ABSTRACT
The Prison administration in India usually faces several challenges in prison management even during the normal times. These challenges got aggravated during the ongoing pandemic COVID-19. One of the main challenges has been the overcrowding in prisons in India. The Supreme Court of India (SC) took suo-moto cognizance of the issue of overcrowding in prisons during the pandemic and considered the situation that the prison inmates were at a high risk of transmission of COVID-19 virus due to the high rate of ingress and egress, in prisons. Thus, the Supreme Court directed the state governments to constitute a High Power Committee (HPC) and identify the prisoners including undertrials who could be released on interim bail or parole. The authors of this research paper have undertaken a study of the issue of overcrowding in Indian prisons in pre COVID-19 times and finding out if the overcrowding actually reduced in the last one year during the ongoing pandemic in view of the SC order. The authors have also explored and an alysed the reasons behind such high overcrowding in India Prisons and have made some suggestions to overcome these in future. © 2022, Supporting Academic Initiatives Foundation. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Bacterial co-infections and secondary infections are common in respiratory viral infections. Since COVID-19 is a respiratory viral infection proportion of the bacterial infections are high which leads to significant mortality. If these organisms were Multidrug resistance (MDR) the situation become worse. In this mini-review, we analyze the bacterial co-infections& secondary infections, and MDR status in COVID-19 individuals Method: This mini-review was reviewed from articles published in PubMed, Scopus, and Google scholar indexed journals between January 2021 to January 2022. The keywords used for the search were "secondary bacterial infections in COVID-19 individuals", "MDR resistant bacteria in COVID-19", and "case reports on MDR infections in COVID-19 patients" Results: the proportion of bacterial co-infections and secondary infections are varied from region to region as low as 2.5% to 95% reported. MDR strains are high. Conclusion(s): Unnecessary use of antibiotics, prolonged hospital stay, and overburden on the health care system are the main reasons for increasing MDR strains. Copyright © 2022 Japan University of Health Sciences.
ABSTRACT
Aim and background: Coronavirus disease is a global pandemic. A significant majority of patients present with mild symptoms but some of them develop into severe disease. One of the key issues has been the very high volume of patients presenting to health centres or hospitals during the outbreak. It clearly overwhelms the human and mechanistic capacities available, especially the need for critical care support. Therefore, early and effective predictors of clinical outcomes are required for risk stratification. Objective: Identification of biomarkers that can be used as an early and helpful marker to improve the management of COVID-19 patients and as a prognostic marker. Materials and methods: This is an ongoing hospital-based retrospective study on patients who were admitted to COVID wards/ICU at IGGMC. Patients are divided into 3 groups - mild-moderate;severe;and critical based on their clinical presentation on admission. Several biomarkers like WBC, platelets, N/L, CRP, LDH, S. ferritin, d-dimer, CPK-MB, serum creatinine, BUL, SGOT, SGPT, and serum albumin were analysed before and after treatment. Results: 110 patients were enrolled in this study until now. Out of which, 36 were classified into mild-moderate, 56 into severe, and 18 into critical. There was no mortality in the mildmoderate group, 37 deaths in the severe, and 13 deaths in the critical group. As all mild-moderate patients were discharged and the majority of critical patients expired, biomarkers were compared between severe patients who were discharged vs severe patients who died. Out of these various biomarkers, CRP was significantly decreased during the course of treatment in severe patients who were discharged (p = 0.004) in comparison to severe patients who died where CRP was significantly increased (p = 0.001) (p value of difference being 0.00001). There was also significant change in ferritin levels (p = 0.006), while other biomarkers like WBC (p = 0.07), platelets (p = 0.066), N/L (p = 0.3), LDH (p = 0.06), d-dimer (p = 0.1), CPK-MB (p = 0.49), serum creatinine (p = 0.05), urea (p = 0.06), S. albumin (p = 0.3), SGOT (p = 0.07), and SGPT (p = 0.25) did not show promising results. As CRP was most significant in determining the prognosis of patients, various treatment protocols were analysed by comparing CRP before and after treatment. Severe patients were divided into 2 groups, who took injection remdesivir along with antibiotics, LMWH, systemic steroids vs those who did not, and CRP level was compared, but the difference was not significant (p = 0.06). CRP level was also compared in patients receiving steroids for > 10 days vs < 10 days (p = 0.18). Pre- and post-treatment CRP was also compared for injection tocilizumab, tablet fevipiravir, hydroxychloroquine, doxycycline, but none of them were able to decrease CRP significantly (p > 0.05) in the severe or critical group but these drugs were effective in reducing CRP significantly (p < 0.05) when given in mild-moderate group or if the treatment was started early. Conclusion: Increment in CRP and ferritin could effectively predict clinical outcomes and could be used for risk stratification but no available drug is effective in reducing these biomarkers significantly in the severe or critical group.
ABSTRACT
Psychiatric problems and disorders are an epidemic in their own right, however, they often go unnoticed & undetected. Post COVID-19, given that most families & individuals were forced to isolate themselves in their homes for huge periods of time, it only made things worse. We humans being social animals needed a refuge, therefore the volume of interactions & personal posts on social media platforms skyrocketed. Whilst, there's huge leverage of text classification techniques using Deep Learning algorithms for financial, commercial applications eg. stock market news analysis, analysing customer behavior, etc. but similar applications in the field of Mental health are quite meager. The text on the social media feed of a person can be critical and of huge help in expeditious detection of depressive disorders. Via the medium of this paper, our aim is to find an optimum solution for the above-addressed problem, we take the real-time user data from an online social networking platform, after which it is pre-processed and analysed, thereafter we use this data to build deep learning-based classifier models i.e. LSTM, (CNN+LSTM), GRU, these models are improved using optimisation algorithms, furthermore, these models are compared and analysed to check which text classification algorithm works best for our use case. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
As of August 2021, the COVID -19 pandemic has affected approximately 200 million cases worldwide. Most of the reported medical literature about the COVID-19 infection discusses its respiratory and haematological manifestations, with limited information about its neurological complications. Encephalitis, meningitis, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, stroke and encephalopathy have been reported in patients with COVID-19 infection. Symptomatology of CNS involvement includes dizziness, headache, impaired consciousness, acute cerebrovascular disease, ataxia, and seizures. Encephalopathy is encountered commonly in patients with severe disease, multi-organ dysfunction and elevated inflammatory markers. Acute cerebrovascular disease is another major manifestation of COVID -19 infection and is mainly due to occlusion of large vessels, hypercoagulability and a pro-inflammatory state. In this report, we discuss the diagnosis and outcome of a 30-year-old patient detected with Posterior Reversible Encephalopathy Syndrome (PRES) as a complication of COVID-19 infection. We hope this report will provide physicians with a useful framework for understanding pathophysiology and imaging findings of PRES in COVID-19 infection. © 2022 Journal of Association of Physicians of India. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses facts and fictions of poplar (Populus deltoides) in Jammu and Kashmir, India. Recently, after the COVID-19 outbreak, it was claimed that 'pollen grains of female poplar may be carriers of the SARS-CoV-2 virus'. The Government of Kashmir issued an order for the felling of about 42,000 female poplar trees, even though many environmentalists and scientists provided evidence that pollen from poplar causes meagre effect on human health when compared to other trees and it has no relation with COVID-19. Experts also suggest that the silky cotton seed of poplar may not cause much harm, but it has been misinterpreted due to carrier nature of other pollen grains. On the other hand, unscientific harvesting of millions of poplar trees could result in desert-like conditions in the future and also affect the livelihood opportunity of farmers and local people in J&K.
ABSTRACT
Background and Purpose: Various neurological complications have been reported in association with COVID-19. We report our experience of COVID-19 with stroke at a single center over a period of eight months spanning 1 March to 31 October 2020. Methods: We recruited all patients admitted to Internal Medicine with an acute stroke, who also tested positive for COVID-19 on RTPCR. We included all stroke cases in our analysis for prediction of in-hospital mortality, and separately analyzed arterial infarcts for vascular territory of ischemic strokes. Results: There were 62 stroke cases among 3923 COVID-19 admissions (incidence 1.6%). Data was available for 58 patients {mean age 52.6 years;age range 17–91;F/M=20/38;24% (14/58) aged ≤40;51% (30/58) hypertensive;36% (21/58) diabetic;41% (24/58) with O2 saturation <95% at admission;32/58 (55.17 %) in-hospital mortality}. Among 58 strokes, there were 44 arterial infarcts, seven bleeds, three arterial infarcts with associated cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, two combined infarct and bleed, and two of indeterminate type. Among the total 49 infarcts, Carotid territory was the commonest affected (36/49;73.5%), followed by vertebrobasilar (7/49;14.3%) and both (6/49;12.2%). Concordant arterial block was seen in 61% (19 of 31 infarcts with angiography done). ‘Early stroke’ (within 48 hours of respiratory symptoms) was seen in 82.7% (48/58) patients. Patients with poor saturation at admission were older (58 vs 49 years) and had more comorbidities and higher mortality (79% vs 38%). Mortality was similar in young strokes and older patients, although the latter required more intense respiratory support. Logistic regression analysis showed that low Glasgow coma score (GCS) and requirement for increasing intensity of respiratory support predicted in-hospital mortality. Conclusions: We had a 1.6% incidence of COVID-19 related stroke of which the majority were carotid territory infarcts. In-hospital mortality was 55.17%, predicted by low GCS at admission. © 2021 Journal of Association of Physicians of India. All rights reserved.