Disruptions to schistosomiasis programmes due to COVID-19: an analysis of potential impact and mitigation strategies
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Abstract
Background
The 2030 goal for schistosomiasis is elimination as a public health problem (EPHP), with mass drug administration (MDA) of praziquantel to school-age children (SAC) as a central pillar of the strategy. However, due to coronavirus disease 2019, many mass treatment campaigns for schistosomiasis have been halted, with uncertain implications for the programmes.
Methods
We use mathematical modelling to explore how postponement of MDA and various mitigation strategies affect achievement of the EPHP goal for Schistosoma mansoni and S. haematobium.
Results
For both S. mansoni and S. haematobium in moderate- and some high-prevalence settings, the disruption may delay the goal by up to 2 y. In some high-prevalence settings, EPHP is not achievable with current strategies and so the disruption will not impact this. Here, increasing SAC coverage and treating adults can achieve the goal. The impact of MDA disruption and the appropriate mitigation strategy varies according to the baseline prevalence prior to treatment, the burden of infection in adults and the stage of the programme.
Conclusions
Schistosomiasis MDA programmes in medium- and high-prevalence areas should restart as soon as is feasible and mitigation strategies may be required in some settings.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.26.20219543: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:It is important to note one important caveat on the predictions made in this study. It has been assumed that for a fixed MDA coverage level, treatment is at random in the population. This may not be the case, as persistent non-adherers to treatment (due to many different factors) are an important feature of most MDA based control …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.26.20219543: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:It is important to note one important caveat on the predictions made in this study. It has been assumed that for a fixed MDA coverage level, treatment is at random in the population. This may not be the case, as persistent non-adherers to treatment (due to many different factors) are an important feature of most MDA based control programmes. If this is the case for treating schistosome infections, our predictions may err on the side of being too optimistic. The model-based predictions can be tested once the MDA programme is resumed as we expect to see a large increase in prevalence of infection after a long period of no intervention, particularly in high transmission settings. Data collection on SAC and adults needs to be done at the start of the resumed intervention. The ongoing Geshiyaro project can address this. 27
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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