Mass gathering events and COVID-19; lessons learnt from the 2020 European football championship.

Evidence about the impact of mass gatherings during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the number of disease cases and on the health-care systems of host countries is limited. Additionally, there have been few publications on the lessons identified from the adaptation of mass gatherings held during the pandemic, including the implementation of comprehensive public health and social measures aimed at reducing viral transmission. This article describes preparations made for the 2020 Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) European Football Championship (UEFA Euro 2020) by the World Health Organization's (WHO) Regional Office for Europe, UEFA and other stakeholders after the championship had been rescheduled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Technical guidance on preparations for the football tournament and risk assessment tools were provided by WHO. A task force established by the WHO Regional Office for Europe conducted traditional and event-based disease surveillance before and during UEFA Euro 2020, monitored public health and social measures in the 11 host countries, and developed a risk communication and community engagement strategy that involved multimedia campaigns targeting news and social media, fans, athletes, event organizers and other stakeholders. The lessons and good practices identified during UEFA Euro 2020 are described to help guide preparations for future mass gatherings in health emergencies. Sharing data and recommendations on best practice from previous mass gatherings with the organizers and countries involved in planning for a major event is particularly important.

Peu de preuves existent concernant l'impact des rassemblements de masse lors de la pandémie de maladie à coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) sur le nombre de cas et sur les systèmes de soins de santé des pays hôtes. En outre, rares sont les publications consacrées aux enseignements qui ont découlé de l'adaptation des rassemblements de masse organisés durant la pandémie, notamment la mise en œuvre de mesures sociales et sanitaires globales visant à limiter la transmission du virus. Le présent article décrit les préparatifs effectués dans le cadre du championnat d'Europe de football 2020 (UEFA Euro 2020) de l'Union européenne des associations de football (UEFA) par le Bureau régional de l'Organisation mondiale de la Santé (OMS) pour l'Europe, l'UEFA et d'autres parties prenantes après le report de la compétition en raison de la pandémie de COVID-19. Des directives techniques relatives à ces préparatifs ainsi que des outils d'évaluation des risques ont été fournis par l'OMS. Un groupe de travail créé par le Bureau régional de l'OMS pour l'Europe a mené une surveillance épidémiologique et événementielle avant et pendant l'UEFA Euro 2020, analysé les mesures sociales et sanitaires dans les 11 pays hôtes et développé une stratégie de communication des risques et d'engagement communautaire impliquant les médias et réseaux sociaux, les supporters, les athlètes, les organisateurs d'événements et d'autres intervenants. Les leçons tirées et les bonnes pratiques identifiées au cours de l'UEFA Euro 2020 sont détaillées ici afin d'aider à encadrer les préparatifs de futurs rassemblements de masse dans des situations d'urgence sanitaire. Partager les données et recommandations sur les meilleures pratiques observées lors de précédents rassemblements de masse avec les organisateurs et pays prenant part à la planification d'un événement de grande envergure est essentiel.

Los datos sobre el impacto de las concentraciones masivas durante la pandemia de la enfermedad por coronavirus de 2019 (COVID-19) en el número de casos de la enfermedad y en los sistemas sanitarios de los países anfitriones son limitados. Además, ha habido pocas publicaciones sobre las lecciones identificadas a partir de la adaptación de las concentraciones masivas celebradas durante la pandemia, incluida la aplicación de medidas sanitarias y sociales integrales destinadas a reducir la transmisión viral. Este artículo describe los preparativos que la Oficina Regional para Europa de la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS), la UEFA y otras partes interesadas realizaron para el Campeonato Europeo de Fútbol 2020 de la Unión de Asociaciones Europeas de Fútbol (UEFA) (Eurocopa 2020 de la UEFA) tras la reprogramación del campeonato a causa de la pandemia de la COVID-19. La OMS proporcionó orientación técnica sobre los preparativos del torneo de fútbol y herramientas de evaluación de riesgos. Un grupo de trabajo creado por la Oficina Regional para Europa de la OMS se encargó de la vigilancia de enfermedades tradicional y basada en eventos antes y durante la Eurocopa 2020 de la UEFA, supervisó las medidas sociales y de salud pública en los 11 países anfitriones y elaboró una estrategia de comunicación de riesgos y participación de la comunidad que incluía campañas multimedia dirigidas a los medios de comunicación y las redes sociales, los aficionados, los atletas, los organizadores de eventos y otras partes interesadas. Se describen las lecciones y buenas prácticas identificadas durante la Eurocopa 2020 de la UEFA para ayudar a orientar los preparativos de futuras concentraciones masivas en emergencias sanitarias. Es fundamental compartir los datos y las recomendaciones sobre las mejores prácticas de anteriores concentraciones masivas con los organizadores y los países implicados en la planificación de un evento de gran envergadura.

Expressions of pandemic fatigue on digital platforms: a thematic analysis of sentiment and narratives for infodemic insights.

BACKGROUND: The infodemic accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an overwhelming amount of information, including questions, concerns and misinformation. Pandemic fatigue has been identified as a concern from early in the pandemic. With new and ongoing health emergencies in 2022, it is important to understand how pandemic fatigue is being discussed and expressed by users on digital channels. This study aims to explore and report on key narrative themes associated with expressions of pandemic fatigue by users on digital platforms. METHODS: This paper describes the collection of publicly available data over a 3-month period from multiple online sources using the Meltwater and CrowdTangle platforms to source data from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Product Reviews, Twitch, blogs & forums. A comprehensive search strategy was developed and tested. A total of 1,484,042 social media posts were identified during the time-period that included the defined search terms for pandemic fatigue. These data were initially sorted by highest levels of engagement and from this dataset, analysts reviewed the identified posts to isolate and remove irrelevant content and identify dominant narratives. A thematic analysis was carried out on these narratives to identify themes related to expression of pandemic fatigue. Two researchers reviewed the data and themes. RESULTS: The thematic analysis of narratives identified six main themes relating to expression of pandemic fatigue, and one theme of counter narratives against pandemic fatigue. Data volume increased concurrent with the time of the mpox emergency announcement. Emergent themes showed the different ways users expressed pandemic fatigue and how it was interlaced with issues of trust, preventative measure acceptance and uptake, misinformation, and being overwhelmed with multiple or sustained emergencies. CONCLUSIONS: This paper has identified the different ways users express pandemic fatigue on digital channels over a 3-month period. Better understanding the implications of the information environment on user's perceptions, questions, and concerns regarding pandemic and more broadly emergency fatigue is vital in identifying relevant interventions and, in the longer term, strengthening the global architecture for health emergency preparedness, prevention, readiness and resilience, as evidenced in this paper. There are clear pathways for further research, including incorporating additional languages and reviewing these themes over longer time periods.

Building a Chatbot in a Pandemic.

Easy access to evidence-based information on COVID-19 within an infodemic has been a challenging task. Chatbots have been introduced in times of emergency, when human resources are stretched thin and individuals need a user-centered resource. The World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe and UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) Europe and Central Asia came together to build a chatbot, HealthBuddy+, to assist country populations in the region to access accurate COVID-19 information in the local languages, adapted to the country context. Working in close collaboration with thematic technical experts, colleagues and counterparts at the country level allowed the project to be tailored to a diverse range of subtopics. To ensure that HealthBuddy+ was relevant and useful in countries across the region, the 2 regional offices worked closely with their counterparts in country offices, which were essential in partnering with national authorities, engaging communities, promoting the tool, and identifying the most relevant communication channels in which to embed HealthBuddy+. Over the past 2 years, the project has expanded from a web-based chatbot in 7 languages to a multistream, multifunction chatbot available in 16 regional languages, and HealthBuddy+ continues to expand and adjust to meet emerging health emergency needs.

Expansion of the 'Antibiotic Guardian' one health behavioural campaign across Europe to tackle antibiotic resistance: pilot phase and analysis of AMR knowledge.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major public health threat. The UK Antibiotic Guardian (AG) behavioural change campaign developed to tackle AMR was expanded across Europe through translation into Russian, Dutch and French. Demographics and knowledge of AGs were analyzed between 01 November 2016 and 31 December 2016. A total of 367 pledges were received with the majority from the public and health care professionals. The pilot has significantly increased the proportion of pledges from Europe (excluding UK) (χ2 = 108.7, P < 0.001). AMR knowledge was greater in AGs (including the public) compared to the EU Eurobarometer survey. Further promotion across Europe is required to measure an impact on tackling AMR.

How to increase COVID-19 vaccination among a population with persistently suboptimal vaccine uptake? Evidence from the North Macedonia mobile vaccination and public health advice caravan.

Over three years since the first COVID-19 vaccine was approved, many countries still have suboptimal vaccination rates despite holding great amounts of vaccines. Overall, there is little evidence on which policies are more effective to encourage vaccination, particularly in countries where a large share of the population remains unvaccinated. In this study, we examine the effectiveness of a community-based intervention carried out in March 2022 in North Macedonia, a country with a large and persistent share of the population that remains unvaccinated. The intervention, spearheaded by the Ministry of Health and supported by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, consisted of a mobile caravan offering vaccination and public health advice to different locations across the country on different days. Results from our staggered difference-in-difference model show that the mobile vaccination caravan increased daily vaccination rates by 7.7 vaccines per 100,000 inhabitants during the three weeks after the day of the caravan visit. This corresponds to a 35 % increase with respect to pre-intervention vaccination rates. We estimate a cost-effectiveness of 25.4 US dollars (USD) per additional vaccination induced. These results point to mobile caravan vaccines as an effective and cost-effective strategy to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates, even in a context of persistently suboptimal uptake.

Co-creating a Mpox Elimination Campaign in the WHO European Region: The Central Role of Affected Communities.

Between May 2022 and September 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe engaged in a collaborative effort with affected communities to address the outbreak of mpox in the region. This concerted endeavor led to the development of a risk communication campaign specifically tailored to address the perceptions and needs of the target audience, thereby contributing to the control and the long-term goal of mpox elimination. Various community engagement interventions were implemented, including the establishment of an informal civil society organizations' working group to provide feedback on the WHO mpox campaign, webinars targeting event organizers, and roundtable discussions with country-level responders. The invaluable feedback garnered from the community was utilized to customize materials and extend outreach to groups that may have been overlooked in the initial response. This successful initiative underscored the immense potential of placing communities at the forefront of emergency response efforts, equipping them with the necessary resources, engagement, and empowerment. This offers 1 model of co-creation that can be applied to health emergencies. It is asserted that the pivotal role played by communities in this response should be recognized as a valuable lesson and incorporated into all emergency responses, ensuring sustained community involvement and empowerment throughout the entire emergency cycle.

Using Machine Learning Technology (Early Artificial Intelligence-Supported Response With Social Listening Platform) to Enhance Digital Social Understanding for the COVID-19 Infodemic: Development and Implementation Study.

BACKGROUND: Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a need for rapid social understanding to inform infodemic management and response. Although social media analysis platforms have traditionally been designed for commercial brands for marketing and sales purposes, they have been underused and adapted for a comprehensive understanding of social dynamics in areas such as public health. Traditional systems have challenges for public health use, and new tools and innovative methods are required. The World Health Organization Early Artificial Intelligence-Supported Response with Social Listening (EARS) platform was developed to overcome some of these challenges. OBJECTIVE: This paper describes the development of the EARS platform, including data sourcing, development, and validation of a machine learning categorization approach, as well as the results from the pilot study. METHODS: Data for EARS are collected daily from web-based conversations in publicly available sources in 9 languages. Public health and social media experts developed a taxonomy to categorize COVID-19 narratives into 5 relevant main categories and 41 subcategories. We developed a semisupervised machine learning algorithm to categorize social media posts into categories and various filters. To validate the results obtained by the machine learning-based approach, we compared it to a search-filter approach, applying Boolean queries with the same amount of information and measured the recall and precision. Hotelling T2 was used to determine the effect of the classification method on the combined variables. RESULTS: The EARS platform was developed, validated, and applied to characterize conversations regarding COVID-19 since December 2020. A total of 215,469,045 social posts were collected for processing from December 2020 to February 2022. The machine learning algorithm outperformed the Boolean search filters method for precision and recall in both English and Spanish languages (P<.001). Demographic and other filters provided useful insights on data, and the gender split of users in the platform was largely consistent with population-level data on social media use. CONCLUSIONS: The EARS platform was developed to address the changing needs of public health analysts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The application of public health taxonomy and artificial intelligence technology to a user-friendly social listening platform, accessible directly by analysts, is a significant step in better enabling understanding of global narratives. The platform was designed for scalability; iterations and new countries and languages have been added. This research has shown that a machine learning approach is more accurate than using only keywords and has the benefit of categorizing and understanding large amounts of digital social data during an infodemic. Further technical developments are needed and planned for continuous improvements, to meet the challenges in the generation of infodemic insights from social media for infodemic managers and public health professionals.

Risk Communication and Community Engagement in Action During Ukraine's War.

In the light of recent emergencies in Europe and around the globe-including COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine-the spotlight has shifted towards the scarcity of Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) research applied to health emergencies. RCCE nurtures the sense of empowerment among communities since it ensures that individuals and communities are part of the solution creation, thus they take informed decisions to protect their health and in turn, contribute to emergency control. Therefore, RCCE can play an important role as core public health intervention across health emergency preparedness and response. However, its tremendous impact, is still underestimated and not widely common. This viewpoint showcases the RCCE measures applied to the Ukrainian emergency to ensure that Ukrainian refugees access health services in host countries, based on their needs and concerns.

Ten considerations for effectively managing the COVID-19 transition.

Governments around the world have implemented measures to manage the transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). While the majority of these measures are proving effective, they have a high social and economic cost, and response strategies are being adjusted. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that communities should have a voice, be informed and engaged, and participate in this transition phase. We propose ten considerations to support this principle: (1) implement a phased approach to a 'new normal'; (2) balance individual rights with the social good; (3) prioritise people at highest risk of negative consequences; (4) provide special support for healthcare workers and care staff; (5) build, strengthen and maintain trust; (6) enlist existing social norms and foster healthy new norms; (7) increase resilience and self-efficacy; (8) use clear and positive language; (9) anticipate and manage misinformation; and (10) engage with media outlets. The transition phase should also be informed by real-time data according to which governmental responses should be updated.

Nordic Baltic workshop on the prevention of family violence: the role of health sector in multisectoral response: Riga, Latvia, 8–9 June 2009: report on media workshop

Thirteen young journalists from nine countries in the Nordic-Baltic region were selected to participate in the Media workshop, Nordic Baltic workshop on the prevention of family violence: the role of health sector in multisectoral response, in Riga, Latvia on 8–9 June 2009. The aim of the workshop was to strengthen young journalists’ understanding of the complexity of family violence in order to develop capacity, enhance quality and quantity of coverage, and build a sustainable independent network to promote dialogue on family violence and health. The workshop gave evidence on examples of good practice for preventing intimate partner violence, child maltreatment and elder abuse, and in particular it explored the health sector’s role in preventing family violence. Special sessions for reporters focused on reporting mechanisms including narrative models for covering family violence in new angles, combining human interest stories with facts and theory. The journalists reported back their conclusions to the plenary sessions with international violence prevention experts. Finally, the reporters were introduced to the World Health Youth (WHY) Communication Network on Environment and Health.