Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34751370›Full record

ArticleEuropean journal of public health2021

Early warning indicators of COVID-19 burden for a prosilient European pandemic response.

Farrugia Beatrice, Neville Calleja

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in European journal of public health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Research gaps and priorities for quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA).Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2024
    Article
  2. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Farrugia BeatriceDepartment of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Malta, Msida, Malta.
Neville CallejaDepartment of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Malta, Msida, Malta.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundThe European Union has been criticized for responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in a reactive, rather than prosilient manner. For the EU bloc to be prosilient, it needs to have the right early warning indicators to allow short-term healthcare system preparedness and agile planning of the public health response.

methodThe association of COVID-19 disease burden, as measured by mortality (COVID-19 and all-cause), hospital and ICU occupancy, with incidence rate (IR), total positivity rate (TPR) and adjusted TPR as proposed by Vong and Kakkar, was investigated using Poisson regression analysis. This was carried out using both real-time data and time lags of up to 8 weeks to identify potential for early warning of spikes in disease burden. ECDC weekly figures for these indicators were used, and the analysis was repeated for the subset of data after Week 42  of 2020, when the EU Council introduced minimum COVID-19 testing rates.

resultsTPR and IR were noted to be the most predictive of COVID-19 disease burden whilst adjusted TPR applied on weekly data was not associated. TPR behaved better at predicting all-cause mortality in both analyses. The TPR and IR were both best associated with hospital and ICU occupancy and COVID-19 mortality with a short time lag (2-3 weeks in the case of TPR with hospital occupancy and COVID-19 mortality).

conclusionsMonitoring TPR can provide a 2-3-week warning of a spike in hospital occupancy and COVID-19 mortality. This time, if well utilized, could help health systems save countless lives by mobilising resources.

Indexed as

COVID-19PandemicsCOVID-19 TestingHumansPublic HealthSARS-CoV-2

Identifiers

PMID34751370
PMCPMC8576301

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.