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Aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) treatment has progressed, and patients are rapidly aging in Japan. Consequently, dynamic changes must have emerged in the clinical practice of SAH. This study aimed to elucidate chronological changes of aneurysmal SAH and the prognostic factors in the previous quarter century in Japan. We conducted a retrospective survey regarding aneurysmal SAH in eight institutions in Japan. The study included 848, 863, and 781 patients in the first (1989-1993), second (1999-2003), and third (2009-2013) periods, respectively. The chronological changes of factors that influenced the poor outcomes and differences between the nonelderly (

Monitoring time-varying vaccine effectiveness (e.g., due to waning of immunity and the emergence of novel variants) provides crucial information for outbreak control. Existing studies of time-varying vaccine effectiveness have used individual-level data, most importantly dates of vaccination and variant classification, which are often not available in a timely manner or from a wide range of population groups. We present a novel Bayesian framework for estimating the waning of variant-specific vaccine effectiveness in the presence of multi-variant circulation from population-level surveillance data. Applications to simulated outbreaks and the COVID-19 epidemic in Japan are also presented. Our results show that variant-specific waning vaccine effectiveness estimated from population-level surveillance data could approximately reproduce the estimates from previous test-negative design studies, allowing for rapid, if crude, assessment of the epidemic situation before fine-scale studies are made available.

COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against death in Japan remains unknown. Furthermore, although evidence indicates that healthcare capacity influences case-fatality risk (CFR), it remains unknown whether this relationship is mediated by age. With a modeling study, we analyzed daily COVID-19 cases and deaths during January–August 2021 by using Tokyo surveillance data to jointly estimate COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against death and age-specific CFR. We also examined daily healthcare operations to determine the association between healthcare burden and age-specific CFR. Among fully vaccinated patients, vaccine effectiveness against death was 88.6% among patients 60–69 years of age, 83.9% among patients 70–79 years of age, 83.5% among patients 80–89 years of age, and 77.7% among patients >90 years of age. A positive association of several indicators of healthcare burden with CFR among patients >70 years of age suggested an age-dependent effect of healthcare burden on CFR in Japan.

Abstract Assessing the impact of temperature on COVID-19 epidemiology is critical for implementing non-pharmaceutical interventions. However, few studies have accounted for the nature of contagious diseases, i.e., their dependent happenings. We aimed to quantify the impact of temperature on the transmissibility and virulence of COVID-19 in Tokyo, Japan, employing two epidemiological measurements of transmissibility and severity: the effective reproduction number ( $$R_{t}$$ R t ) and case fatality risk (CFR). We estimated the $$R_{t}$$ R t and time-delay adjusted CFR and to subsequently assess the nonlinear and delayed effect of temperature on $$R_{t}$$ R t and time-delay adjusted CFR. For $$R_{t}$$ R t at low temperatures, the cumulative relative risk (RR) at the first temperature percentile (3.3 °C) was 1.3 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.1–1.7). As for the virulence to humans, moderate cold temperatures were associated with higher CFR, and CFR also increased as the temperature rose. The cumulative RR at the 10th and 99th percentiles of temperature (5.8 °C and 30.8 °C) for CFR were 3.5 (95% CI: 1.3–10.0) and 6.4 (95% CI: 4.1–10.1). Our results suggest the importance to take precautions to avoid infection in both cold and warm seasons to avoid severe cases of COVID-19. The results and our proposed approach will also help in assessing the possible seasonal course of COVID-19 in the future.

The article discusses research by Akira Endo and colleagues on the epidemiology of the 2022 global outbreak of monkeypox. The research examines the heavy-tailed sexual partnership distribution among men who have sex with men (MSM), which may explain the sustained growth of the outbreak despite the absence of such patterns previously. It also mentions that ensuring support and tailored messaging to facilitate prevention and early detection among MSM with high numbers of partners is warranted.

The article discusses research on age-dependent effects of COVID-19 vaccine and effect of healthcare burden on COVID-19 deaths in Tokyo, Japan from January 1 to August 31, 2021. The study estimated COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE) against death and time-varying case-fatality risk (CFR) in SARS-CoV-2-positive persons according to age group using data published by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Research results compare the effect of healthcare burden on CFR in older and younger age groups.