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Third release with important fixes. It adds testing, using a dynamically started test instance with a SARS-CoV-2 ID mapping databases. Fixed in this release is the returning of mapped identifiers in plain text, adds the missing support for filtering target data sources with ?datasource=X, and fixes the batch method to return identifiers in the original format in plain text. New Contributors @jmillanacosta made their first contribution in https://github.com/bridgedb/BridgeDbWebservice/pull/7 Full Changelog: https://github.com/bridgedb/BridgeDbWebservice/compare/2.1.0...2.1.1

Purpose of Review: The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated restrictions have had a significant impact on people’s everyday lives, including the lives of Autistic adults. We aimed to (a) synthesise all papers currently published on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on autistic adults and (b) identify lessons for the care and support of Autistic adults in pandemic and post-pandemic times. Recent Findings: Fifty-five papers met the inclusion criteria. Most studies focused on the pandemic’s impact on the wellbeing of Autistic adults. Several studies focused on the use of (telehealth) services or the risk of COVID-19 infection/hospitalisation. Summary: Autistic adults were significantly impacted by the pandemic, both directly as indicated by higher COVID-19 infection and hospitalisation rates, but also indirectly due to severe service disruptions and social restrictions. Even though there were large differences observed both between as well as within individuals in terms of the negative/positive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, most studies reported a negative effect on Autistic adults’ mental health. We draw several lessons from this review for the future care and support of Autistic adults, all of which must be underpinned by participatory research methods, that is, where Autistic community members are actively involved in setting research questions, testing the acceptability of the methods and interpreting and disseminating the results.

In the Netherlands, there are special laboratories that test whether people have an infectious disease. The analysis of how many people become ill and by which variant of a virus or bacterium is known as laboratory-based surveillance of infectious diseases. RIVM performs this analysis in cooperation with these ‘medical-microbiological laboratories’ and with the Municipal Public Health Services. During the coronavirus pandemic, it became increasingly clear that laboratories, including those of RIVM, must be able to test for infectious diseases on a large scale. They must also be able to see which variants of a pathogen are involved, such as the Delta and Omicron variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In addition, it must be possible to exchange laboratory data with RIVM safely and efficiently, so that RIVM can monitor how a pandemic is progressing in the Netherlands. For infectious diseases other than COVID-19, it is equally important that RIVM is able to monitor how they are evolving through laboratory tests. Currently, different technical systems are used for different diseases. Some of these systems are outdated. To better cope with a possible new epidemic, RIVM will set up a new technical platform for laboratory-based surveillance. This means that the surveillance of various infectious diseases can be technically supported in the same way, both during data storage and data analysis. This will also make it possible to exchange data in the same way, which is more efficient and clearer for all laboratories concerned. Furthermore, the platform will be better able to process large amounts of test results and make it easy to store and analyse data about new pathogens. In preparation for this improvement, RIVM has described the legal context for the exchange of data, such as data privacy legislation. It has also described the first full version of the technical specifications and functionalities that the platform must meet. RIVM will develop and refine the most important components of the platform as from 2023. In order to develop the platform as carefully as possible, its individual components will be tackled one by one. This way, RIVM can learn from each experience. This approach will be beneficial for both the quality and cost of the ultimate platform.

In 2016, the Hepatitis B and C Public Policy Association (HepBCPPA), gathered all the main stakeholders in the field of hepatitis C virus (HCV) to launch the now landmark HCV Elimination Manifesto, calling for the elimination of HCV in the EU by 2030. Since then, many European countries have made progress towards HCV elimination. Multiple programmes—from the municipality level to the EU level—were launched, resulting in an overall decrease in viremic HCV infections and liver-related mortality. However, as of 2021, most countries are not on track to reach the 2030 HCV elimination targets set by the WHO. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a decrease in HCV diagnoses and fewer direct-acting antiviral treatment initiations in 2020. Diagnostic and therapeutic tools to easily diagnose and treat chronic HCV infection are now well established. Treating all patients with chronic HCV infection is more cost-saving than treating and caring for patients with liver-related complications, decompensated cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma. It is more important than ever to reinforce and scale-up action towards HCV elimination. Yet, efforts urgently need the dedicated commitment of policymakers at all governmental and policy levels. Therefore, the third EU Policy Summit, held in March 2021, featured EU parliamentarians and other key decision makers to promote dialogue and take strides towards securing wider EU commitment to advance and achieve HCV elimination by 2030. We have summarized the key action points and reported the ‘Call-to-Action’ statement supported by all the major relevant European associations in the field.

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic cancer patients might have experienced delays in screening, diagnosis and/or treatment. A systematic review was conducted to give an overview of the effects of COVID-19 induced delays in oncological care on the physical and mental health outcomes of cancer patients. Methods: MEDLINE and EMBASE databases were searched for articles on the effects of COVID-19 induced delays on physical and mental health outcomes. Results: Out of 1333 papers, eighteen observational, and twelve modelling studies were included. In approximately half of the studies, tumor stage distribution differed during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic. Modelling studies predicted that the estimated increase in the number of deaths ranged from -0.04 to 30%, and the estimated reduction in survival ranged from 0.4 to 35%. Varying results on the impact on mental health, e.g. anxiety and depression, were seen. Conclusions: Due to large methodological discrepancies between the studies and the varying results, the effect of COVID-19 induced delays on the physical and mental health outcomes of cancer patients remains uncertain. While modelling studies estimated an increase in mortality, observational studies suggest that mortality might not increase to a large extent. More longitudinal observational data from the pandemic period is needed for more conclusive results.

OVERVIEW This repository contains the code, documentation manual and data visualisations for the design and operation of the Piedmont COVID-19 surveillance data modelling and management pipeline developed in collaboration with the Piedmont Epidemiological Service (SEPI). For privacy purposes all the data in this repository are either fake (i.e. invented) or synthetic (i.e. simulated) in order to be structurally equivalent to the original individual-level data to accurately showcase the functionalities of the data modelling and management pipeline. The only reference to the real data can be found in the plots located in the images/real-output folder. HOW TO ACCESS If you would like to access the real Piedmont COVID-19 surveillance data covering the year 2020 for your research project (i.e. sequences, incidences and empirical time delay distributions visualised here), please feel free to contact us by sending us an email. HOW TO CITE If you use these contents in your work, please cite this repository using the metadata in CITATION.bib. REFERENCES Data CSI Piemonte (2020) Piedmont Region COVID-19 Data Management Platform. CSI Piemonte CSI Piemonte (2020) GESCOVID19: COVID-19 Data Management Platform in Piedmont. GitHub Leproni (2021) The Piedmont Region COVID-19 Platform. CSI Piemonte Moroni and Monticone (2022) Italian COVID-19 Integrated Surveillance Dataset. Zenodo Software Monticone and Moroni (2022) ICD_GEMs.jl: A Julia Package to Translate Between ICD-9 and ICD-10 Codes. Zenodo Monticone and Moroni (2022) UnrollingAverages.jl: A Julia Package to Deconvolve Time Series Data.. Zenodo Papers Del Manso et al. (2020) COVID-19 integrated surveillance in Italy: outputs and related activities. Epidemiologia & Prevenzione Milani et al. (2021). Characteristics of patients affecting the duration of positivity at SARS-CoV-2: a cohort analysis of the first wave of epidemic in Italy. Epidemiologia & Prevenzione Starnini et al. (2021) Impact of data accuracy on the evaluation of COVID-19 mitigation policies. Data & Policy, 3, E28. Zhang et al. (2021) Data science approaches to confronting the COVID-19 pandemic: a narrative review. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Vasiliauskaite et al. (2021) On some fundamental challenges in monitoring epidemics. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Badker et al. (2021) Challenges in reported COVID-19 data: best practices and recommendations for future epidemics. BMJ Global Health Shadbolt et al. (2022) The Challenges of Data in Future Pandemics. Epidemics

Background: Even when maternity care facilities are available, some women will choose to give birth unassisted by a professional (freebirth). This became more apparent during the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), as women were increasingly concerned they would contract the virus in health care facilities. Several studies have identified the factors that influence women to seek alternative places of birth to hospitals, but research focusing specifically on freebirth is limited. Methods: Eight databases were searched from their respective inception dates to April 2022 for studies related to freebirth. Data from the studies were charted and a thematic analysis was subsequently conducted. Results: Four themes were identified based on findings from the 25 included studies: (1) Geographical and socio-demographic determinants influencing freebirth, (2) Reasons for choosing freebirth, (3) Factors hindering freebirth, and (4) Preparation for and varied experiences of freebirth. Discussion: More women chose to give birth unassisted in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared with high-income countries (HICs). Overall, motivation for freebirth included previous negative birth experiences with health care professionals, a desire to adhere to their birth-related beliefs, and fear of contracting the COVID-19 virus. Included studies reported that study participants were often met with negative responses when they revealed that they were planning to freebirth. Most women in the included studies had positive freebirth experiences. Future research should explore the different motivators of freebirth present in LMICs or HICs to help inform effective policies that may improve birth experiences while maintaining safety.

Infections with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and vaccinations targeting the spike protein (S) offer protective immunity against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This immunity may further be shaped by cross-reactivity with common cold coronaviruses. Mutations arising in S that are associated with altered intrinsic virus properties and immune escape result in the continued circulation of SARS-CoV-2 variants. Potentially, vaccine updates will be required to protect against future variants of concern, as for influenza. To offer potent protection against future variants, these second-generation vaccines may need to redirect immunity to epitopes associated with immune escape and not merely boost immunity toward conserved domains in preimmune individuals. For influenza, efficacy of repeated vaccination is hampered by original antigenic sin, an attribute of immune memory that leads to greater induction of antibodies specific to the first-encountered variant of an immunogen compared with subsequent variants. In this Review, recent findings on original antigenic sin are discussed in the context of SARS-CoV-2 evolution. Unanswered questions and future directions are highlighted, with an emphasis on the impact on disease outcome and vaccine design.

During the most of the twentieth century, design and construction (architecture) in South Africa closely followed western trends. A recent publication Common Ground: Dutch-South African Architectural Exchanges 1902-1961 highlights conclusions on research into the legacy of émigré Dutch built environment professional in the built environment of South Africa today. A surprising discovery was the critical role Dutch educated architects played in the design of health care facilities. This further essay explores the historically novel implementation of new insights in healthcare design in South Africa during the early twentieth century in chronological order, highlighting their origins and specially focusing on the contribution of Dutch educated architects. This built healthcare legacy has proven to be especially resilient to change: the hospitals, clinics and child care facilities and institutions often still serve the communities they were designed for. At the time of writing, the COVID-19 pandemic gives cause to present the origins of these significant historic innovations in the face of healthcare challenges and reflect on their perseverance through time.

Law in Action is a podcast in which academics talk about their research and how law works in practice. The guests are academics who contributed to the special issue “Access to Justice in a digital era” of the Journal of Empirical Research on Law in Action (Recht der Werkelijkheid). The COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on everyone in a way nobody could have predicted and the judicial system was no exception. Marieke Dubelaar, together with María Bruquetas-Callejo and Karen Geerstema, analysed the role of the lawyer in criminal law, immigration detention law and asylum law in the context of digitalisation measures during the COVID-19 lockdowns in the Netherlands.