Informing the pandemic response: the role of the WHO's COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update.

On 31 December 2019, the Municipal Health Commission of Wuhan, China, reported a cluster of atypical pneumonia cases. On 5 January 2020, the WHO publicly released a Disease Outbreak News (DON) report, providing information about the pneumonia cases, implemented response interventions, and WHO's risk assessment and advice on public health and social measures. Following 9 additional DON reports and 209 daily situation reports, on 17 August 2020, WHO published the first edition of the COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update (WEU). On 1 September 2023, the 158th edition of the WEU was published on WHO's website, marking its final issue. Since then, the WEU has been replaced by comprehensive global epidemiological updates on COVID-19 released every 4 weeks. During the span of its publication, the webpage that hosts the WEU and the COVID-19 Operational Updates was accessed annually over 1.4 million times on average, with visits originating from more than 100 countries. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the WEU process, from data collection to publication, focusing on the scope, technical details, main features, underlying methods, impact and limitations. We also discuss WHO's experience in disseminating epidemiological information on the COVID-19 pandemic at the global level and provide recommendations for enhancing collaboration and information sharing to support future health emergency responses.

The World Health Organization COVID-19 surveillance database.

In January 2020, SARS-CoV-2 virus was identified as a cause of an outbreak in China. The disease quickly spread worldwide, and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the pandemic in March 2020.From the first notifications of spread of the disease, the WHO's Emergency Programme implemented a global COVID-19 surveillance system in coordination with all WHO regional offices. The system aimed to monitor the spread of the epidemic over countries and across population groups, severity of the disease and risk factors, and the impact of control measures. COVID-19 surveillance data reported to WHO is a combination of case-based data and weekly aggregated data, focusing on a minimum global dataset for cases and deaths including disaggregation by age, sex, occupation as a Health Care Worker, as well as number of cases tested, and number of cases newly admitted for hospitalization. These disaggregations aim to monitor inequities in COVID-19 distribution and risk factors among population groups.SARS-CoV-2 epidemic waves continue to sweep the world; as of March 2022, over 445 million cases and 6 million deaths have been reported worldwide. Of these, over 327 million cases (74%) have been reported in the WHO surveillance database, of which 255 million cases (57%) are disaggregated by age and sex. A public dashboard has been made available to visualize trends, age distributions, sex ratios, along with testing and hospitalization rates. It includes a feature to download the underlying dataset.This paper will describe the data flows, database, and frontend public dashboard, as well as the challenges experienced in data acquisition, curation and compilation and the lessons learnt in overcoming these. Two years after the pandemic was declared, COVID-19 continues to spread and is still considered a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). While WHO regional and country offices have demonstrated tremendous adaptability and commitment to process COVID-19 surveillance data, lessons learnt from this major event will serve to enhance capacity and preparedness at every level, as well as institutional empowerment that may lead to greater sharing of public health evidence during a PHEIC, with a focus on equity.

Identifying and Resolving End of Session Cues in Substance Detection Canine Training.

When training and working a substance detection canine, a trained final response should be performed immediately upon recognition of odor (Generally, a 1-3 s window is preferred within our detection practices). Typical canine training places much emphasis on planning and setting up training scenarios to achieve specific objectives but not much consideration is given to how to end a training session. When the canine fails to maintain criteria, trainers are left trying to determine the cause of poor performance. One consideration often overlooked is a phenomenon called End of Session Cueing that may exist in detection training whereby a previously trained canine no longer responds to odor because it has taken on aversive association. This may be due to several factors associated with motivation. The sequence of events at the end of a session can be as equally important to maintain motivation for the task of scent detection in future sessions. This paper will identify and examine multiple factors associated with "End of Session Cues" in working dogs, how they may be responsible for poor final response performance and discuss potential strategies to address them.

Efficacy and safety of topical ciprofloxacin/dexamethasone versus neomycin/polymyxin B/hydrocortisone for otitis externa.

OBJECTIVES: To compare the efficacy and safety of ciprofloxacin 0.3%/dexamethasone 0.1% (CIP/DEX) otic suspension with that of neomycin 0.35%/polymyxin B 10,000 IU/mL/hydrocortisone 1.0% (N/P/H) otic suspension in patients with acute otitis externa (AOE). STUDY DESIGN: Randomized, observer-masked, parallel-group, multicenter study. Patients were randomized to 7 days treatment with either CIP/DEX 3-4 drops twice daily or N/P/H 3-4 drops three times daily. POPULATION: Patients of either sex and older than 1 year, with a clinical diagnosis of mild, moderate, or severe AOE and intact tympanic membranes were recruited to participate. OUTCOMES MEASURED: Signs and symptoms of AOE, including ear inflammation, tenderness, edema and discharge (assessed on Days 3, 8 [End-of-Therapy] and 18 [Test-of-Cure]); microbiologic eradication (presumed or documented); and frequency of adverse events. RESULTS: Patients enrolled numbered 468. In culture-positive patients who met the inclusion criteria (N = 396), clinical cure rates at Day 18 were significantly higher with CIP/DEX than with N/P/H (90.9% vs. 83.9%; p = 0.0375), as were microbiologic eradication rates (94.7% vs. 86.0%; p = 0.0057). In addition, the clinical response was significantly better with CIP/DEX than with N/P/H at Days 3 and 18 (p = 0.0279 and p = 0.0321, respectively), as was the reduction in ear inflammation at Day 18 (p = 0.0268). Both preparations were well tolerated in pediatric and adult patients. CONCLUSIONS: 7 days treatment with CIP/DEX otic suspension administered twice daily is clinically and microbiologically superior to N/P/H otic suspension administered 3 times daily in the treatment of mild to severe AOE, and is equally well tolerated.