Marie Betsy Varughese

Government of Alberta · Analytics and Performance Reporting Branch

Foreign-born persons in Canada contribute 67% of all tuberculosis (TB) cases annually, but represent only 21% of the total population. Molecular epidemiological studies suggest that most foreign-born TB cases result from the reactivation of latent tuberculous infection (LTBI) acquired before immigration. To estimate the effect on incidence of a pre...

Background: The increasing rates of multidrug resistant TB (MDR-TB) have posed the question of whether control programs under enhanced directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS-Plus) are sufficient or implemented optimally. Despite enhanced efforts on early case detection and improved treatment regimens, direct transmission of MDR-TB remains...

Background Time to diagnosis and treatment is a major factor in determining the likelihood of tuberculosis (TB) transmission and is an important area of intervention to reduce the reservoir of TB infection and prevent disease and mortality. Although Indigenous peoples experience an elevated incidence of TB, prior systematic reviews have not focused...

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen multiple waves, in part due to the implementation and relaxation of social distancing measures by the public health authorities around the world, and also caused by the emergence of new variants of concern (VOCs) of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. As the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to transition into an endemic state, how to...

Since the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan City in December of 2019, numerous model predictions on the COVID-19 epidemics in Wuhan and other parts of China have been reported. These model predictions have shown a wide range of variations. In our study, we demonstrate that noniden-tifiability in model calibrations using the confirmed-case data is the main...

In the original publication of this article [1], the authors want to add the following sentence in the Acknowledgement section.

Background: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is an opportunistic bacterial organism resistant to first line antibiotics. Acquisition of MRSA is often classified as either healthcare-associated or community-acquired. It has been shown that both healthcare-associated and community-acquired infections contribute to the spread of MRS...

Sixty-three percent of the total active tuberculosis cases in Canada were diagnosed among foreign-born individuals, representing 20% of the total population. The majority of these cases occur from the reactivation of tuberculosis infections acquired prior to immigration. A preventive policy consisting of screening and treating new immigrants for la...

p> OBJECTIVE: In June of 2013, southern Alberta underwent flooding that affected approximately 100,000 people. We describe the process put in place for public health surveillance and assessment of the impacts on health. METHODS: Public health surveillance was implemented for the six-week period after the flood to detect anticipated health events,...

Although numerous reports have compared the antimicrobial susceptibility of Campylobacter spp., controversy still exists about the use of the E test as an alternative to the agar dilution method suggested by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. MICs of 8 antimicrobials were determined using the E test and agar dilution methods for 103 C...