Assessing Mental Health of Women Working as Front-Line Health Workers in Self-Help Groups in Odisha during COVID-19 Outbreak

COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on the mental condition of the people globally and the more affected are women as compared to men. Women engaged in self-help groups also suffering from mental health disorders during COVID-19 pandemic. The current study aimed to understand how mental health has affected the SHGs women during COVID-19 and violence of women in the domestic field due to the impact of COVID-19. The current study designed a questionnaire by using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and the General Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) and data was collected from 218 respondents and descriptive analysis was conducted by using SPSS-20. The findings revealed that the maximum number of women in self-help groups suffered with mild anxiety and 15% suffered with severe anxiety disorder. The maximum number of women follows meditation followed by indoor games and yoga to cope up with anxiety. Hence, women working in self-help groups need to take preventive actions like yoga and other therapies to avoid anxiety and stress which help them to engage and be productive in their professional job during COVID-19 pandemic. © 2023 by SPC (Sami Publishing Company)

Medical Assistance and Healthcare Services Facilitated by Self-Help Groups (SHGs) During COVID-19 in India

In India women, self-help groups have risen to the extraordinary challenges of the COVID-19(Coronavirus) pandemic. The COVID-19 and its crisis imposed lockdown and emerged with unique challenges for women’s groups. In the health care sector, during the ongoing war against the COVID-19 pandemic, women played a more significant role in working as frontline staff and being exposed to the deadly disease in many ways. The SHGs being run and governed by women have a lot of contribution towards the more significant production of medical assistance, i.e., masks, sanitizers, PPEkit, and all other protective gear and measures to meet the required and ongoing demands of the health sector. During lockdowns, the women’s group faced a significant challenge as almost all women’s groups met physically. However, they contributed most during such difficult times. During this time there were significant disruptions in the supply chain and distribution of medical products, which has immensely affected and have caused hindrance in women’s menstrual and reproductive health in India. More than 70% women are the world’s frontline health care and social workers, which accounts for a staggering 88.8% of trained nurses. Rural women in Odisha have contributed and helped produce more than 1 million cotton masks for police personnel and healthcare workers. © 2022 by SPC (Sami Publishing Company)

Effective online teaching learning during COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a dramatic change in our day to day life. It affected not only the normal working of many organizations but also the traditional classroom teaching and learning methodologies. Since everyone has to maintain social distancing to follow COVID-19 guidelines, work from home is being preferred as the best alternative as a preventive measure from spreading the pandemic. In its severe impact, schools, colleges, and universities were shut down, pushing nearly 1.2 billion students out of the classroom. As a result, the education system has to suddenly adapt to a distinctive online-based e-learning approach over digital platforms. Research tells that online learning motivated more towards the retention of online resources with less cost in terms of money and time. But, it has also brought many challenges along the way. In this research work, we focus on some of the major challenges such as information security and network bandwidth problem during online teaching. The related security measures being adopted in our research work to secure personal information during any online teaching and learning process. We also focus on some basic learning models for provisioning effective online-based teaching and learning. © 2021 Institute of Physics Publishing. All rights reserved.

Geographical variation in case fatality rate and doubling time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Case fatality rate (CFR) and doubling time are important characteristics of any epidemic. For coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), wide variations in the CFR and doubling time have been noted among various countries. Early in the epidemic, CFR calculations involving all patients as denominator do not account for the hospitalised patients who are ill and will die in the future. Hence, we calculated cumulative CFR (cCFR) using only patients whose final clinical outcomes were known at a certain time point. We also estimated the daily average doubling time. Calculating CFR using this method leads to temporal stability in the fatality rates, the cCFR stabilises at different values for different countries. The possible reasons for this are an improved outcome rate by the end of the epidemic and a wider testing strategy. The United States, France, Turkey and China had high cCFR at the start due to low outcome rate. By 22 April, Germany, China and South Korea had a low cCFR. China and South Korea controlled the epidemic and achieved high doubling times. The doubling time in Russia did not cross 10 days during the study period.

SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in India: epidemiological features and in silico analysis of the effect of interventions

Background: After SARS-CoV-2 set foot in India, the Government took a number of steps to limit the spread of the virus in the country. This included restricted testing, isolation, contact tracing and quarantine, and enforcement of a nation-wide lockdown starting 25 March 2020. The objectives of this study were to i) describe the age,gender distribution and mortality among COVID-19 patients identified till 14 April 2020 and predict the range of contact rate;and ii) predict the number of active COVID-19 patients after 40 days of lockdown. Methods: We used a cross-sectional descriptive design for first objective and a susceptible-infected-removed model for in silico predictions. We collected data from government-controlled and crowdsourced websites. Results: Studying age and gender parameters of 1161 Indian COVID-19 patients, the median age was 38 years (IQR, 27-52) with 20-39 year-old males being the most affected group. The number of affected patients were 854 (73.6%) men and 307 (26.4%) women. If the current contact rate continues (0.25-27), India may have 110460 to 220575 infected persons at the end of 40 days lockdown. Conclusion: The disease is majorly affecting a younger age group in India. Interventions have been helpful in preventing the worst-case scenario in India, but will be unable to prevent the spike in number of cases.