10/16—COVID-19 in New Zealand and the impact of the national response: a descriptive epidemiological study
1503 cases were detected over the study period, including 95 (6·3%) hospital admissions and 22 (1·5%) COVID-19 deaths. Times from illness onset to notification and isolation progressively decreased and testing increased over the study period, with few disparities and increasing coverage of females, Māori, Pacific peoples, and lower socioeconomic groups. New Zealand's response resulted in low relative burden of disease, low levels of population disease disparities, and the initial achievement of COVID-19 elimination (Jefferies et al. 2020).
Contact tracing with digital assistance in Taiwan’s COVID-19 outbreak response
A centralized contact tracing system was developed to support data linkage, cross-jurisdictional coordination, and follow-up of contacts’ health status. Among the 8,051 close contacts of the 487 confirmed cases (16.5 close contacts/case, 95% CI [13.9-19.1]), the median elapsed time from last exposure to quarantine was three days (IQR 1-5). By implementing the approach of self-reporting using automatic text-messages and web-app, the percentage of health status updates from self-reporting increased from 22.5% to 61.5%. The high proportion of secondary cases detected via contact tracing (88%) might reduce the R0 to under one and minimize the impact of local transmission in the community.
Diagnostic accuracy of non-contact infrared thermometers and thermal scanners: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Infrared thermal screening, via the use of handheld non-contact infrared thermometers (NCITs) and thermal scanners, has been widely implemented all over the world. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate its diagnostic accuracy for the detection of fever. From a total of 1063 results, 30 studies were included in the qualitative synthesis, of which 19 were included in the meta-analysis. The pooled sensitivity and specificity were 0.808 (95%CI 0.656-0.903) and 0.920 (95%CI 0.769-0.975), respectively, for the NCITs (using forehead as the site of measurement), and 0.818 (95%CI 0.758-0.866) and 0.923 (95%CI 0.823-0.969), respectively, for thermal scanners. Thermal screening had a low positive predictive value, especially at the initial stage of an outbreak, while the negative predictive value (NPV) continued to be high even at later stages.
Sudden irreversible hearing loss post COVID-19
This paper presents the first UK case of sudden onset sensorineural hearing loss following COVID-19. Physical examination and imaging excluded any other cause of hearing loss. A literature review showed that four other cases have been previously described.
Fighting the COVID-19 pandemic: onsite mass workplace testing for COVID-19 in the Republic of Korea
OECD estimates that the economic growth rate of the Republic of Korea (ROK) will be −1.2% this year, the highest among the nations of the G20. As many countries shut down their borders to control the inflow of infected people, multinational corporations faced management challenges. Solving this problem was a top priority for a nation like the ROK due to its high economic dependency on trade. The Korean government and domestic corporations pursued diplomatic solutions. They assured them that their employees would be tested for COVID-19 and only personnel certified as healthy would be sent. As of June 11, 2020, 2,620 workers had been tested with reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and none of them was found to be positive. We have issued certifications for overseas dispatches, enabling workers to perform their tasks abroad without unnecessary quarantine periods.
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