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Contributions of Government Measures, Meteorological Variations, and Human Activities on Transmissions of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) and Novel Infectious Diseases

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A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Infectious Disease Epidemiology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (24 March 2023) | Viewed by 13804

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Dr. Ka-Chun Chong

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1. Centre for Health Systems and Policy Research, School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
2. Clinical Trials and Biostatistics Laboratory Shenzhen Research Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen 518172, China
Interests: mathematical modelling in characterizing the interaction between environmental changes; human behaviors; and infectious disease dynamics; applications of mathematical modelling for health system and policy research; artificial intelligence for public health applications

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Despite the concerted effort of the global community, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is not easy to contain. Given the absence of specific antiviral therapeutics in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the control measures deployed by countries were non-pharmaceutical interventions that limited human mobility—ranging from case isolation and quarantine of contacts to the lockdown of an entire population—with the aim of suppressing the pandemic and delaying the peak before it could overwhelm the healthcare system. As of mid-2021, there are some vaccines that the World Health Organization has listed for emergency use. Apart from government measures, seasonal and geographical climate variations may modulate the transmission of respiratory viruses—while early attention towards the association between ambient temperature and COVID-19 transmission was from experimental studies, epidemiological studies showed inconsistent results at the population level.

In this Special Issue, we invite epidemiological papers focusing on how government measures, meteorological variations, and human activities affected the transmissions of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) and other Novel Infectious Diseases. The submissions can include original articles, brief reports, and short communications. There are no restrictions on study design or methodology.

We hope you will consider contributing to this Special Issue.

Dr. Ka-Chun Chong
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

COVID-19
human mobility
NPI
temperature
humidity
air pollution
infectious disease epidemiology
mathematical model

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

25 pages, 559 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Human Mobility Restrictions and COVID-19 Infection Rates: Analysis of Mobility Data and Coronavirus Spread in Poland and Portugal

by Artur Strzelecki, Ana Azevedo, Mariia Rizun, Paulina Rutecka, Kacper Zagała, Karina Cicha and Alexandra Albuquerque

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(21), 14455; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192114455 - 4 Nov 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 5455

Abstract

This study examines the possibility of correlation between the data on human mobility restrictions and the COVID-19 infection rates in two European countries: Poland and Portugal. The aim of this study is to verify the correlation and causation between mobility changes and the infection spread as well as to investigate the impact of the introduced restrictions on changes in human mobility. The data were obtained from Google Community Mobility Reports, Apple Mobility Trends Reports, and The Humanitarian Data Exchange along with other reports published online. All the data were organized in one dataset, and three groups of variables were distinguished: restrictions, mobility, and intensity of the disease. The causal-comparative research design method is used for this study. The results show that in both countries the state restrictions reduced human mobility, with the strongest impact in places related to retail and recreation, grocery, pharmacy, and transit stations. At the same time, the data show that the increase in restrictions had strong positive correlation with stays in residential places both in Poland and Portugal. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Contributions of Government Measures, Meteorological Variations, and Human Activities on Transmissions of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) and Novel Infectious Diseases)

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7 pages, 1554 KiB

Open AccessCommunication

COVID-19 Case Tracking System in Quarantine Policy: Focus on the Privacy Shift Concept and Application in South Korea

by Kwansik Moon, Nackhwan Kim, Jemin Justin Lee, Hyunsik Yoon and Kyungho Lee

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(18), 11270; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811270 - 7 Sep 2022

Viewed by 1604

Abstract

This study analyzed how Korea’s quarantine policy manages personal information to prevent and control COVID-19. Korea effectively halted the spread of COVID-19 through epidemiological investigations and cell-broadcast systems. In this process, the route of infection is presented without identifying the patient, and the necessary participants are selected only through authentication. We found a correlation between the number of emergency text messages sent by the Ministry of Interior and Safety in 2020 and the number of confirmed cases (R² = 0.465, p < 0.001). Based on Korea’s case, we propose a new concept for solving the personal information problems that might arise during a pandemic response. Full article

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14 pages, 1368 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Does Governance Quality Matter for the Selection of Policy Stringency to Fight COVID-19?

by Yan Wang

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(11), 6679; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116679 - 30 May 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1535

Abstract

Independent of different national conditions, an indisputable fact is that the worldwide governments should play a role in fighting the ongoing COVID-19. To make clear the determinants of government response to tackle COVID-19, I investigate the impact of governance quality. To do so, I newly create an overall governance index based on six dimensions of Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) from the World Bank to proxy governance quality. I regress the overall governance index with controls on the stringency index from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker database. Using pooled and panel data models with individual and time fixed effects, I find that the relationship between governance quality and policy stringency for 339 days across 163 countries is significantly nonmonotonic. Countries with middle governance quality select a high level of policy stringency in contrast to those with high and low governance quality. I also find that policy stringency significantly increases when daily new cases increase. The findings highlight the role of governance quality in deciding the stringency level of public health policies. Full article

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12 pages, 1316 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multiple COVID-19 Waves and Vaccination Effectiveness in the United States

by Lixin Lin, Yanji Zhao, Boqiang Chen and Daihai He

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(4), 2282; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042282 - 17 Feb 2022

Cited by 36 | Viewed by 2929

Abstract

(1) Background: The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused multiple waves of cases and deaths in the United States (US). The wild strain, the Alpha variant (B.1.1.7) and the Delta variant (B.1.617.2) of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) were the principal culprits behind these waves. To mitigate the pandemic, the vaccination campaign was started in January 2021. While the vaccine efficacy is less than 1, breakthrough infections were reported. This work aims to examine the effects of the vaccination across 50 US states and the District of Columbia. (2) Methods: Based on the classic Susceptible—Exposed—Infectious–Recovered (SEIR) model, we add a delay class between infectious and death, a death class and a vaccinated class. We compare two special cases of our new model to simulate the effects of the vaccination. The first case expounds the vaccinated individuals with full protection or not, compared to the second case where all vaccinated individuals have the same level of protection. (3) Results: Through fitting the two approaches to reported COVID-19 deaths in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia, we found that these two approaches are equivalent. We calculate that the death toll could be 1.67–3.33 fold in most states if the vaccine was not available. The median and mean infection fatality ratio are estimated to be approximately 0.6 and 0.7%. (4) Conclusions: The two approaches we compared were equivalent in evaluating the effectiveness of the vaccination campaign in the US. In addition, the effect of the vaccination campaign was significant, with a large number of deaths averted. Full article

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7 pages, 855 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Modelling of Waning of Immunity and Reinfection Induced Antibody Boosting of SARS-CoV-2 in Manaus, Brazil

by Haozhen Wei, Salihu S. Musa, Yanji Zhao and Daihai He

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(3), 1729; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19031729 - 2 Feb 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1723

Abstract

It was reported that the Brazilian city, Manaus, likely exceeded the herd immunity threshold (presumably 60–70%) in November 2020 after the first wave of COVID-19, based on the serological data of a routine blood donor. However, a second wave started in November 2020, when an even higher magnitude of deaths hit the city. The arrival of the second wave coincided with the emergence of the Gamma (P.1) variant of SARS-CoV-2, with higher transmissibility, a younger age profile of cases, and a higher hospitalization rate. Prete et al. (2020 MedRxiv 21256644) found that 8 to 33 of 238 (3.4–13.9%) repeated blood donors likely were infected twice in Manaus between March 2020 and March 2021. It is unclear how this finding can be used to explain the second wave. We propose a simple model which allows reinfection to explain the two-wave pattern in Manaus. We find that the two waves with 30% and 40% infection attack rates, respectively, and a reinfection ratio at 3.4–13.9%, can explain the two waves well. We argue that the second wave was likely because the city had not exceeded the herd immunity level after the first wave. The reinfection likely played a weak role in causing the two waves. Full article

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