accounts for the economic and human capital cost of adopting such strategies, and provide an end-to-end pipeline to simulate the virus spread and the incurred loss of various policy combinations. By investigating the national response in 10 countries covering four continents, we found that social distancing coupled with contact tracing is the most successful policy, reducing the virus transmission rate by 96\% along with a 98\% reduction in economic and human capital loss. Together with experimental results, we open-sourced a framework to test the efficacy of each policy combination.