RESUMEN
Background: COVID-19 an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, started in late 2019 and became a pandemic within a short period. To respond to the pandemic vaccines like Covishield, Covaxin, Sputnik V, Covovax, etc., were developed rapidly. However, there were raising concerns about the development of immunity as well as adverse events following vaccination. Objectives: To compare anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody titres at different time-points post-vaccination between baseline seropositive and seronegative groups and to assess the adverse events following the 1st dose of Covishield vaccine among adult beneficiaries attending vaccination centre in a tertiary care hospital of Upper Assam. Materials and Methods: Prospective Cohort study was conducted from July 2021 to June 2022 among adult beneficiaries receiving the Covishield vaccine. The oral questionnaire was used incorporating socio-demographic variables, and clinical profiles including co-morbidities and adverse events following vaccination. Data analysis was done by Microsoft Excel and SPSS. Results: Out of a total of 146 study participants, IgG estimation showed 61% as seropositive and the rest as seronegative. A total of 55.40% had minor adverse events, majority of them were females (53.08%) and 88.80% belonged to 18-59 years compared to 11.11% above 60 years of age. The majority (71.60%) did not have any co-morbidities and the major AEFI was NIL among the study participants. The study group had 61% seropositive previously infected. Conclusion: Covishield vaccination induces an immune response and 90% seroconversion is achieved after 1st dose (booster dose). Antibody titres of the seropositive group by natural infection of SARS-CoV-2 were higher than seronegative cohort seroconverted by vaccination. The AEFI observed were minor and can be commented as safer.
RESUMEN
The conventional paper-based system for malaria surveillance is time-consuming, difficult to track and resource-intensive. Few digital platforms are in use but wide-scale deployment and acceptability remain to be seen. To address this issue, we created a malaria surveillance mobile app that offers real-time data to stakeholders and establishes a centralised data repository. The MoSQuIT app was designed to collect data from the field and was integrated with a web-based platform for data integration and analysis. The MoSQuIT app was deployed on mobile phones of accredited social health activists (ASHA) working in international border villages in the northeast (NE) Indian states of Assam, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh for 20 months in a phased manner. This paper shares the challenges and opportunities associated with the use of MoSQuIT for malaria surveillance. MoSQuIT employs the same data entry formats as the NVBDCP's malaria surveillance programme. Using this app, a total of 8221 fever cases were recorded, which included 1192 (14.5%) cases of P. falciparum malaria, 280 (3.4%) cases of P. vivax malaria and 52 (0.6%) mixed infection cases. Depending on network availability, GPS coordinates of the fever cases were acquired by the app. The present study demonstrated that mobile-phone-based malaria surveillance facilitates the quick transmission of data from the field to decision makers. Geospatial tagging of cases helped with easy visualisation of the case distribution for the identification of malaria-prone areas and potential outbreaks, especially in hilly and remote regions of Northeast India. However, to achieve the full operational potential of the system, operational challenges have to be overcome.