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PrepaTec Morelia students returned to face-To-face classes in January-May 2022 semester after just over a year in the online class format, because of confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a priority to implement activities that promoted the integration, physical activity, and emotional health of the students. This is how, given the popularity generated among adolescents by the South Korean series "The Squid Game"where several traditional games are presented, the idea of implementing similar activities with traditional Mexican games to promote the integration and emotional well-being of the students rose. The games that were chosen were: Jumping Rope. Elastic Skipping, Freeze Tag, Red Light, Green Light, Hopscotch, Marbles, Yoyo, Spinning Top, Cup-And-Ball and Play Tig. The project was applied in the Tutoring and Wellbeing VI class with a total of 124 students between the ages of 17 and 19 who were in their last year of high school. With one week per week for a total of 8 sessions. A survey with the question: What emotions did you experience when playing and interacting with your classmates The results showed that 84.6% of the students experienced a feeling of happiness, followed by 72.6% who said they felt also energetic. In the satisfaction survey within the satisfaction survey with 5-point Likert scale where 5 is very satisfactory and 1, the result was 3.94 with a standard deviation of 1.03, which confirms the importance of generating activities not only focused on the academic area, because without a doubt one of the great lessons learned from the pandemic is that mental health care as part of the optimal personal development of the human being and learning for life. © 2022 Owner/Author.
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In the last two years, there has been an abrupt change in the use of the Internet and Social Media. For many, these digital media have become the foundation of our lives and we rely on them without giving too much thought to what makes them work or who makes them possible. Its stability gives us stability, allowing people from almost every continent to move seamlessly between their offline and online lives. And yet, billions of peoplemust also navigate this abrupt change without reliable access to the Internet and digital media. This article presents a sample of the role played by social media in the harshest part of the Covid-19 pandemic, in the very particular case of Panama. © 2022 IEEE.
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Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, rethinking lifestyle and quality of life through the appropriate use of public space is necessary. This study aims to verify the measures of social distancing in Chapinero Centro, which, according to the mobility survey 2019 of Bogota, has an average of 4,633 trips on foot between 10 and 20 minutes according to the travel patterns in the areas of transportation analysis studied. Despite having great social and economic dynamics, this area has small sidewalks that hinder compliance with social distancing, which is necessary to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, geographic analysis of this area was performed using data provided by the vulnerability map of the Coronavirus web in Colombia by the National Planning Department, the Institute for Health Technology Assessment, and the National Administrative Department of Statistics. This geographic analysis made it possible to calculate the variables of population indicator per block, maximum population per sidewalk, and the criterion of compliance with social distancing. When developing the vulnerability and social distancing maps, it became evident that 37% of the sidewalks do not comply with the 2 meters of social distancing between people, so we propose extending them to 3.5 meters and reducing this same value in the vehicular space to design an effective social distancing map. We concluded that the widening of the sidewalks allows flexible use of the streets oriented to a healthy distance, which could be complemented with an accessibility study and a study of vehicular traffic to measure the impact of this intervention. © 2022, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. All rights reserved.
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The epidemiological situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has represented a challenge to undertake the tasks that were usually performed in any activity of daily life. Reorganizing information services represents a challenge for its professionals, particularly in Cuban medical universities. The objective of this paper is to describe the alternatives and innovations created and applied by the Scientific Information Group of the Faculty of Medical Sciences "Dr. Enrique Cabrera" to support teaching and scientific research during the recess of face-to-face activities, in the period from March to December 2020. © 2022, Centro Nacional de Informacion de Ciencias Medicas. All rights reserved.
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Positive psychology interventions hold great promise as schools around the world look to increase the wellbeing of young people. To reach this aim, a program was developed to generate positive emotions, as well as improve life satisfaction, mental toughness and perceptions of school kindness in 538 expatriate students in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Starting in September 2019, the program included a range of positive psychology interventions such as gratitude, acts of kindness and mental contrasting as examples. Life satisfaction and mental toughness at mid-year were sustained or grew by the end of the year. Positive affect, emotional wellbeing and social wellbeing increased at post-intervention 1, compared to baseline. However, this improvement reverted to baseline levels at post-intervention 2, when data were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Only psychological wellbeing, negative affect, perceptions of control, and school kindness were increased at post-intervention 2. During the lockdown, students moved less, but slept and scrolled more. Those who extended their sleep duration reported greater wellbeing. Boosting wellbeing through the use of positive psychology interventions works - even in a pandemic - and extended sleep duration appears to be a driving factor for this observation.
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Background. COVID-19 has emerged as a global public health emergency and has been the main cause of intensive care admission during the pandemic. COVID-19-associated pulmonary aspergillosis (CAPA) has been reported in case series of critically ill patients. However, the criteria for CAPA diagnosis has been inconsistent among most of the reports. Mexico has been widely affected by SARS-CoV-2. We present a series of CAPA cases at a teaching hospital in Mexico City. Methods. We performed a retrospective analysis of COVID-19 patients admitted to the ABC Medical Center from May 1st, 2020, to May 1st, 2021. Including only those with critical COVID-19 who required invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV). Patients with a diagnosis of CAPA were analyzed. We followed the 2020 ECMM/ISHAM consensus criteria for CAPA diagnosis. Aspergillus antigen testing in tracheal aspirate and serum was done with Aspergillus-specific galactomannoprotein (GP) ELISA (Euroimmun Medizinische Labordiagnostika). Results. Among the 230 admitted patients who required IMV, we identified 49 (21.3%) cases of CAPA, 46 probable CAPA and 3 proven CAPA. Nineteen (38%) of those died in the hospital. The mean age was 64.5 ± 12.6 years and 11 were female. Proven CAPA was diagnosed with culture in three cases (one A. niger, one A. terreus and one A. fumigatus). Probable CAPA was diagnosed by a positive serum GP in 27 (55.1%) patients and by a positive bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) GP in 29 (59.2%) cases. Seven patients had both serum and BAL positive GP. Forty-six (93.9%) patients received corticosteroids, and 22 (49.9%) were treated with tocilizumab before CAPA diagnosis. All but one received isavuconazole as CAPA treatment. We detected 35 (71.4%) patients who had a bacterial co-infection. Eighteen of those died (51.4%) compared to only one dead in the subgroup without coinfections (7.1%). The mean time from hospital admission to CAPA diagnosis was 6.2 days (SD 7.1) among those who survived compared to 13.2 (SD 6.3) days in those who died p< 0.01. Conclusion. CAPA had a lower prevalence than previously reported in other series. However, it appears to be linked to high mortality when it occurs with other bacterial coinfections and when it is diagnosed late from admission.
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The current spreading of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic had put all the scientific community in alert. Even in the presence of different vaccines, the active virus still represents a global challenge. Due to its rapid spreading and uncertain nature, having the ability to forecast its dynamics becomes a necessary tool in the development of fast and efficient health policies. This study implements a temporal convolutional neural network (TCN), trained with the open covid-19 data set sourced by the Health Ministry of Peru (MINSA) on the Peruvian coast. In order to obtain a robust model, the data was divided into validation and training sets, without overlapping. Using the validation set the model architecture and hyper-parameters were found with Bayesian optimization. Using the optimal configuration the TCN was trained with a test and forecasting window of 15 days ahead. Predictions on available data were made from March 06, 2020 until April 13, 2021, whereas forecasting from April 14 to April 29, 2021. In order to account for uncertainty, the TCN estimated the 5%, 50% and 95% prediction quantiles. Evaluation was made using the MAE, MAD, MSLE, RMSLE and PICP metrics. Results suggested some variations in the data distribution. Test results shown an improvement of 24.241, 0.704 and 0.422 for the MAD, MSLE and RMSLE metrics respectively. Finally, the prediction interval analysis shown an average of 97.886% and 97.778% obtained by the model in the train and test partitions. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Background: Over the past few years, it has been shown that T cells play an essential role in antiviral immunity, in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic some studies reported an association between lymphocytopenia and exhaustion of the surviving remaining T cells which are apparently functional in patients with acute COVID-19, specially in those with severe forms of presentation. Some studies have reported an association where less than 800 CD4 + T cells are negatively related to the survival of seriously ill patients with COVID -19. Methods: We included 19 patients admitted to our hospital (ABC Medical Center) from May 7 to 15, 2020 with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 and were randomized into 2 groups according to the severity of the presentation (severe or critical) A determination of CD4 + T cells was made at admission, we also reported the need for invasive mechanical ventilation at some point of the hospitalization for each group, all patients were followed until their hospital discharge. One patient was excluded because he was still admitted at the time of the analysis. Results: Of the 18 patients included, 9 (50%) fulfilled criteria of severe and 9 (50%) of critical. The mean of CD4 + T cell was 455 (256-697) for the severe and 285.44 (145-430) for the critical (CI 95% P 0.46), the determination of CD8+ T cell was 212 (88-392) for the severe and 201 (59-534) for the critical (CI 95% P 1.19), of the critical patients 8 (88.9%) required invasive mechanical ventilation and only one non-invasive mechanical ventilation, while the severe patients only required support with supplemental oxygen by nasal cannula (9 (100%)).The mean lenght of hospitalization was 12.73 days (3-34) and all the patients survived until they were discharged home. Conclusion: As it has been reported in some studies, the pathogenesis of SARSCoV- 2 infection in humans is associated with a reduction and functional exhaustion of T cells in patients with COVID-19.In this study we presume that lower levels of CD4+T cells can be associated with critical forms of COVID 19 as the majority of critical patients in our report had < 300 CD4 +T cell count, while we need further studies with a greater number of patients and follow-up to establish reliable determinations, we propose than the levels of CD4+T cell count could be use as a good predictor of severity in COVID-19.
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Background: COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, has emerged as a global public health emergency and has been the main cause of intensive care admission during the pandemic. Invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) superinfection has been reported in case series of critically ill patients. Mexico has been widely affected by SARS-CoV-2. We present a case series of COVID-19-associated IPA at a teaching hospital in Mexico City. Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of COVID-19 patients admitted to the ABC Medical Center from March 13 to June 1, 2020. Only those with severe or critical COVID-19 were hospitalized. Patients with a diagnosis of putative IPA were analyzed. SARS-CoV-2 was diagnosed by Real-Time PCR from nasopharyngeal swabs. Aspergillus antigen testing in tracheal aspirate and serum was done with Aspergillus-specific galactomannoprotein (GP) ELISA (Euroimmun Medizinische Labordiagnostika).The study was approved by the hospital ethics committee. Results: Among the 47 admitted patients who required invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV), we identified seven (14.9%) cases of IPA. The mean age was 59.7 ± 17.8 years and five were male. All our patients had comorbidities, but none were under previous immunosuppressive treatment. All had critical COVID-19 pneumonia requiring IMV. All but one patient received corticosteroids, and five patients were treated with tocilizumab before IPA diagnosis. Putative IPA was diagnosed in six cases (86%) by a positive GP in tracheal aspirate, additionally in one of these, the tracheal aspirate culture also grew Aspergillus niger. The remaining one (14%) had a positive serum GP. The median time from COVID-19 to IPA diagnosis was 10 days. There were five bacterial co-infections, three with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, one with Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, and one with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Six patients were treated with isavuconazole and one voriconazole. As of June 17, 2020, three patients had died, two patients had been discharged, and two were still in the intensive care unit receiving IMV. Aspergillus niger isolated from a tracheal aspirate of a critically-ill COVID-19 patient Conclusion: COVID-19-associated IPA had a lower prevalence than previously reported in other series. However, it appears to be linked to high mortality and could be associated with other bacterial coinfections.
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Background: Since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease-2019 (SARS-CoV-2) in December 2019, thousands of healthcare workers have faced this highly contagious disease;For its handling, the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) consisting of masks, goggles and protective clothing is needed for long periods of time, generating the appearance of various skin manifestations (pressure injuries, contact dermatitis, urticaria and exacerbation of pre-existing skin diseases). Objective: To describe the frequency of cutaneous manifestations caused by the use of PPE in healthcare workers and the risk factors for developing them. Methodology: From June 4 to 14, 2020;1,000 surveys were distributed online to health workers from 12 hospitals in the metropolitan area of Mexico City. Results. 78% showed dermatological alterations associated with PPE, mainly xerosis, scaling and erythema, with greater involvement in the hands, the nasal bridge and the cheeks, usually accompanied by itching and pain. There was a relationship between the use of PPE and the exacerbation of dermatological diseases, mainly rosacea (OR 2.96). It was shown that the alcohol gel increased 1.8 and 2 times the risk of presenting xerosis and fissures respectively, with an association (OR 2.3) between constant hand washing and xerosis. Conclusion: The exacerbation and increase of dermatosis associated with the use of PPE and the associated factors for its appearance were observed.
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In this article, a teacher educator and two veteran teachers of 9–12 English Language Arts (ELA) inquire into the opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned from the abrupt transition to online learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The shared setting was a major metropolitan area. The fundamental question addressed is What really changed? In ELA classes that were already rich in digital resources, and where assignments were regularly submitted using internet-based learning management systems, the Spring 2020 school close-down and move to online instruction nevertheless meant profound changes to the authors’ teaching lives. In this article they investigate the approximately 12 weeks that concluded the first pandemic semester, focusing on the impact on teaching and learning environments, instructional purposes, and 21st century tools. The authors believe these changes will have consequences in future classrooms, in whatever physical or virtual contexts teachers find themselves delivering instruction. © Copyright © 2020 Turchi, Bondar and Aguilar.