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How has COVID impacted the Public Health landscape?

Specifically infectious diseases!

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public-health covid-19 infectious-diseases
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Jennifer’s Answer

I think the biggest change we saw in our Microbiology lab was increased positivity rates. For instance, positivity of urine cultures usually is around 23% and it jumped up to over 30%. Other cultures including wound related jumped a significant percentage as well. We attributed this to the fact that were at home suffering for things like UTIs and wounds or abscesses because either they couldn't get appointments or didn't feel safe going to the doctor. Since COVID we are still seeing an increase in both the number of overall cultures as well as requests for sensitivity testing in our Acid Fast and Mycology cultures.
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Elya’s Answer

COVID has brought public health to the forefront of the public's attention and while this is a net positive, it also comes with greater scrutiny (rightfully so, but just newer to public health). Due to the nature of population sciences, a large portion of the evidence base is reliant on observational data, which is great to have but also comes with its own nuances (e.g., what the population of study is, what biases may be inherent in the data, what was the context of the study, etc.). All of these nuances impact the interpretation and applicability of findings. Furthermore, there can be many studies seemingly looking at similar factors but ending with different results. It is up to the public health practitioner to piece the puzzle together and ensure that the evidence is sufficient and relevant when making decisions that affect an entire group of individuals. While this has always been part of the public health training, now that public health is more visible in public conversation, the communication of the evidence along with the complexity and nuance has become a very important aspect of public health.
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