Examining the barriers, facilitators and attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccine and public health measures for black communities in Canada: a qualitative study protocol.

INTRODUCTION: Black communities claim the highest number of cases and deaths due to COVID-19 in Canada. Generating culturally/contextually appropriate public health measures and strategies for vaccine uptake in black communities within Canada can better support the disproportionate impact of this pandemic. This study explores the barriers and enablers to public health measures limited to mask-wearing, disinfection, sanitation, social distancing and handwashing, as well as the barriers and attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines among the black community. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: We will use qualitative approaches informed by the widely accepted Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) to aid our investigation. We will conduct 120 semistructured interviews and five focus groups with black populations across the major provinces of Canada to understand the barriers and facilitators to public health measures, including barriers and attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines. Data will be organised and analysed based on the CFIR. Facilitators and barriers to COVID-19 preventative measures and the barriers, facilitators and attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines will be organised to explore relationships across the data. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This study was approved by the Social Sciences, Humanities and Education Research Ethics Board at the University of Toronto (41585). All participants are given information about the study and will sign a consent form in order to be included; participants are informed of their right to withdraw from the study. Research material will be accessible to all researchers involved in this study as no personal identifiable information will be collected during the key informant semistructured interviews and focus groups. The study results will be provided to participants and published in peer-reviewed journals.

Augmenting the Sensing Performance of Entangled Photon Pairs through Asymmetry.

We analyze theoretically and experimentally cases of asymmetric detection, stimulation, and loss within a quantum nonlinear interferometer of entangled pairs. We show that the visibility of the SU(1,1) interference directly discerns between loss on the measured mode (signal) and the conjugated mode (idler). This asymmetry also affects the phase sensitivity of the interferometer, where coherent seeding is shown to mitigate losses that are suffered by the conjugated mode; therefore increasing the maximum threshold of loss that permits sub-shot-noise phase detection. Our findings can improve the performance of setups that rely on direct detection of entangled pairs, such as quantum interferometry and imaging with undetected photons.