key: cord-1002125-0fjanr6v
authors: El-Sokkary, Rehab H.
title: Editorial on COVID-19 Vaccine, Variants and New Waves
date: 2021-09-22
journal: J Infect Public Health
DOI: 10.1016/j.jiph.2021.09.017
sha: 9b53f4b6d80ecec64fdb20e61f92b1defcadbaee
doc_id: 1002125
cord_uid: 0fjanr6v

nan

The COVID19 pandemic is causing huge daily changes and has a profound impact on human life around the world. All disciplines have participated in extensive research to combat COVID-19. We are in the midst of a rapidly spreading pandemic, and the Internet is full of new information, shared practices, rules, research articles, ideas and examples, and some fake news. Our challenge is to turn these threats into opportunities so that we can better prepare for this pandemic and the next, possibly more serious, infectious disease pandemic.

In this context, JIPH launched our special issue under the research topic "COVID-19 -Vaccine, Variants, and New Waves" in May, 2021, and invited researchers to address the changes/novelties in control and mitigation strategies after the first wave of the pandemic, including but not limited to: Covid19 vaccine, from a variety of perspectives. This special issue provides rigorous empirical analysis related to the COVID19 research, and also implements an accelerated peer review process to disseminate the latest COVID19 research on the spot as soon as possible.

In this issue, we presented strategies to support the healthcare system against COVID19 at the national, international and global levels. Despite all the difficulties, and interruptions brought about by the pandemic, we have received diverse and 72 insightful manuscripts. After rigorous peer-review, we accepted 33 articles, from various disciplines, including medical microbiology, immunology, infection control, public health, epidemiology, economics, clinical medicine, artificial intelligence, mathematics, and bioinformatics. Different types of manuscripts are presented; correspondence, case reports, reviews and full text articles. Despite the diversity of this collective effort, the contributions fall into five research areas: (1) Epidemiology and occupational risks of COVID19; (2) Clinical manifestations and secondary infections of COVID19 cases; (3) COVID19 prevention and control; (4) Diagnosis and treatment; modalities and (5) Vaccine and immune response.

The first research area includes contributions to the epidemiology, prevalence, risk factors, demographics, and measurement factors related to COVID19 in the first and second waves. The second research area that attracted the attention of researchers was different clinical presentations related to COVID-19 and secondary bacterial, viral and fungal infections. Risk factors for death and the use of non-parametric models for analyzing survival data of COVID-19 patients were addressed. The third-line research area focuses on factors that may help comply with appropriate preventive measures. starting from identifying the preventive practices using the health belief model, analysis of knowledge, and attitude for prevention of COVID-19 in general or personal protective equipment use in specific, and ending to the linkage between COVID-19 pandemic and mobility in different countries. Researchers in the fourth research area shared their experiences in the use of various diagnostic and treatment methods, including laboratory and X-ray workup, in 3 different countries. The fifth line of research addressed the immune response against SARS-CoV2 including the seroprevalence and dynamics of antibodies either to SARS-CoV2 in diseased cases or induced by the BNT162b2 vaccine. Vaccine hesitancy was investigated by 10 pieces of research including, the willingness to receive vaccination and factors affecting hesitancy, health inequities, Prioritizing of vaccine receipt, and the use of media to strengthen vaccine confidence.

In conclusion, the manuscripts in this special journal presented the problems exasperated by the pandemic and offered recommendations on addressing and mitigating such issues. We value the contributions from this wide range of disciplinary approaches would offer broader perspectives from different disciplines. We need to share them and learn from them.

Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

I would like to thank all the authors who submitted their research work, all the researchers who reviewed the manuscripts for this special issue and Shuaib Hussain Vaiyanna for his professional and continuous support in all steps of preparing this special issue. I greatly appreciate that JIPH had a straightforward peerreview process, as well as staff editorial support.

Prof. Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Infection Control, Zagazig University, Egypt E-mail address: rehab elsokkary@zu.edu.eg