Crucial contribution of the universities to SARS-CoV-2 surveillance in Ecuador: Lessons for developing countries

Santander-Gordón, Daniela; Iturralde, Gabriel; Freire‐Paspuel, Byron; Zambrano-Mila, Marlon S.; Morales-Jadán, Diana; Vallejo-Janeta, Alexander Paolo; Coronel, Barbara; Galvis, Heberson; Jaramillo-Vivanco, Tatiana; Bilvao, Christian David; Paredes-Espinosa, Maria Belen; Rodríguez, Angel; Laglaguano, Juan Carlos; Herrera, Henry; Tito-Álvarez, Ana M; Ortíz-Prado, Esteban; Rivera-Olivero, Ismar A.; Henriquez-Trujillo, Aquiles R.; Lozada, Tannya; García-Bereguiaín, Miguel Angel

doi:10.1016/j.onehlt.2021.100267

Cited by 18 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…The World Health Organization, China office reported a new strain of SARS infection (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019 (1)(2)(3)(4)(5). Accordingly, health experts recognized this fatal viral disease as SARS-CoV-2 (6)(7)(8). This new strain of the viral disease caused COVID-19, which brought the ongoing worldwide pandemic (9)(10)(11).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media Efficacy in Crisis Management: Effectiveness of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions to Manage COVID-19 Challenges

et al. 2022

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The new identified virus COVID-19 has become one of the most contagious diseases in human history. The ongoing coronavirus has created severe threats to global mental health, which have resulted in crisis management challenges and international concerns related to health issues. As of September 9, 2021, there were over 223.4 million patients with COVID-19, including 4.6 million deaths and over 200 million recovered patients reported worldwide, which has made the COVID-19 outbreak one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. The aggressive public health implementations endorsed various precautionary safety and preventive strategies to suppress and minimize COVID-19 disease transmission. The second, third, and fourth waves of COVID-19 continue to pose global challenges to crisis management, as its evolution and implications are still unfolding. This study posits that examining the strategic ripostes and pandemic experiences sheds light on combatting this global emergency. This study recommends two model strategies that help reduce the adverse effects of the pandemic on the immune systems of the general population. This present paper recommends NPI interventions (non-pharmaceutical intervention) to combine various measures, such as the suppression strategy (lockdown and restrictions) and mitigation model to decrease the burden on health systems. The current COVID-19 health crisis has influenced all vital economic sectors and developed crisis management problems. The global supply of vaccines is still not sufficient to manage this global health emergency. In this crisis, NPIs are helpful to manage the spillover impacts of the pandemic. It articulates the prominence of resilience and economic and strategic agility to resume economic activities and resolve healthcare issues. This study primarily focuses on the role of social media to tackle challenges and crises posed by COVID-19 on economies, business activities, healthcare burdens, and government support for societies to resume businesses, and implications for global economic and healthcare provision disruptions. This study suggests that intervention strategies can control the rapid spread of COVID-19 with hands-on crisis management measures, and the healthcare system will resume normal conditions quickly. Global economies will revitalize scientific contributions and collaborations, including social science and business industries, through government support.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media Efficacy in Crisis Management: Effectiveness of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions to Manage COVID-19 Challenges

et al. 2022

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“…The "coronaviruses disease 2019" (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has challenged public health systems worldwide since the initial outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019 [ 1 , 2 ]. While SARS-CoV-2 vaccination programs progress successfully at high income countries and COVID-19 pandemic is somehow under control, the challenge persists for middle and low income countries in need to improve SARS-CoV-2 testing [ 3 – 5 ]. A wide variety of commercial SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR detection kits are available in South America for clinical use, some of them with Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) or other international recognized agencies, while others even lack of their country of origin EUA and compromise a reliable diagnosis in these high burden COVID-19 settings [ 6 – 13 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analytical sensitivity and clinical performance of "COVID-19 RT-PCR Real TM FAST (CY5) (ATGen, Uruguay) and "ECUGEN SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR" (UDLA-STARNEWCORP, Ecuador)": High quality-low cost local SARS-CoV-2 tests for South America

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Background Dozens of commercial RT-qPCR kits for SARS-CoV-2 detection are available with or without Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by FDA or other regulatory agencies. Objective We evaluated the clinical performance of two SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR kits designed and produced in South America, "COVID-19 RT-PCR Real TM FAST (CY5)" (ATGen, Uruguay) and "ECUGEN SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR" (UDLA-STARNEWCORP, Ecuador), for RT-qPCR SARS-CoV2 detection using "TaqMan 2019-nCoV Assay Kit v1" (Thermofisher, USA) as a gold standard technique. Results We report a great clinical performance and analytical sensitivity for the two South American kits with sensitivity values of 96.4 and 100%, specificity of 100% and limit of detection in the range of 10 copies/uL of RNA extraction. Conclusions "COVID-19 RT-PCR Real TM FAST (CY5)" and "ECUGEN SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR" kits are reliable SARS-CoV-2 tests made in South America that have been extensively used in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador. These locally produced SARS-CoV-2 tests have contributed to overcome supply shortages and reduce diagnosis cost, while maintaining the high quality standards of FDA EUA commercially available kits. This approach could be extended for other diagnostic products to improve infectious diseases surveillance at middle and low income countries beyond COVID-19 pandemic.

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“…On the other hand, the high specificity and the acceptable sensitivity values obtained for anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG, considering that antibodies release is not the only immune response to COVID-19 infection (GeurtsvanKessel et al, 2020;Turner et al, 2021), suggest that the serological COVID-19 tests included in our study can be useful tools for seroprevalence studies. Estimating the percentage of the population that has already been infected in the community is essential for understanding the spread of the pandemic, and will also assist vaccination program decisions in middle-and low-income countries (Santander-Gordon et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diagnostic Performance of Seven Commercial COVID-19 Serology Tests Available in South America

Rivera-Olivero

Henríquez-Trujillo

Kyriakidis

et al. 2022

Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.

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BackgroundAlthough RT-qPCR remains the gold-standard for COVID-19 diagnosis, anti-SARS-CoV-2 serology-based assays have been widely used during 2020 as an alternative for individual and mass testing, and are currently used for seroprevalence studies.ObjectiveTo study the clinical performance of seven commercial serological tests for COVID-19 diagnosis available in South America.MethodsWe conducted a blind evaluation of five lateral-flow immunoassays (LFIA) and two enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) for detecting anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.ResultsWe found no statistically significant differences among ELISA kits and LFIAs for anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG sensitivity (values ranging from 76.4% to 83.5%) and specificity (100% for the seven serological assays). For anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgM, the five LFIAs have a significantly higher sensitivity for samples collected 15 days after the first time RT-qPCR positive test, with values ranging from 47.1% to 88.2%; moreover, the specificity varied from 85% to 100%, but the only LFIA brand with a 100% specificity had the lowest sensitivity.ConclusionThe diagnostic performance of the seven serological tests was acceptable for the seven brands tested for anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG detection for seroprevalence screening purposes. On the other hand, our results show the lack of accuracy of anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgM detection in LFIAs as a tool for SARS-CoV-2 acute-phase infection diagnosis.

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Crucial contribution of the universities to SARS-CoV-2 surveillance in Ecuador: Lessons for developing countries

Cited by 18 publications

References 19 publications

Social Media Efficacy in Crisis Management: Effectiveness of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions to Manage COVID-19 Challenges

Social Media Efficacy in Crisis Management: Effectiveness of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions to Manage COVID-19 Challenges

Analytical sensitivity and clinical performance of "COVID-19 RT-PCR Real TM FAST (CY5) (ATGen, Uruguay) and "ECUGEN SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR" (UDLA-STARNEWCORP, Ecuador)": High quality-low cost local SARS-CoV-2 tests for South America

Diagnostic Performance of Seven Commercial COVID-19 Serology Tests Available in South America

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