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Understanding indoor occupancy patterns is crucial for energy model calibration, efficient operations of fresh air systems, and COVID-19 exposure risk assessment. University libraries, as one of centers of campus life, due to the high mobility and "foot-voting” nature of them, i.e., occupants pick seats in the micro-environments they prefer, provide a non-intrusive opportunity to carry out post-occupancy evaluations. We conducted a long-term online monitoring of occupancy in libraries of a university in China by web-crawling the online seat reservation system, based on which, we constructed two sets of databases consisting of around 70 million records of nearly 3, 000 seats in 4 library sections, with seat-level resolution and sampling frequency up to every 10 seconds. The informative data set depicts not only the overall spatio-temporal occupancy patterns, but also nuances hidden within seats and visits. The daily flow of the main libraries exceeded two visits per seat. Half of the visitors stayed at the libraries for 3-6 hours during a single occupancy. Semester schedules and campus accessibility together influence students' decisions on when and which library to go, while even within the same zone, some seats were always more popular than their neighbours. "Semi-isolation” is one of the candidate attractive features proposed to understand the underlying patterns. © 2022 17th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, INDOOR AIR 2022. All rights reserved.
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Particulate air pollution represented by PM2.5 is one of the biggest environmental challenges in the 21st century. Especially in 2020, the global outbreak of COVID-19 has brought new challenges to melt-blown filter materials, such as the attenuation of filtration efficiency with breathing, even no filtration effect for viruses as their smaller diameter, the sharp decline of filter efficiency after oily filtration cycle, and its limit in some explosive occasions. Here, using the diameter difference of polystyrene (PS), polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and nylon 6(PA6) fibers, we report a multistage structure nanofiber membrane (PS/PVDF/PA6&Ag MSNMs) with high efficiency, low resistance and antibacterial effect by constructing gradient pore structure and introducing silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs), overcoming the above defects. The average filtration efficiency of PS/PVDF/PA6&Ag MSNMs for diisooctyl sebacate (DEHS) monodisperse particles from 0.2 μm to 4.9 μm was 99.88%, and the pressure drop was only 128 Pa. After repeated circulation for 100 times, the filtration efficiency and pressure drop remained stable. Above all, the antibacterial nanofiber membrane with high efficiency and low resistance has been preliminarily constructed, the future research will further focus on the performance after circulation. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd
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Clinical question What is the role of drug interventions in the treatment and prevention of covid-19? Recommendations The first version on this living guidance focuses on corticosteroids. It contains a strong recommendation for systemic corticosteroids in patients with severe and critical covid-19, and a weak or conditional recommendation against systemic corticosteroids in patients with non-severe covid-19. Corticosteroids are inexpensive and are on the World Health Organisation list of essential medicines. How this guideline was created This guideline reflects an innovative collaboration between the WHO and the MAGIC Evidence Ecosystem Foundation, driven by an urgent need for global collaboration to provide trustworthy and living covid-19 guidance. A standing international panel of content experts, patients, clinicians, and methodologists, free from relevant conflicts of interest, produce recommendations for clinical practice. The panel follows standards, methods, processes, and platforms for trustworthy guideline development using the GRADE approach. We apply an individual patient perspective while considering contextual factors (that is, resources, feasibility, acceptability, equity) for countries and healthcare systems. The evidence A living systematic review and network meta-analysis, supported by a prospective meta-analysis, with data from eight randomised trials (7184 participants) found that systemic corticosteroids probably reduce 28 day mortality in patients with critical covid-19 (moderate certainty evidence;87 fewer deaths per 1000 patients (95% confidence interval 124 fewer to 41 fewer)), and also in those with severe disease (moderate certainty evidence;67 fewer deaths per 1000 patients (100 fewer to 27 fewer)). In contrast, systemic corticosteroids may increase the risk of death in patients without severe covid-19 (low certainty evidence;absolute effect estimate 39 more per 1000 patients, (12 fewer to 107 more)). Systemic corticosteroids probably reduce the need for invasive mechanical ventilation, and harms are likely to be minor (indirect evidence). Understanding the recommendations The panel made a strong recommendation for use of corticosteroids in severe and critical covid-19 because there is a lower risk of death among people treated with systemic corticosteroids (moderate certainty evidence), and they believe that all or almost all fully informed patients with severe and critical covid-19 would choose this treatment. In contrast, the panel concluded that patients with non-severe covid-19 would decline this treatment because they would be unlikely to benefit and may be harmed. Moreover, taking both a public health and a patient perspective, the panel warned that indiscriminate use of any therapy for covid-19 would potentially rapidly deplete global resources and deprive patients who may benefit from it most as potentially lifesaving therapy. Updates This is a living guideline. Work is under way to evaluate other interventions. New recommendations will be published as updates to this guideline. Readers note This is version 1 of the living guideline, published on 4 September (BMJ 2020;370:m3379) version 1. Updates will be labelled as version 2, 3 etc. When citing this article, please cite the version number. Submitted August 28 Accepted August 31Copyright © Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to.
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Bike-sharing data are an important data source to study urban mobility in the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, studies that focus on different bike-sharing activities including both riding and rebalancing are sparse. This limits the comprehensiveness of the analysis of the impact of the pandemic on bike-sharing. In this study, we combine geospatial network analysis and origin-destination (OD) clustering methods to explore the spatiotemporal change patterns hidden in the bike-sharing data during the pandemic. Different from previous research that mostly focuses on the analysis of riding behaviors, we also extract and analyze the rebalancing data of a bike-sharing system. In this study, we propose a framework including three components: (1) a geospatial network analysis component for a statistical and spatiotemporal description of the overall riding flows and behaviors, (2) an origin-destination clustering component that compensates the network analysis by identifying large flow groups in which individual edges start from and end at nearby stations, and (3) a rebalancing data analysis component for the understanding of the rebalancing patterns during the pandemic. We test our framework using bike-sharing data collected in New York City. The results show that the spatial distribution of the main riding flows changed significantly in the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic time. For example, many riding trips seemed to expand the purposes of riding for work-home commuting to more leisure activities. Furthermore, we found that the changes in the riding flow patterns led to changes in the spatiotemporal distributions of bike rebalancing, such as the shifting of the rebalancing peak time and the increased ratio between the number of rebalancing and the total number of rides. Policy implications are also discussed based on our findings.
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To explore the influencing factors of perceived stress among frontline nurses during COVID-1 9, and the role of positive psychological capital in anxiety sensitivity and stress perception, so as to provide evidence for reducing the perceived stress of frontline nurses. From December 2021 to January 2022, 475 frontline nurses from 8 hospitals in X city were investigated by general data questionnaire, positive psychological capital, anxiety sensitivity index and perceived stress scale. The results showed that there were significant differences in nurses’ perceived stress in age, working years, professional title and salary. Perceived stress was positively correlated with anxiety sensitivity, negatively correlated with positive psychological capital, and anxiety sensitivity was negatively correlated with positive psychological capital. Anxiety sensitivity can not only directly predict perceived stress, but also negatively affect perceived stress through positive psychological capital. Therefore, during the epidemic prevention and control in COVID-1 9, nurses can obtain effective stress coping strategies by strengthening their positive psychological capital, thus reducing their anxiety and perceived stress, and better providing high-quality nursing services for patients. © 2022, Editorial department of Chinese Medical Ethics. All rights reserved.
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Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has resulted in a global health care crisis. The provision of CT imaging services by radiology departments for COVID-19 patients poses multiple challenges. Thus, the clinical indications and utility of thoracic CT, determined by whether it subsequently alters patient management, in COVID-19 patients is important to establish. Current literature is not well established specifically for the 'Delta' SARS-CoV-2 variant. Methods and Materials: This is a single tertiary hospital centre retrospective review of all consecutive confirmed COVID-19 cases admitted during the peak of the 'Delta' variant wave in Australia who underwent a chest CT. Clinical indication for chest CT and patient management plan pre and post CT were ascertained. Result(s): During this period, 1403 patients were admitted with COVID-19 and 92 patients underwent CT of the thorax, with 18 patients scanned urgently. There were 73 CTPA, 14 CT Chest and 5 HRCT studies. 20 patients were in ICU at the time of scan. Regarding the clinical indications for thoracic CT, 72.8% of studies were to evaluate for pulmonary emboli, 16.2% for assessment of COVID-19 pneumonia complications, 5.4% for tuberculosis and 6.5% for other indications. 21 (23%) of these studies resulted in a change in management with 2 patients having a major change in management (thrombolysis, CT guided aspiration) whilst 19 had minor changes. Of 73 CTPA studies, 11 (15%) patients had evidence of pulmonary embolism. 6 patients underwent a second chest CT for diverse reasons. Conclusion(s): In conclusion, 6% of patients in the cohort of COVID- 19 patients admitted to our centre during the Delta variant wave of COVID-19 in NSW, Australia underwent a CT of the thorax. In 23% of these patients, chest CT resulted in a change in management. 72.8% of chest CT scans were for the evaluation of possible pulmonary emboli. CT was not used for diagnosis or follow-up of COVID-19 in any of our patients.
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Objective To analyze the epidemiological characteristics of surveillance results of public health emergencies of communicable diseases in Shenzhen from 2016 to 2020. Methods The data of public health emergencies in Shenzhen from 2016 to 2020 were derived from National Public Health Emergency Reporting Management Information System, the occurrence characteristics of epidemic outbreak were analyzed by disease types, regions and institution types, and SPSS 22. 0 was used for statistical analysis. Results The events of COVID-19 reported in 2020 were excluded,a total of 233 public health emergencies of for communicable diseases were reported, with 6 271 cases and 2 deaths were reported in Shenzhen from 2016 to 2020. The attack rate was 3. 87%, and the fatality rate was 0. 03%. The highest prevalence rate was 5. 20% in 2018. There were 164 clustered epidemic events, accounting for 70. 39% of the total information related to public health emergencies, involving 7 types of communicable diseases. Chicken pox (100 incidents,3 565 cases) and infectious diarrhea (41 incidents, 1 491 cases) were the found to be the most common diseases, accounting for 60. 98% and 25. 00% of the total clustered epidemic events, respectively. There were 78. 45% of the clustered events of respiratory communicable diseases occurred in primary schools, and 58. 33% of the clustered events events of intestinal diseases occurred in kindergartens. The difference was statistically significant in the composition ratio of the two kinds of communicable diseases in kindergartens, primary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities and other places. Conclusion A comprehensive prevention and control strategy should be adopted. The comprehensive control strategies should be formulated from aspects including the reduction of population susceptibility, implementing of early reporting and school suspension measures, monitoring of epidemic strains, and strengthening of personal hygiene protection habits for communicable diseases with high risk among different populations. © 2022, Editorial Department of Medical Pest Control. All rights reserved.
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COVID-19 has now been sweeping the whole world, and fundamentally affecting our daily life. An effective mechanism to further fight against COVID-19 and prevent the spread of this pandemic is to alert people when they are in the vicinity of areas with a high infection risk, yielding them to adjust their routes and consequently, leave these areas. Inspired by the fact that mobile communication networks are capable of precise positioning, data processing and information broadcasting, as well as are available for almost every person, in this paper, we propose a mobile network assisted Risk arEa ALerting scheme, named REAL, which exploits heterogeneous mobile networks to alert users who are in/near to the areas with high risks of COVID- 19 infection. Specifically, in REAL scheme, all base stations (BSs) periodically estimate their serving users' locations, which are then analyzed by macro BSs (MBSs) to identify risk areas. Next, each MBS transmits the information about risk areas to small BSs (SBSs), which in their turn adjust the beamforming direction to cover these areas and send alerts to users located therein. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed REAL scheme. In addition, some key challenges associated with implementing REAL are discussed at the end. IEEE
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The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals agenda calls for health data to be disaggregated by age. However, age groupings used to record and report health data vary greatly, hindering the harmonisation, comparability, and usefulness of these data, within and across countries. This variability has become especially evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, when there was an urgent need for rapid cross-country analyses of epidemiological patterns by age to direct public health action, but such analyses were limited by the lack of standard age categories. In this Personal View, we propose a recommended set of age groupings to address this issue. These groupings are informed by age-specific patterns of morbidity, mortality, and health risks, and by opportunities for prevention and disease intervention. We recommend age groupings of 5 years for all health data, except for those younger than 5 years, during which time there are rapid biological and physiological changes that justify a finer disaggregation. Although the focus of this Personal View is on the standardisation of the analysis and display of age groups, we also outline the challenges faced in collecting data on exact age, especially for health facilities and surveillance data. The proposed age disaggregation should facilitate targeted, age-specific policies and actions for health care and disease management.
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Background: This document provides evidence-based clinical practice guidelines on the diagnostic utility of nucleic acid-based testing of respiratory samples for viral pathogens other than influenza in adults with suspected community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Methods: A multidisciplinary panel developed a Population-Intervention-Comparison-Outcome question, conducted a pragmatic systematic review, and applied Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation methodology for clinical recommendations.
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Introduction: Few previous studies have been well described the details of the clinical and virological course of illness among discharged patients. The study aims to study the epidemiological and clinical features of discharged patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection in Changchun, Northeast China. Materials and methods: We included all discharged patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection from Changchun Infectious Hospital, China, as 9 March 2020. We extracted and collected on data of demographic characteristic, clinical features, chest computed tomography (CT) scan, laboratory result, and treatment from the electronic medical records. Exact epidemiological information was obtained from the investigation of patients or close contacts by investigators of at all levels of the Center for Disease Prevention and Control in Jilin Province. Results: Of the 43 discharged patient retrospective studied, 38 were mild novel coronavirus pneumonia, only one with critical ill case and no health workers were infected. The median age was 41.0 years, and 25 were male. All cases were infected by person-to-person transmission and the median incubation period from exposure to illness onset was 8.0 days. 22 patients had comorbidities. The most common symptoms at illness onset were fever, cough, expectoration, myalgia or fatigue, chest tightness, nasal congestion or sneezing. Median duration of illness onset to hospital admission and discharged was 6.0 days and 22.0 days, the median duration of viral shedding after illness onset was 19.0 days (IQR: 14-22). Conclusion: Patients were imported and cluster cases by person-to-person transmission and relatively mild in Changchun, China. Our findings further confirmed the prolonged viral shedding among patients. © 2021 A. CARBONE Editore. All rights reserved.
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BACKGROUND: Accumulated evidence revealed that male was much more likely to higher severity and fatality by SARS-CoV-2 infection than female patients, but few studies and meta-analyses have evaluated the sex differences of the infection and progression of COVID-19 patients. AIM: We aimed to compare the sex differences of the epidemiological and clinical characteristics in COVID-19 patients;and to perform a meta-analysis evaluating the severe rate, fatality rate, and the sex differences of the infection and disease progression in COVID-19 patients. METHODS: We analyzed clinical data of patients in Changchun Infectious Hospital and Center, Changchun, Northeast China;and searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library without any language restrictions for published articles that reported the data of sex-disaggregated, number of severe, and death patients on the confirmed diagnosis of adult COVID-19 patients. RESULTS: The pooled severe rate and fatality rate of COVID-19 were 22.7% and 10.7%. Male incidence in the retrospective study was 58.1%, and the pooled incidence in male was 54.7%. CONCLUSION: The pooled severe rate in male and female of COVID-19 was 28.2% and 18.8%, the risky of severe and death was about 1.6folds higher in male compared with female, especially for older patients (> 50 y). © 2020 Zhijun Li, Lina Feng, Wenyu Cui, Jian Zhang, Yingxin Huang, Yunhong Zhao, Fei Teng, Donglin Wu, Bonan Cao, Hui Wang, Liquan Deng, Qiong Yu.
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Introduction: In December 2019, a new type of pneumonia named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was reported in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. The present study aimed to report the case of a patient with COVID-19 and comorbid pulmonary tuberculosis, on which there have been no relevant reports hitherto. Case Presentation: The case was a 47-year-old female patient with COVID-19 positive pharyngeal swabs. She did not suffer from fever, coughs, or difficulties in breathing. The patient was diagnosed with COVID-19 and pulmonary tuberculosis based on her epidemiological history, routine blood test, imaging findings, and COVID-19 nucleic acid test results. It should be noted that contact and droplet precautions were implemented for this patient. The administrated treatments for her included antiviral, anti-tuberculosis, and liver protection treatments. The patient did not complain about discomfort and her condition was stable. Conclusion: The COVID-19 and comorbid tuberculosis were suspected;however, epidemiological history, clinical presentation, laboratory tests, and imaging examinations must be combined to make a comprehensive diagnosis. Moreover, prompt quarantine and treatment measures should be implemented as well.
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The recent outbreak of respiratory illness in Wuhan, China is caused by a novel coronavirus, named 2019-nCoV, which is genetically close to a bat-derived coronavirus. 2019-nCoV is categorized as beta genus coronavirus, same as the two other strains - severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). Antiviral drugs commonly used in clinical practice, including neuraminidase inhibitors (oseltamivir, paramivir, zanamivir, etc.), ganciclovir, acyclovir and ribavirin, are invalid for 2019-nCoV and not recommended. Drugs are possibly effective for 2019-nCoV include: remdesivir, lopinavir / ritonavir, lopinavir / ritonavir combined with interferon-ß, convalescent plasma, and monoclonal antibodies. But the efficacy and safety of these drugs for 2019-nCoV pneumonia patients need to be assessed by further clinical trials.