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To tackle the spread of COVID-19 since its outbreak in January 2020, the police have been given additional powers in Taiwan. Studies have consistently revealed that police legitimacy, the belief that the police are trustworthy and allowed to exercise their authority to maintain order, is the main factor determining whether people are willing to cooperate with the police and comply with laws. This paper explores police legitimacy in Taiwan in terms of whether it exists and whether the Taiwanese police have built or damaged their legitimacy during the unprecedented challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the relevant literature, historical events, public opinion survey results, and official crime data, we find that police legitimacy existed before and has continued to exist during the pandemic in Taiwan.
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Due to the recent and ongoing pandemic - COVID-19 - there was an urgency to determine a method to delay the continuously rapid development of the new virus. As a result, Ultraviolet-C (UVC) light, also known as Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation (UVGI), has been in higher demand because of its known ability to disinfect quickly and effectively. However, because of its short wavelength/higher energy, either 222nm or 254nm, material degradation is usually much more accelerated than Ultraviolet-A (UVA) or Ultraviolet-B (UVB). At this moment, this study only observed color change when exposing polystyrene to UVC light, and it is believed that this is one of the first studies, if not the first, conducted with this material. Polystyrene was selected because of its availability, abundance of relevant research (ie. UVA/UVB exposure results), and its use in weathering standards. Additionally, since there are no standards specifically about UVC exposure, this preliminary research may provide some direction. © 2022 Society of Plastics Engineers. All rights reserved.
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Background. People living with HIV (PLHIV) suffer from adverse outcomes of metabolic syndrome. We hypothesized the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with the stay-at-home status in 2020, resulted in physical inactivity and dietary changes leading to increases in weight and body mass index (BMI). Methods. This retrospective observational chart review evaluated PLHIV at an infectious diseases clinic with a documented BMI from 2017 to 2020. Data on patients' demographics, comorbidities, and antiretroviral therapy (ART) as of 2020 and the yearly values of BMI, A1c, and LDL from 2017 to 2020 were collected. Results. Among 256 HIV-infected persons, mean age+/-SD was 48.5+/-13.1 (median= 51;Q1-Q3: 39.5-57.5;range: 20-78) and 95 (37%) were female. Mean BMI were 28.19+/-6.32, 28.44+/-5.95, 28.57+/-5.91, and 29.00+/-6.09 for 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 respectively. Unadjusted and adjusted analysis showed a significant difference in BMI across time, where the mean BMI in 2020 was significantly higher than in 2017 (p< 0.0001), 2018 (p< 0.0001), and 2019 (p< 0.0001). Furthermore, for each consecutive year prior to 2019, there was no significant difference in mean BMI (2017 vs. 2018, p< 0.3464;2018 vs. 2019, p< 0.4671;2017 vs. 2019, p< 0.0861). There was a significant difference in A1c when adjusting for age, sex, race, and ART (Geometric Mean: 5.64, 5.68, 5.68, 5.78 for 2017 through 2020), with the visit year 2020 being significantly higher than 2017 (p< 0.003) and 2019 (p< 0.023) but not 2018 (p< 0.092). There were no significant differences in annual LDL using the same variables for adjustment. Body mass index (BMI) increased over time from 2017 to 2020 Mean BMI were 28.2+/-6.3, 28.4+/-5.9, 28.6+/-5.9, and 29.0+/-6.1 for 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 respectively. Pairwise comparison of BMI from 2017 to 2020 Unadjusted and adjusted analysis showed a significant difference in BMI across time, where the mean BMI in 2020 was significantly higher than in 2017 (p<0.0001), 2018 (p<0.0001), and 2019 (p<0.0001). Furthermore, for each consecutive year prior to 2019, there was no significant difference in mean BMI (2017 vs. 2018, p<0.3464;2018 vs. 2019, p<0.4671;2017 vs. 2019, p<0.0861). Conclusion. Among PLHIV at our clinic, there was a substantial BMI increase in 2020, possibly due to the stay-at-home status in early 2020. A previous study utilized questionnaires to estimate the weight change in this patient population but this is the first report of documented BMI in the clinic setting. It is important to note that the magnitude of these differences was small and should be interpreted with caution. On the other hand, depending on a person's initial height and weight, a one-unit change in BMI may translate to a substantial weight gain, which can be meaningful.
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Background. We studied the safety and efficacy of the use of monoclonal antibodies (MAB) against SARS-CoV-2 in pregnant women who developed COVID-19 infection. Methods. We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive multi-center study of pregnant patients who developed SARS-CoV-2 infection from January 2021 to January 2022 and received MAB therapy. Primary outcomes assessed were infusion-related adverse events and pregnancy outcomes within one month of MAB infusion. The secondary outcomes assessed were hospitalization and ICU admission for COVID19 infection and thirty-day all-cause mortality. Results. 141 patients were included in the study (median age 33 +/- 5.3 SD, median BMI 28.9 +/- 8.42 SD). In terms of COVID vaccination status, 49.6% received one dose, 36.1% were fully vaccinated, and 7% received the booster dose. Most patients received casirivimab/imdevimab (105, 74.5%) followed by sotrovimab (33, 23.4%). Four patients developed adverse reactions to MAB infusion (two grade-2 reactions and two grade-1 reactions as per the National cancer institute infusion reaction grading criteria). Only one patient (0.7%) was hospitalized for COVID-19 infection, however, she was not hypoxic nor required ICU admission. Five patients delivered within four weeks of MAB administration, however, four of those patients were of gestational age > 37 weeks. Data for 30-day all-cause mortality was available on 88.7% (125) of the patients and data for 30-day pregnancy adverse outcomes was available on 86.5% (122) of the patients due to lack of follow-up within the Health System. There was no reported 30-Day all-cause mortality within the cohort. Two patients (1.4%) had premature rupture of the membrane and one patient (0.7%) had premature delivery within 30 days of receiving MAB. Two patients had preeclampsia (1.4%) and one patient (0.7%) was admitted for evaluations of decreased fetal movements. Conclusion. Administration of monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 was well tolerated during pregnancy. Only 4 out of 141 (2.8%) had mild to moderate infusion-related reactions. The 30-day pregnancy adverse outcomes observed were well below the mean background rate. There was no reported mortality among MAB recipients and only one patient was hospitalized for mild COVID19 infection.
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Background. Over 600,000 SARS-CoV-2 infections and 20,000 deaths have occurred among users of the Veterans Health Administration, the US's largest integrated health care system. We explored early outcomes of SARS-COV-2 infection in Veterans. Methods. An ongoing, prospective longitudinal cohort study of Veterans ages >= 18 enrolled 1,826 participants (29.0% inpatient;49.1% vaccinated;68.3% SARS-CoV-2-positive;85.0% male, mean age = 57.1 years) seeking inpatient or outpatient care after SARS-CoV-2 testing at 15 Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers in July 2020 to February 13, 2022. Using multivariable regression, we estimated relationships of baseline demographic characteristics, COVID-19 vaccination, and clinical history to illness severity and cumulative length of hospital stay within 60 days of study entry. Illness severity was defined by a Veterans Affairs adaptation of the WHO COVID-19 severity scale and included 4 levels (mild, moderate, severe, or death). We derived the Charlson co-morbidity index (CCI) and other baseline characteristics from electronic health data and study questionnaires, and reported qualitative SARS-CoV-2 IgG responses using inpatients' study-collected blood specimens. Results. High CCI scores (>= 5) occurred in 47 (42.7%) vaccinated SARS-CoV-2-positive inpatients and 47 (21.2%) unvaccinated. Severe illness occurred in 17 (15.5%) vaccinated inpatients, 37 (16.7%) unvaccinated inpatients, 4 (0.9%) vaccinated outpatients, and 3 (0.7%) unvaccinated outpatients. Eleven (10%) of 110 vaccinated SARS-CoV-2-positive inpatients died, as did 15 (6.8%) of the 222 unvaccinated. In SARS-CoV-2-positive inpatients, a one-step higher CCI was associated with more severe illness (aOR 1.10, 95%CI 1.01-1.20) and more hospitalization days (aIRR 1.06, 95% CI 1.03-1.10), adjusting for vaccination status. Respectively, 93% of vaccinated and 63% of unvaccinated SARS-CoV-2 positive inpatients with baseline antibody results had an anti-spike IgG response. Conclusion. In an ongoing longitudinal cohort study of COVID-19 in US Veterans, comorbidity burden was higher among vaccinated than unvaccinated inpatients and was associated with more severe illness and hospitalization days, independent of vaccination status.
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Introduction: Ischemic necrosis of dermal flaps is a devastating complication of reconstructive surgery. The increasing prevalence of diabetes, obesity, and an aging population adds to this concern. Hypoxia-inducible factor-1alpha (HIF-1alpha), a master regulator of the adaptive response to hypoxia, controls the expression of angiogenic growth factors. The development of biologically active, gene-specific mRNAs, especially in COVID-19 vaccines, has shown the ability for intracellular protein expression. We sought to express HIF-1alpha through mRNA transfection and determined its biological activity by measuring the upregulation of selected downstream targets. Method(s): 5'-methyl-capped poly-A tailed mRNA was generated using T7 RNA polymerase and verified by gel electrophoresis. Predominant and variant HIF-1alpha mRNA were transfected into primary human dermal fibroblasts via Lipofectamine in triplicate, and RNA levels were assessed using RT-qPCR. All gene expression levels were normalized to beta-actin expression levels Results: At one day after transfection, the levels of HIF-1alpha transcript were significantly higher in the cells transfected with predominant (p = 0.0104) and variant (p = 0.0007) HIF-1alpha transcripts relative to the control. Additionally, the expression of HIF-1alpha transcription product genes VEGF (p = 0.0274) and ANG-1 (p = 0.05) were significantly higher in the cells transfected with the HIF-1alpha transcripts than the control. Conclusion(s): Our approach led to the successful transfection of HIF-1alpha mRNA into human fibroblasts, resulting in upregulation of HIF-1alpha downstream angiogenic targets. Thus, the use of biologically active HIF-1alpha mRNA transfection offers a promising approach to inhibit ischemic necrosis.
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Contact tracing apps use mobile devices to keep track of and promptly identify those who come in contact with an individual who tests positive for COVID-19. However, privacy is a major obstacle to the wide-spread use of such apps since users are concerned about sharing their contact and diagnosis data. This research overcomes multiple challenges facing contact tracing apps: (1) As researchers have pointed out, there is a need to balance contact tracing effectiveness with the amount of user identity and diagnosis information shared. (2) No matter what information the user chooses to share, the app should safeguard the privacy of user information. (3) On the other hand, some essential test result information must be shared for the contact tracing app to work. While contact tracing apps have done a good job maintaining contact information on the user's device, most such apps publish positive COVID-19 test results to a central server which have some risks for compromise. We address these challenges by (1) giving the user the right to choose how much information to share about their diagnosis and their identity, (2) building our novel contact tracing app on top of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) to assure privacy preserving user authentication with verifiable credentials, and (3) decentralizing the storage of COVID-19 test results. We, in collaboration with Verizon, have implemented our Privacy-preserving Contact Tracing (PpCT) app, leveraging SSI advances based on the blockchain for their 5G network. © 2021 ACM.
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Background: In 2020, the American College of Cardiology Fellows-in-Training (FIT) Section Leadership Council piloted a virtual mock interview (MI) initiative in response to the transition to cardiovascular disease (CVD) fellowship virtual recruitment during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic. The impact of the expanded MI initiative in 2021 was evaluated. Methods: Through ACC outreach, applicants voluntarily enrolled to participate in virtual 30-minute MI followed by a feedback session conducted by volunteer FIT. Pre- and post-MI surveys utilizing Likert scales were analyzed with paired Wilcoxon rank sum tests. Results: A total of 100 FIT interviewed 159 applicants (34% female, mean age 30 years). Applicants were of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds (45% Asian, 28% White, 7% Black, 4% Hispanic, 7% multi-ethnic). 26% cited no cardiology-specific mentorship from their institution or outside institutions, and 65% had no prior experience with a virtual interview format. 129 applicants completed both preand post-MI surveys. Compared to pre-MI, applicants’ confidence, preparation, and comfort with a virtual platform improved significantly (p<0.001 for all, Figure). More than 85% of applicants agreed that FIT feedback during the MI helped identify strengths and weaknesses and enhanced their interview skills. Conclusion: The ACC FIT MI initiative improved confidence and subjective virtual interview skills in a diverse cohort of applicants to CVD fellowship. [Formula presented]
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Background. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infected patients experience systemic inflammation and respiratory distress, which appears to be associated with increased cytokine release. During the peak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), tocilizumab was used to treat critically ill patients with potential cytokine storm. However, tocilizumab has an increased risk of developing serious infections. Methods. This retrospective observational chart review was approved by Institutional Review Board and evaluated patients admitted from March to November 2020, who were SARS-CoV-2 positive and received tocilizumab for the treatment group and no tocilizumab for the control group. The primary endpoint is usage of antimicrobials. The secondary endpoints are development and outcomes of secondary infections and hospital length of stay and mortality. Chi-square test was used for categorical data and Mann-Whitney test was used for continuous data. Results. A total of 160 patients were included in analysis, with 80 in each arm. 60% of patients in the treatment group required antibiotics compared to 35% in the control group (p = 0.0015), with the highest usage of anti-MRSA coverage, betalactams, cephalosporins, and carbapenems in both groups. Antifungal therapy was required in 21.3% of patients in the tocilizumab group compared to 6.3% in the control group (p = 0.0059), with echinocandins being the most used class in both groups. The median days of antimicrobial use in the tocilizumab group was 14 (IQR 7, 24.5) compared to 9 (IQR 6.5, 19) in the control group (p = 0.3346). In the treatment group, 60% of patients developed a secondary infection compared to 35% of patients in the control group (p < 0.0017). Secondary infection treatment failure was observed in 75% of tocilizumab patients compared to 60.7% of control patients (p = 0.1910). In hospital mortality was 50% in patients who received tocilizumab compared to 27.5% in the control group (p < 0.0039). Conclusion. Patients on tocilizumab received more antimicrobials, but with a similar spectrum of antimicrobial coverage. Patients who received tocilizumab had higher odds of developing secondary infections and expiring during their hospital stay. There were similar durations of antimicrobial therapy and treatment outcomes.
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"Bugs as drugs" in medicine encompasses the use of microbes to enhance the efficacy of vaccination, such as the delivery of vaccines by Leishmania-the protozoan etiological agent of leishmaniasis. This novel approach is appraised in light of the successful development of vaccines for Covid-19. All relevant aspects of this pandemic are summarized to provide the necessary framework in contrast to leishmaniasis. The presentation is in a side-by-side matching format with particular emphasis on vaccines. The comparative approach makes it possible to highlight the timeframe of the vaccine workflows condensed by the caveats of pandemic urgency and, at the same time, provides the background of Leishmania behind its use as a vaccine carrier. Previous studies in support of the latter are summarized as follows. Leishmaniasis confers life-long immunity on patients after cure, suggesting the effective vaccination is achievable with whole-cell Leishmania. A new strategy was developed to inactivate these cells in vitro, rendering them non-viable, hence non-disease causing, albeit retaining their immunogenicity and adjuvanticity. This was achieved by installing a dual suicidal mechanism in Leishmania for singlet oxygen (O-1(2))-initiated inactivation. In vitro cultured Leishmania were genetically engineered for cytosolic accumulation of UV-sensitive uroporphyrin I and further loaded endosomally with a red light-sensitive cationic phthalocyanine. Exposing these doubly dye-loaded Leishmania to light triggers intracellular production of highly reactive but extremely short-lived O-1(2), resulting in their rapid and complete inactivation. Immunization of susceptible animals with such inactivated Leishmania elicited immunity to protect them against experimental leishmaniasis. Significantly, the inactivated Leishmania was shown to effectively deliver transgenically add-on ovalbumin (OVA) to antigen-presenting cells (APC), wherein OVA epitopes were processed appropriately for presentation with MHC molecules to activate epitope-specific CD8+ T cells. Application of this approach to deliver cancer vaccine candidates, e.g., enolase-1, was shown to suppress tumor development in mouse models. A similar approach is predicted to elicit lasting immunity against infectious diseases, including complementation of the spike protein-based vaccines in use for COVID-19. This pandemic is devastating, but brings to light the necessity of considering many facets of the disease in developing vaccination programs. Closer collaboration is essential among those in diverse disciplinary areas to provide the roadmap toward greater success in the future. Highlighted herein are several specific issues of vaccinology and new approaches worthy of consideration due to the pandemic.
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Biomedical named entity recognition from clinical texts is a fundamental task for clinical data analysis due to the availability of large volume of electronic medical record data, which are mostly in free text format, in real-world clinical settings. Clinical text data incorporates significant phenotypic medical entities, which could be used for profiling the clinical characteristics of patients in specific disease conditions. However, general approaches mostly rely on the coarse-grained annotations (e.g. mentions of symptom terms) of phenotypic entities in benchmark text dataset. Owing to the numerous negation expressions of phenotypic entities (e.g. 'no fever', 'no cough' and 'no hypertension') in clinical texts, this could not feed the subsequent data analysis process with well-prepared structured clinical data. Thus, we constructed a fine-grained Chinese clinical corpus. Thereafter, we proposed a phenotypic named entity recognizer (Phenonizer). The results on the test set show that Phenonizer outperform those methods based on Word2Vec with Fl-score of 0.896. By comparing character embeddings from different data, it is found that character embeddings trained by clinical corpora can improve F-score by 0.0103. Furthermore, the fine-grained dataset enables methods to distinguish between negated symptoms and presented symptoms, and avoids the interference of negated symptoms. Finally, we tested the generalization performance of Phenonier, achieving a superior F1-score of 0.8389. In summary, together with fine-grained annotated benchmark dataset, Phenonier proposes a feasible approach to effectively extract symptom information from Chinese clinical texts with acceptable performance. © 2021 IEEE.
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The first coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines in the United States were the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) and mRNA-1273 (Moderna). Pregnant persons were excluded from the original Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) issued by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in December 2020. Pregnant persons with COVID-19 are at increased risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes compared with pregnant persons without COVID-19. This study presents preliminary findings of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine safety in pregnant persons from the United States. To conduct this study, the researchers extracted data from 3 different US vaccine safety monitoring systems: the "v-safe after vaccination health checker" surveillance system, the v-safe pregnancy registry, and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). V-safe asks participants to report local and systemic signs and symptoms as mild, moderate, or severe during daily surveys. Women were eligible if they received their mRNA vaccination during pregnancy or during the preconception period, defined as 30 days before the last menstrual period through 14 days after, and were 18 years of age or older. Participant-reported pregnancy outcomes were spontaneous pregnancy loss (defined as spontaneous abortion and stillbirth) and neonatal outcomes (such as preterm birth, congenital anomalies, small size for gestational age, and neonatal death). Data were obtained through December 14, 2020, to February 28, 2021. In all, 35,691 v-safe participants ages 16 to 54 years identified themselves as pregnant. The majority of enrolled participants were between the ages of 25 and 44 years (98.8%), non-Hispanic White (79.0%), and did not report a COVID-19 diagnosis during pregnancy (97.6%). Overall, 92 (2.3%) of participants received their first vaccination dose during the preconception period, 1132 (28.6%) in the first trimester, 1714 (43.3%) in the second trimester, and 1019 (25.7%) in the third trimester. In terms of adverse effects, injection site pain was described more among pregnant persons compared with nonpregnant women. Headache, myalgia, chills, and fever were reported less often among pregnant persons compared with nonpregnant people. Of the 3958 participants enrolled in the v-safe pregnancy registry, 827 had a completed pregnancy. Of these, 827 completed pregnancies, 115 (13.9%) resulted in a pregnancy loss, and 712 (86.1%) resulted in a live birth (mainly among participants with vaccination in the third trimester). Adverse neonatal outcomes included preterm birth (in 9.4%) and small size for gestational age (in 3.2%);no neonatal deaths were reported. There were 221 pregnancy-related adverse events reported to VAERS, of which the most frequently reported event was spontaneous abortion (46 cases). No congenital anomalies were reported. Of note, the proportions of adverse pregnancy and neonatal outcomes in the v-safe pregnancy database were similar to those published before the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings from this study did not show obvious safety concerns among pregnant persons who received mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. More longitudinal follow-up and studies including larger numbers of women vaccinated earlier in pregnancy are needed to better inform outcomes. Further, new evidence has shown transplacental transfer of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antibodies after maternal COVID-19 vaccination during the third trimester. This evidence suggests that maternal vaccination might provide some protection to the neonate. However, more data are needed to make evaluations on the level of protection.
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Introduction: Previous studies showed that the effect of antivirals for COVID-19 was promising but varied across patient population, and was modest among severe cases. Chinese Medicine (CM) was extensively used to treat COVID-19 in China. We aimed to evaluate the real-world effectiveness of add-on semi-individualized CM during the outbreak. Methods: A retrospective total sampling cohort of 1788 adult confirmed COVID-19 patients were recruited from all 2235 consecutive records retrieved from 5 hospitals in Wuhan during 15 January to 13 March 2020. Consultation notes, laboratory/imaging investigations, pharmacy and prognosis records were linked by an electronic medical record system and verified by at least 2 researchers independently. The mortality of add-on semi-individualized CM users and non-users was compared by inverse probability weighted hazard ratio (HR) and by propensity score matching. Change of biomarkers was compared between groups and the frequency of CMs used was analysed. Subgroup analysis was performed to stratify disease severity and dose of CM exposure. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to test the robustness. Change of key biomarkers and the prescription were analysed. Results: The crude mortality was 3.8% in the semi-individualized CM user group and 17.0% among the non-users. Add-on CM was associated with a mortality reduction of 58% (HR=0.42, 95% CI: 0.23 to 0.77) among all COVID-19 cases and 66% (HR=0.34, 95% CI: 0.15 to 0.76) among severe/critical COVID-19 cases demonstrating dose-dependent response, after inversely weighted with propensity score. The result was robust in various stratified, weighted, matched, adjusted and sensitivity analyses. Severe/critical patients received add-on CM had a trend of stabilized D-dimer level after 3-7 days of admission when compared to baseline. Anti-inflammatory, immunomodulating and anti-asthmatic CMs were most used. Conclusion: Add-on semi-individualized CM was associated with significantly reduced mortality demonstrating dose-dependent response, especially among severe/critical COVID-19 patients. Chinese medicine should be considered as an add-on regimen for trial use. Keywords: COVID-19;Chinese Medicine;Retrospective Cohort;mortality;
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There are around 300 night markets in Taiwan, and they have been drawing an increasing number of tourists in recent years. As a result, public awareness over air quality in the night markets has grown tremendously. In response to this, a specific night market in Kaohsiung City was chosen for this study in order to characterize the existing air quality in and around the night markets. In this present study, we employed an Industrial Source Complex Short-Term (ISCST3) air quality model for the simulation of PM2.5 diffusions. The model as a technique can simulate the pollutants emissions, diffusions, transportation, and pollution sources in specific areas and subsequently evaluate the influence between the source and the receiver. Therefore, we compared pollutants emissions data from several air quality monitoring stations with our sampling data of three different sampling sites in Kaohsiung City. The findings of this study showed that the average concentration of PM2.5 was in the range of 29-61 mu g m(-3) during opening hours of the night market, whereas the average concentration of PM2.5 range was between 22-38 mu g m(-3) before the night market opening hours. The concentration of metallic elements (ME) (Mg, Na, Cr, Mn, Fe, Cu, Al, Ba, Cd, Pb and Ca) was determined with the support of Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES). During the night market opening hours, the result disclosed that the ME concentrations in PM2.5 was in an increasing order as follows: Na > Fe > Al > Ca. With respect to the concentration of carbonaceous species, our results showed that the highest total carbon (TC) concentration was found to be 6.52 mu g m(-3) during the downwind sampling interval. The highest elemental carbon (EC) and organic carbon (OC) concentration were found to be 6.53 mu g m(-3) and 2.70 mu g m(-3) of the PM2.5 concentration, respectively. This study's findings have significant consequences for Taiwan policymakers and urban planners, particularly those responsible for coordinating environmental protection and economic development in cities. Therefore, policy actions to abate urban air pollution can be attained on diverse governing echelons, resulting in synergistic effects such as a reduction in climate change impacts.
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The restrictive measures implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have triggered sudden massive changes to travel behaviors of people all around the world. This study examines the individual mobility patterns for all transport modes (walk, bicycle, motorcycle, car driven alone, car driven in company, bus, subway, tram, train, airplane) before and during the restrictions adopted in ten countries on six continents: Australia, Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Iran, Italy, Norway, South Africa and the United States. This cross-country study also aims at understanding the predictors of protective behaviors related to the transport sector and COVID-19. Findings hinge upon an online survey conducted in May 2020 (N = 9,394). The empirical results quantify tremendous disruptions for both commuting and non-commuting travels, highlighting substantial reductions in the frequency of all types of trips and use of all modes. In terms of potential virus spread, airplanes and buses are perceived to be the riskiest transport modes, while avoidance of public transport is consistently found across the countries. According to the Protection Motivation Theory, the study sheds new light on the fact that two indicators, namely income inequality, expressed as Gini index, and the reported number of deaths due to COVID-19 per 100,000 inhabitants, aggravate respondents' perceptions. This research indicates that socio-economic inequality and morbidity are not only related to actual health risks, as well documented in the relevant literature, but also to the perceived risks. These findings document the global impact of the COVID-19 crisis as well as provide guidance for transportation practitioners in developing future strategies.
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2020 has brought a severe impact on the world. The COVID-19 epidemic has infected more than 30 million people worldwide, and more than a million people have died. International economic activities have also suffered unprecedented harm. Thereforiniiie, relevant personnel’s response to the COVID-19 epidemic is achieved at all stages to prevent COVID-19 injury entirely. Medical institutions, centralized quarantine sites, home quarantine personnel, and all the people involved can adequately handle the waste generated by the COVID-19 epidemic. Therefore, this chapter has formulated management measures and operating principles which mainly constitute the following four sections includes (1) Introduction to health waste management;(2) Waste classification and cleaning methods in COVID-19 medical institutions;(3) Centralized quarantine station and home isolation waste cleaning method;(4) COVID-19 infection control and risk assessment measures in Taiwanese hospitals (5) Feasible application of the smart system in health waste management. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.