A local COVID-19 outbreak with two community clusters occurred in a large industrial city, Shaoxing, China, in December 2021 after serial interventions were imposed. We aimed to understand the reason by analysing the characteristics of the outbreak and evaluating the effects of phase-adjusted interventions. Publicly available data from 7 December 2021 to 25 January 2022 were collected to analyse the epidemiological characteristics of this outbreak. The incubation period was estimated using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo method. A well-fitted extended susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered model was used to simulate the impact of different interventions under various combination of scenarios. There were 387 SARS-CoV-2-infected cases identified, and 8.3% of them were initially diagnosed as asymptomatic cases. The estimated incubation period was 5.4 (95% CI 5.2–5.7) days for all patients. Strengthened measures of comprehensive quarantine based on tracing led to less infections and a shorter duration of epidemic. With a same period of incubation, comprehensive quarantine was more effective in containing the transmission than other interventions. Our findings reveal an important role of tracing and comprehensive quarantine in blocking community spread when a cluster occurred. Regions with tense resources can adopt home quarantine as a relatively affordable and low-impact intervention measure compared with centralized quarantine.

In 2020, the fifth Canadian Consensus Conference on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Dementia (CCCDTD5) published up-to-date recommendations for the clinical management of persons living with dementia (PLWD) and their caregivers. During the CCCDTD5 meetings, a list of recommendations for dementia care was compiled. With the aid of family physicians and the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging, we selected the most relevant CCCDTD5 recommendations for primary care and tailored and summarized them in the present manuscript to facilitate their reference and use. These recommendations focus on (a) risk reduction, (b) screening and diagnosis, (c) deprescription of dementia medications, and (d) non-pharmacological interventions. The development of recommendations for the ongoing management of dementia is an iterative process as new evidence on interventions for dementia is published. These recommendations are important in the primary care setting as the entry point for PLWD into the health system.

There is increasing need for early, pro-active programs that can delay dementia diagnosis and enhance well-being of individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and their care-partners (i.e., care-dyads). This randomized controlled trial evaluated the efficacy of a combined cognitive rehabilitation and multi-family group treatment (CR-MFG) that was designed to facilitate adoption of newly learned cognitive strategies into the care-dyads everyday lives. Analyzed data included 23 care-dyads who participated in CR-MFG treatment and 23 care-dyads in standard care (SC). The 3-month intervention consisted of individual joining sessions, an educational workshop, and 20/twice weekly multifamily memory strategy training and problem-solving sessions. Everyday functioning, memory, and psychological functioning (i.e., quality-of-life, depression, coping) were assessed. The CR-MFG intervention was associated with significant post-test group differences and improved post-test performances by the MCI participants on performance-based measures of everyday functioning and neuropsychological tests of memory. There was also some suggestion that CR-MFG care-partners perceived positive change in the everyday functioning of the MCI participants. In contrast, no post-test group differences were found for either care-dyad member on the self-report psychological measures; care-partners in the treatment group did self-report improved coping behaviors at post-test. These 3-month results are preliminary but suggestive that CR-MFG may produce modest, practical everyday functional benefits for persons with MCI. (JINS, 2014, 20, 1–12)

Background: To clarify physicians’ actual practice in treating agitation in the nursing home and to elucidate the relationship between background factors, familiarity with interventions, and practice.

Methods: A survey of actual practice for agitation in persons with dementia was administered to 67 physicians aged 31–70+ working in nursing homes in Israel. Questionnaires were administered by personal interview, self-completed, or a combination of the two.

Results: Psychotropic medications are prescribed by 92.5% of physicians for treating agitation, most notably, Haloperidol (39%). Non-pharmacological treatment was also reported to be common, though to a lesser extent, with environmental change being the most prevalent non-pharmacological intervention. Generally, physicians showed low familiarity levels with non-pharmacological interventions, with higher levels noted for physicians with a specialty in geriatrics compared to those who were non-specialized. Physicians who were non-Israeli and younger also reported higher familiarity levels compared to their respective counterparts (i.e. Israeli and older) but this difference did not reach significance.

Conclusion: The findings indicate that, despite current guidelines, psychotropic medications are the treatment of choice among nursing home physicians in Israel. While rates of use of non-pharmacological interventions are substantial, their in-practice application may be hindered by lack of familiarity as well as system barriers. The results have implications for system and education changes.