ABSTRACT
On November 17, 2019, the first known case of COVID-19 in the world emerged. It was diagnosed in the Chinese province of Hubei, Wuhan (observer, 2019). Little or nothing was known until then, but the virus quickly spread around the world. More than three months after the first cases appeared in Wuhan, China, COVID-19 was no longer considered an epidemic and was, for the first time, declared by the WHO as a pandemic on March 13, 2020 (Publico, 2020). The world never thought to live a drama of this dimension, airplanes stopped, desert cities, schools closed, with students studying at distance and almost all people working from home. Given its transferability, there was a need for higher education schools to reorganize and implement contingency plans in order to mitigate the spread of the disease. In this work, we intend to show how this implementation in situ was achieved, so that the classes return to a possible normality, taking into account the imposed conditions. A comparing between the case of a national educational establishment and those of another country was made.
ABSTRACT
In Portugal there are more than 2500 companies and 15,000 people who work directly in the stone industry. In addition to all the known risks in this type of industry, the critical in terms of safety and health that companies and people linked to the stone sector have faced in recent years has been COVID-19, given that, in addition to all the damage that this disease on people's health has (and still does) lead to a reduction in business productivity, an increase in labour costs and a delay in product delivery times. The research in this study intends to investigate safety and health measures to be implemented by the stone industry and their usefulness to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 in the stone industry and analyse how COVID-19 pandemic affected the stone industry. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
In Portugal there are more than 2500 companies and 15,000 people who work directly in the stone industry. In addition to all the known risks in this type of industry, the critical in terms of safety and health that companies and people linked to the stone sector have faced in recent years has been COVID-19, given that, in addition to all the damage that this disease on people’s health has (and still does) lead to a reduction in business productivity, an increase in labour costs and a delay in product delivery times. The research in this study intends to investigate safety and health measures to be implemented by the stone industry and their usefulness to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 in the stone industry and analyse how COVID-19 pandemic affected the stone industry. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The city's image is not only translated by wooded avenues, streets, buildings and historical monuments, but also by squares. Those are symbols of humanity's history since the Greek Agora, passing through the Roman Forum to nowadays' modern squares. Such spaces present different functions, projected by means of sociability and leisure practices experienced by diverse social groups. Besides that, they own different configuration and activities directed to different users from different age groups, so the researchers have a gathering of children, teenagers, adults and old people. Regarding activities/functionalities, there are circulation, leisure, contemplation, resting, cultural, educational, psychological, aesthetic and environmental varying from place to place. Thus, this research aims at analyzing the squares in the small town of Juranda-PR, highlighting the functionality of such public spaces. Methodological base consists in bibliographical research in scientific journals, books, dissertations and theses on public squares;on-site research in two squares surveying the main types of equipment and structures. Results show that environmental, aesthetic and social functions are predominant. However, since February 2020, sociability among citizens in the squares have been practically annulated due to the coronavirus pandemic, obliging the population to social isolation, leaving the squares totally empty.
ABSTRACT
Purpose : Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has already been detected in ocular samples. However, the role of the eye in Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is still unclear. We investigated the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in conjunctival swabs from patients with confirmed severe form of COVID-19 searching for differences in the presentation and assay positivity. Methods : This cross-sectional study included 50 conjunctival swab samples (one eye per patient) collected from 50 patients with confirmed COVID-19 in Hospital das Clínicas HCFMUSP, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Samples were collected within 24 hours from the naso/oropharyngeal swab. Inclusion criteria was severe/critical disease and indication for hospitalization according to the Institutional Guideline, which was the presence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. Conjunctival swab was collected from the inferior fornix, without anesthesia, using a nylon flocked swab. Real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) was performed with primers and probes described in CDC protocol. The study was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee and informed consent was obtained prior to procedures. Results : Twenty-four patients were male and twenty-six were female. Median age was 57.38 years (SD 15.23). Mean duration of symptoms before ocular sampling was 7.6 days (SD 3.52). Naso/oropharyngeal swab RT-PCR (within 24 hours from the conjunctival swab) was positive in 34 (68%) patients, negative in 14 (28%) and inconclusive in 2 (4%) patients. All the patients with negative or inconclusive RT-PCR had COVID-19 diagnosis confirmed by another naso/oropharyngeal swab or serology. Five (10%) conjunctival swabs resulted in positive rRT-PCR analysis and two (4%) had inconclusive results. Among the positive patients, 2 patients had a negative naso/oropharyngeal swab and 1 patient had an inconclusive result. None of the patients had ocular symptoms. Conclusions : The positivity rate of conjunctival swab for SARS-CoV-2 was higher when compared to previous studies and similar to those that evaluated moderate to severe forms of COVID-19, and was not associated with ocular symptoms. This suggests that a greater viral load may be present in the tear film of patients with severe form of COVID-19 and may not be associated with conjunctivitis. Special concern should be taken to healthcare workers.