Analysis of the reliability of patient COVID-19 screening data compared against their actual test data.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to evaluate the truthfulness of patients about their pre-appointment COVID-19 screening tests at a dental clinic. METHODS: A total of 613 patients were recruited for the study from the dental clinic at the Faculty of Dentistry, Najran University, Saudi Arabia. The data collection was done in three parts from the patients who visited the hospital to receive dental treatment. The first part included the socio-demographic characteristics of the patients and the COVID-19 swab tests performed within the past 14 days. The second part was the clinical examination, and the third part was a confirmation of the swab test taken by the patient by checking the Hesen website using the patient ID. After data collection, statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS 26.0. Descriptive analysis was done and expressed as mean, standard deviation, frequency, and percentage (%). A cross-tabulation, also described as a contingency table, was used to identify trends and patterns across data and explain the correlation between different variables. RESULTS: It was seen from the status of the swab test within 14 days of the patient's arrival at the hospital for the dental treatment that 18 (2.9%) patients lied about the pre-treatment swab test within 14 days, and 595 (97.1%) were truthful. The observed and expected counts showed across genders and diagnosis a statistically significant difference (p < 0.001), and there was no significant difference seen across different age groups (p = 0.064) of the patients. CONCLUSIONS: Dental healthcare workers are worried and assume a high risk of COVID-19 infection as the patients are not truthful about the pre-treatment COVID-19 swab test. Routine rapid tests on patients and the healthcare staff are a feasible option for lowering overall risks.

An exploration of how fake news is taking over social media and putting public health at risk.

Recent statistics show that almost 1/4 of a million people have died and four million people are affected either with mild or serious health problems caused by coronavirus (COVID-19). These numbers are rapidly increasing (World Health Organization, May 3, 2020c). There is much concern during this pandemic about the spread of misleading or inaccurate information. This article reports on a small study which attempted to identify the types and sources of COVID-19 misinformation. The authors identified and analysed 1225 pieces of COVID-19 fake news stories taken from fact-checkers, myth-busters and COVID-19 dashboards. The study is significant given the concern raised by the WHO Director-General that 'we are not just fighting the pandemic, we are also fighting infodemic'. The study concludes that the COVID-19 infodemic is full of false claims, half backed conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific therapies, regarding the diagnosis, treatment, prevention, origin and spread of the virus. Fake news is pervasive in social media, putting public health at risk. The scale of the crisis and ubiquity of the misleading information require that scientists, health information professionals and journalists exercise their professional responsibility to help the general public identify fake news stories. They should ensure that accurate information is published and disseminated.J.M.

Guidance for Medical Ethicists to Enhance Social Cooperation to Mitigate the Pandemic.

The Covid-19 pandemic has presented major challenges to society, exposing preexisting ethical weaknesses in the modern social fabric's ability to respond. Distrust in government and a lessened authority of science to determine facts have both been exacerbated by the polarization and disinformation enhanced by social media. These have impaired society's willingness to comply with and persevere with social distancing, which has been the most powerful initial response to mitigate the pandemic. These preexisting weaknesses also threaten the future acceptance of vaccination and contact tracing, two other tools needed to combat epidemics. Medical ethicists might best help in this situation by promoting truth-telling, encouraging the rational adjudication of facts, providing transparent decision-making and advocating the virtue of cooperation to maximize the common good. Those interventions should be aimed at the social level. The same elements of emphasizing cooperation and beneficence also apply to the design of triage protocols for when resources are overwhelmed. A life-stages approach increases beneficence and reduces harms. Triage should be kept as simple and straightforward as reasonably possible to avoid unwieldly application during a pandemic.

Telling the Truth to Child Cancer Patients in COVID-19 Times.

A notable feature of the COVID-19 pandemic is that children are less at risk of becoming infected or, if infected, less likely to become seriously unwell, so ethical discussions have consequently focused on the adult healthcare setting. However, despite a lower risk of children becoming acutely ill with COVID-19, there nevertheless may be significant and potentially sustained effects of COVID-19 on the physical, psychological, and emotional health and well-being of children. Focusing on the context of children's cancer care, and specifically bone marrow transplant (BMT), we describe some of these effects and then address one specific ethical challenge that arises. That is the question of what and how much to tell children whose cancer treatment has been changed because of COVID-19. Drawing on our previous work on the ethical reasons for telling the truth to younger children (aged 5-12) we link different ethical reasons to the different types of information that could be given to children in this context. We argue that children should be given an explanation of the changes that they will directly experience, including some changes to the process of their actual medical treatment; but not about increased risk associated with these changes, unless they specifically ask for this information.