Wastewater surveillance in the Management of Covid 19: experiences from three Countries

MP4 Video; Size: 318MB; Duration: 02:00Please cite as: Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), (2021). Wastewater surveillance in the Management of Covid 19: experiences from three Countries. [Online] Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11911/204Webinar presented and hosted by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) and the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) on 31 August 2021. Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 RNA has emerged to be an important tool in the management of the disease. The viral RNA can be isolated in wastewater around one to two weeks before it is usually detected through human testing at community level. Direct correlations have been found between the concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater and the number of cases of COVID-19 in a particular wastewater catchment area, providing the basis for a COVID-19 Early Warning System. Being relatively affordable and reliable, the tool appears to be particularly valuable in settings where epidemiological data are not available, to establish and adjust public health management strategies. In this webinar, the experiences, challenges encountered, and lessons learned in the course of rolling out wastewater surveillance programmes in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Nigeria are discussed, including preliminary information on the tracking of SARS-CoV-2 variants in wastewater.Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)(South Africa

Level of agreement between objectively determined body composition and perceived body image in 6- To 8-year-old South African children- To Body Composition-Isotope Technique study

To assess the level of agreement between body size self-perception and actual body size determined by body mass index (BMI) z-score and body fatness measured by the deuterium dilution method (DDM) in South African children aged 6-8 years. A cross-sectional sample of 202 children (83 boys and 119 girls) aged 6-8 years from the Body Composition-Isotope Technique study (BC-IT) was taken. Subjective measures of body image (silhouettes) were compared with the objective measures of BMI z-score and body fatness measured by the DDM. The World Health Organization BMI z-scores were used to classify the children as underweight, normal, overweight, or obese. DDM-measured fatness was classified based on the McCarthy centile curves set at 2nd, 85th and 95th in conjunction with fatness cut-off points of 25% in boys and 30% in girls. Data were analyzed using SPSS v26. Of 202 children, 32.2%, 55.1%, 8.8%, and 2.4% perceived their body size as underweight, normal, overweight, and obese, respectively. Based on BMI z-score, 18.8%, 72.8%, 6.9%, and 1.5% were classified as underweight, normal, overweight, and obese, respectively. Body fatness measurement showed that 2.5%, 48.0%, 21.8%, and 29.7% were underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obese, respectively

Placebo use in vaccine trials: recommendations of a WHO expert panel.

Vaccines are among the most cost-effective interventions against infectious diseases. Many candidate vaccines targeting neglected diseases in low- and middle-income countries are now progressing to large-scale clinical testing. However, controversy surrounds the appropriate design of vaccine trials and, in particular, the use of unvaccinated controls (with or without placebo) when an efficacious vaccine already exists. This paper specifies four situations in which placebo use may be acceptable, provided that the study question cannot be answered in an active-controlled trial design; the risks of delaying or foregoing an efficacious vaccine are mitigated; the risks of using a placebo control are justified by the social and public health value of the research; and the research is responsive to local health needs. The four situations are: (1) developing a locally affordable vaccine, (2) evaluating the local safety and efficacy of an existing vaccine, (3) testing a new vaccine when an existing vaccine is considered inappropriate for local use (e.g. based on epidemiologic or demographic factors), and (4) determining the local burden of disease