ABSTRACT
Education plays an important role in nurturing children. COVID-19 pandemic brings challenges or disruptions to school education, due to school closures in some countries. Science subject in primary schools is unique as hands-on experiments are important learning components. Its learning process may be affected, as a new norm of online learning or home-based learning. This research project creates a serious game on science subject for primary school students aging within 10 to 11 years old using virtual reality (VR) technology. It consists of three virtual learning phases. Phase 1 explains theories of science topics on electricity and electric circuits. Phase 2 provides interactive hands-on experiment exercises where students can practice theory knowledge learned in the previous phase. An interactive quiz session is offered to reinforce the learning in Phase 3. Interactive VR features enable primary school students learning science concepts in an interesting way compared to conventional classroom settings. Meticulous design attentions have been placed in the details such as visual instructions, voice instructions, speech tempo, animations, and colorful graphics to create a sense of realism and keep students actively engaged. Preliminary case study has been conducted with 10 students at primary schools in Singapore to evaluate learning effectiveness in this research. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: Since December 2019, the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that emerged in Wuhan city has spread rapidly around the world. The risk for poor outcome dramatically increases once a patient progresses to the severe or critical stage. The present study aims to investigate the risk factors for disease progression in individuals with mild to moderate COVID-19. METHODS: We conducted a cohort study that included 1007 individuals with mild to moderate COVID-19 from three hospitals in Wuhan. Clinical characteristics and baseline laboratory findings were collected. Patients were followed up for 28 days for observation of disease progression. The end point was the progression to a more severe disease stage. RESULTS: During a follow up of 28 days, 720 patients (71.50%) had recovered or were symptomatically stable, 222 patients (22.05%) had progressed to severe disease, 22 patients (2.18%) had progressed to the critically ill stage and 43 patients (4.27%) had died. Multivariate Cox proportional hazards models identified that increased age (hazard ratio (HR) 2.56, 95% CI 1.97-3.33), male sex (HR 1.79, 95% CI 1.41-2.28), presence of hypertension (HR 1.44, 95% CI 1.11-1.88), diabetes (HR 1.82, 95% CI 1.35-2.44), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (HR 2.01, 95% CI 1.38-2.93) and coronary artery disease (HR 1.83, 95% CI 1.26-2.66) were risk factors for disease progression. History of smoking was protective against disease progression (HR 0.56, 95% CI 0.34-0.91). Elevated procalcitonin (HR 1.72, 95% CI 1.02-2.90), urea nitrogen (HR 1.72, 95% CI 1.21-2.43), α-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase (HR 3.02, 95% CI 1.26-7.21) and D-dimer (HR 2.01, 95% CI 1.12-3.58) at baseline were also associated with risk for disease progression. CONCLUSIONS: This study identified a panel of risk factors for disease progression in individuals with mild to moderate COVID-19.