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We examine the financial performance of the forest products industry in the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, employing data for publicly trading companies in the industry globally. We first examine the market investor reaction to the declaration of a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020 by conducting an event-study analysis. Then, we analyze medium-term changes in stock returns and their systematic risk by an econometric estimation of the capital asset pricing model. Our event-study analysis of the forest products industry shows that the forestry subsector was impacted more than the paper subsector when the WHO declared the pandemic. The effect was most prominent in North America. We find that the systematic risk for the forestry subsector tended to increase during 2020, until October. Again, this effect was most clear in North America. Conversely, the impact on the paper subsector was more stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Syndromic surveillance provides public health intelligence to aid in early warning and monitoring of public health impacts (e.g. seasonal influenza), or reassurance when an impact has not occurred. Using information collected during routine patient care, syndromic surveillance can be based on signs/symptoms/preliminary diagnoses. This approach makes syndromic surveillance much timelier than surveillance requiring laboratory confirmed diagnoses. The provision of healthcare services and patient access to them varies globally. However, emergency departments (EDs) exist worldwide, providing unscheduled urgent care to people in acute need. This provision of care makes ED syndromic surveillance (EDSyS) a potentially valuable tool for public health surveillance internationally. The objective of this study was to identify and describe the key characteristics of EDSyS systems that have been established and used globally., Methods: We systematically reviewed studies published in peer review journals and presented at International Society of Infectious Disease Surveillance conferences (up to and including 2017) to identify EDSyS systems which have been created and used for public health purposes. Search criteria developed to identify "emergency department" and "syndromic surveillance" were applied to NICE healthcare, Global Health and Scopus databases., Results: In total, 559 studies were identified as eligible for inclusion in the review, comprising 136 journal articles and 423 conference abstracts/papers. From these studies we identified 115 EDSyS systems in 15 different countries/territories across North America, Europe, Asia and Australasia. Systems ranged from local surveillance based on a single ED, to comprehensive national systems. National EDSyS systems were identified in 8 countries/territories: 2 reported inclusion of ≥85% of ED visits nationally (France and Taiwan)., Conclusions: EDSyS provides a valuable tool for the identification and monitoring of trends in severe illness. Technological advances, particularly in the emergency care patient record, have enabled the evolution of EDSyS over time. EDSyS reporting has become closer to 'real-time', with automated, secure electronic extraction and analysis possible on a daily, or more frequent basis. The dissemination of methods employed and evidence of successful application to public health practice should be encouraged to support learning from best practice, enabling future improvement, harmonisation and collaboration between systems in future., Prospero Number: CRD42017069150 .

In less than five months, COVID-19 has spread from a small focus in Wuhan, China, to more than 5 million people in almost every country in the world, dominating the concern of most governments and public health systems. The social and political distresses caused by this epidemic will certainly impact our world for a long time to come. Here, we synthesize lessons from a range of scientific perspectives rooted in epidemiology, virology, genetics, ecology and evolutionary biology so as to provide perspective on how this pandemic started, how it is developing, and how best we can stop it., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This paper takes a novel approach for forecasting the risk of disease emergence by combining risk management, signal processing and econometrics to develop a new forecasting approach. We propose quantifying risk using the Value at Risk criterion and then propose a two staged model based on Multivariate Singular Spectrum Analysis and Quantile Regression (MSSA-QR model). The proposed risk measure (PLVaR) and forecasting model (MSSA-QR) is used to forecast the worst cases of waterborne disease outbreaks in 22 European and North American countries based on socio-economic and environmental indicators. The results show that the proposed method perfectly forecasts the worst case scenario for less common waterborne diseases whilst the forecasting of more common diseases requires more socio-economic and environmental indicators., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Addressing critical global health issues, such as antimicrobial resistance, infectious disease outbreaks, and natural disasters, requires strong coordination and management across sectors. The One Health approach is the integrative effort of multiple sectors working to attain optimal health for people, animals, and the environment, and is increasingly recognized by experts as a means to address complex challenges. However, practical application of the One Health approach has been challenging. The One Health Systems Mapping and Analysis Resource Toolkit (OH-SMART) introduced in this paper was designed using a multistage prototyping process to support systematic improvement in multi-sectoral coordination and collaboration to better address complex health concerns through an operational, stepwise, and practical One Health approach. To date, OH-SMART has been used to strengthen One Health systems in 17 countries and has been deployed to revise emergency response frameworks, improve antimicrobial resistance national action plans and create multi agency infectious disease collaboration protocols. OH-SMART has proven to be user friendly, robust, and capable of fostering multi-sectoral collaboration and complex system-wide problem solving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Several populations of Coho salmon have been maintained in aquaculture, but the extent of the genetic diversity in these strains is unknown. This paper describes the genetic status of several aquaculture strains of Coho salmon from North America, Chile, and Japan and a wild-type hatchery strain from the Pacific Northwest of North America. The Chilean strains in particular have been subject to changes in population sizes attributable to their establishment, reductions due to disease outbreaks, and maintenance of small population sizes in culture. An assumption-free method for estimating the changes in genetic diversity showed that many aquaculture strains had reduced variability. These results highlight the importance of monitoring the genetic diversity of aquaculture species from the start of breeding programs to secure their future genetic variation, particularly in challenging environments such as those expected from climate change. Understanding the genetic status of aquaculture strains is essential for developing management guidelines aimed at sustaining the rates of genetic gain for economically important traits, as well as securing populations that will be robust to climate change. Coho salmon was the first salmonid introduced to Chile for commercial purposes and now comprises an essential component of the country's aquaculture industry. Several events, such as admixture, genetic bottlenecks, and rapid domestication, appear to be determinants in shaping the genome of commercial strains representing this species. To determine the impact of such events on the genetic diversity of these strains, we sought to estimate the effective population size (Ne) of several of these strains using genome-wide approaches. We compared these estimates to commercial strains from North America and Japan, as well as a hatchery strain used for supportive breeding of wild populations. The estimates of Ne were based on a method robust to assumptions about changes in population history, and ranged from low (Ne = 34) to relatively high (Ne = 80) in the Chilean strains. These estimates were higher than those obtained from the commercial North American strain but lower than those observed in the hatchery population and the Japanese strain (with Ne over 150). Our results suggest that some populations require measures to control the rates of inbreeding, possibly by using genomic information and incorporating new genetic material to ensure the long-term sustainability of these populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hantaviruses can cause hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) in the Americas and hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) in Eurasia. In recent decades, repeated outbreaks of hantavirus disease have led to public concern and have created a global public health burden. Hantavirus spillover from natural hosts into human populations could be considered an ecological process, in which environmental forces, behavioral determinants of exposure, and dynamics at the human–animal interface affect human susceptibility and the epidemiology of the disease. In this review, we summarize the progress made in understanding hantavirus epidemiology and rodent reservoir population biology. We mainly focus on three species of rodent hosts with longitudinal studies of sufficient scale: the striped field mouse (Apodemus agrarius, the main reservoir host for Hantaan virus [HTNV], which causes HFRS) in Asia, the deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus, the main reservoir host for Sin Nombre virus [SNV], which causes HPS) in North America, and the bank vole (Myodes glareolus, the main reservoir host for Puumala virus [PUUV], which causes HFRS) in Europe. Moreover, we discuss the influence of ecological factors on human hantavirus disease outbreaks and provide an overview of research perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]