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Background: Public health organisations use public health indicators to guide health policy. Joint analysis of multiple public health indicators can provide a more comprehensive understanding of what they are intended to evaluate.Objective: To analyse variaitons in the prevalence of congenital anomaly-related perinatal mortality attributable to termination of pregnancy for foetal anomaly (TOPFA) and prenatal diagnosis of congenital anomaly prevalence.Methods: We included 55 363 cases of congenital anomalies notified to 18 EUROCAT registers in 10 countries during 2008-12. Incidence rate ratios (IRR) representing the risk of congenital anomaly-related perinatal mortality according to TOPFA and prenatal diagnosis prevalence were estimated using multilevel Poisson regression with country as a random effect. Between-country variation in congenital anomaly-related perinatal mortality was measured using random effects and compared between the null and adjusted models to estimate the percentage of variation in congenital anomaly-related perinatal mortality accounted for by TOPFA and prenatal diagnosis.Results: The risk of congenital anomaly-related perinatal mortality decreased as TOPFA and prenatal diagnosis prevalence increased (IRR 0.79, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.72, 0.86; and IRR 0.88, 95% CI 0.79, 0.97). Modelling TOPFA and prenatal diagnosis together, the association between congenital anomaly-related perinatal mortality and TOPFA prevalence became stronger (RR 0.70, 95% CI 0.61, 0.81). The prevalence of TOPFA and prenatal diagnosis accounted for 75.5% and 37.7% of the between-country variation in perinatal mortality, respectively.Conclusion: We demonstrated an approach for analysing inter-linked public health indicators. In this example, as TOPFA and prenatal diagnosis of congenital anomaly prevalence decreased, the risk of congenital anomaly-related perinatal mortality increased. Much of the between-country variation in congenital anomaly-related perinatal mortality was accounted for by TOPFA, with a smaller proportion accounted for by prenatal diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 19,000 residents and health-care workers in 315 RCFs were swabbed in a once – off mass swabbing of residents and staff in residential care facilities (RCFs) in the Cork/Kerry region in Ireland in April and May 2020. This exercise was in response to epidemiological evidence demonstrating increasing community transmission of COVID-19 and emerging evidence of the vulnerability of older persons, particularly those with underlying medical conditions. The effectiveness of such strategies is uncertain and may depend on both the positive case yield and efficiency of testing turn-around to ensure that timely control measures are put in place. The overall positivity rate was 0.88% (n = 172). Mass swabbing allowed early identification of some new cases and outbreaks in RCFs. This facilitated early public health interventions to protect the most vulnerable members of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]