Response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the legally deprived population of liberty in Cali (Colombia)

Abstract   With the COVID-19 pandemic, the challenge of reducing the transmission of the disease has led to new challenges in decision-making. The vulnerability of persons deprived of liberty led to the design of contagion mitigation alternatives. Since February 2020, at the Villahermosa Penitentiary and Prison Center in Cali, the Secretaría de Salud Pública (SSP) began a series of actions that intensified on March 11, when the WHO declared COVID -19 as a pandemic. The SSP, in an articulated work; configured a series of strategies aimed at mitigating the impact and speed of contagion, infectious disease doctors and internists were also summoned who provided recommendations and contributed to decision-making. An intervention model was designed, which was guided by two main processes: promotion and prevention actions and service provision actions. The articulated work and the high commitment of the actors involved, the development of strategies for biosecurity, hygiene, isolation, rapid detection, and, above all, immediate control of symptoms and medical care on-site with adjustments that allowed managing patients inside the institution; It has meant that to date mortality is below 1% and that for the time being the situation is under control. Key messages • The humanization of health service provision is essential to achieve effective results. • The rapid and articulated responses made it possible to maintain a mortality of less than 1% in this population.

Early evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic may have reduced the proportion of individuals submitted to cervical, colorectal and breast cancer screening.However, the recovery from the pandemic impact was very heterogeneous.We aim to explore the impact of the pandemic on cancer screening and estimate the time to recover lost screening opportunities in Portugal.We used an interrupted time series to analyze the impact of the pandemic on the implementation of cancer screening.The study population was the eligible individuals screened for cervical, colorectal and breast cancer by month and health region between 2018 and 2021.We used Poisson regression with health region random effects to estimate the trend before and after the first lockdown (March 2020) and the impact of the first lockdown.We predicted the counterfactual evolution without a pandemic to estimate lost screening opportunities.The first lockdown resulted in 93,1% (95%CI 92,9-93,2), 89,4% (95%CI 89,2-89,5) and 84,1% (95%CI 83,8-84,3) decrease in the proportion of expected cervical, colorectal and breast cancer screening tests.Nonetheless, we document an increased trend difference between pre and post lockdown of 6,0% (95%CI 5,9-6,0) and 5,3% (95%CI 5,3-5,4), 3,7% (95%CI 3,6-3,7) per month.However, by December 2021, there are still many lost screening opportunities due to the pandemic -293k cervical cytology tests (42,2% less than expected), 247k fecal occult blood tests (28,7%) and 388k mammograms (38,4%).The first lockdown resulted in an abrupt decrease in cancer screening.However, we document an increase in the cancer screening trend after the pandemic.Nevertheless, there are still considerable lost screening opportunities after 2 years.

Key messages:
The pandemic caused a massive disruption in cancer screening.Although there was an increase in screening trends after the first lockdown, 2 years later, many lost screening opportunities remain.
Population-based screenings need to increase the outputs to account for lost screening opportunities due to the pandemic.

Methods:
A cross-sectional study among 163 second-year medical students of the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences was conducted in Kaunas, Lithuania with self-reported measures of anxiety and insomnia and comparing nonprescription medicine use for anxiety and insomnia before and during the covid-19 pandemic.

Results:
A near two-fold increase in the prevalence of anxiety and insomnia among Lithuanian medical students was reported during the covid-19 pandemic compared to before the onset of the pandemic (p < 0,001).The use of nonprescription medication increased during the pandemic (p < 0,001), in particular anxiolytics (p < 0,05).Once-weekly anxiolytic medication use increased from 8,0% before the pandemic to 14,7% during the pandemic.Regular nonprescription medicine use (2-3 times weekly) had more than tripled, from 2,4% to 9,2%.
During the pandemic, almost a fifth of the respondents were increasingly searching for information on anxiolytic nonprescription medication online during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic.

Conclusions:
During the covid-19 pandemic, the prevalence of anxiety and insomnia increased among Lithuanian medical students, along with the practice of anxiolytic nonprescription medications.Lithuanian medical students increasingly practiced self-medication during the pandemic and found the information on nonprescription medication increasingly online, which offers opportunities for telemedicine.

Key messages:
During the covid-19 pandemic, the prevalence of anxiety and insomnia increased among Lithuanian medical students, along with the practice of anxiolytic nonprescription medications.
During covid-19, Lithuanian medical students increasingly retrieved information on nonprescription medication online instead of consulting a pharmacist, offering opportunities for telemedicine.
During international contact tracing activities an increase of reporting of COVID-cases with a travel history to a Catholic shrine in Europe was observed, despite travel restrictions put in place.In order to promote public health actions as risk communication, a risk evaluation was conducted.A descriptive analysis was carried out: personal and vaccination data were collected; for cases, date and type of positive tests, date of symptoms' onset were collected; for high-risk contacts, date and type of negative tests at the end of follow-up were collected.Frequencies were calculated.University of Sousse, Faculty of Medicine of Sousse, Sousse, Tunisia 3 Groupement de Me ´decine du Travail de Sousse, Sousse, Tunisia Contact: Benfredj.Sihem@famso.u-sousse.tnBackground:Psychologicaland social factors related to work activity can improve or deteriorate the physical and mental health of employees.Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the psychological well-being of workers has been strongly affected.Particularly, jobs with isostrain characterized by high work demands and low work control, coupled with low social support, place employees at highest risk for poor mental health.We aimed to assess the factors associated with isostrain among employees in the tourism sector in Sousse.
Methods:A cross-sectional study was conducted between September and November 2020 among tourism workers belonging to 12