Adverse events of COVID-19 vaccines in patients with rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease (RMD)

Background: COVID-19 has severely influenced all aspects of life since its emergence and one of the strategies to end this pandemic rest on the vaccination to achieve herd immunity. While vaccinations are usually a safe and effective tool, the abbreviated development process of the available COVID -19 vaccines has increased uncertainties about the safety among the general population especially among patients with immune-mediated diseases (IMD) such as RMD. Method(s): This was a cross sectional study looking at the incidence of adverse events within a month following COVID-19 vaccination among the RMD patients attended rheumatology clinic at the Hospital Tuanku Ja'afar Seremban (HTJS) from 1 May 2021 to 31 September 2021. Result(s): 549 patients were recruited with mean age of 51.5 years. Majority (n = 417, 76%) were females. 414 (75.4%) received Pfizer/ BioNTech, 127 (23.1%) received Sinovac, 7 (1.3%) received Oxford/ AstraZeneca and 1 (0.2%) received Moderna. 35 (6.3%) patients had COVID-19 infection with half of them contracted the infection after at last 1 dose of vaccine. The underlying RMD included RA (n = 217, 39.5%), SLE (n = 122, 22.2%), gout (n = 65, 11.8%), osteoarthritis (n = 41, 7.5%) and psoriatic arthritis (n = 30, 5.5%). 288 (52.4%) patients did not report any side effects following the vaccination. Pain at the site of the injection (n = 169, 30.8%) was the most common side effects, followed by muscle pain (n = 91, 16.4%), fever (n = 90, 16.4%), joint pain (n = 55, 10%) and tiredness (n = 43, 7.7%). 30 (5.4%) cases of RMD flares were reported following the vaccination. 25 were arthritis flare, 3 were SLE flare (2 renal and 1 mucocutaneous involvement) and 2 were psoriasis flare. There were no serious adverse events that required hospitalization. Conclusion(s): This study supports the overall safety of COVID-19 vaccines in patients with RMD. This information can help to overcome vaccine hesitancy among this population.

Impact of COVID-19 infection on rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease (RMD) patients

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has brought challenges especially for people with rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease (RMD). The COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance reported patients with RMD had higher rates of COVID-19 infection and mortality compared with general population. The data regarding the prevalence, clinical characteristics, and outcomes of COVID-19 infection among RMD patients in Malaysia are limited. Objective(s): This study describes the clinical characteristics and outcomes of COVID-19 infection on RMD patients (including factors associated with poor outcomes) at Hospital Tuanku Jaa'far Seremban (HTJS), Malaysia. Method(s): This is a retrospective cross-sectional study. All RMD patients who confirmed COVID-19 infection either with COVID-19 PCR or RTK from 1st January 2021 to 28th February 2022 were identified. Data were collected from patients' clinic notes, hospital admission notes and electronic records. Data on RMD diagnosis, comorbidities, disease activity, medication, vaccination status, clinical staging of COVID-19 infection, outcomes including hospitalization, complications from COVID-19 infection and RMD disease flare within 1 month following COVID-19 infection were analyzed. Result(s): From the 2746 patients with RMD seen from 1st January 2021 to 28th February 2022, 2.8% (n = 77) patients were reported positive for COVID-19 infection. The most common underlying RMD were rheumatoid arthritis 35.1% (n = 27) followed by systemic lupus erythematosus 22.1% (n = 17) and psoriatic arthritis 13% (n = 10). Majority of the patients had mild COVID-19 infection symptoms which categorized into stage 2 (46.8%, n = 36). 53.2% (n = 41) patients were hospitalized, and 2.6% (n = 2) patients died of severe COVID-19 pneumonia. 13% (n = 10) developed complications from COVID-19 infection in which 6 patients complicated with organizing pneumonia, 2 with pulmonary embolism, 1 with cytokine release syndrome and 1 with acute respiratory distress syndrome. 16% (n = 10) patients reported flare of RMD within 1 month post COVID-19 infection in which 6 had arthritis flare, 5 mucocutaneous flare and 1 had renal flare. Hypertension (P = 0.021) and diabetes mellitus (P = 0.005) were associated with higher rate of hospitalization. Patients who received 3 doses of COVID-19 vaccination had lower rate of hospitalization compared with those without vaccination (P = 0.026). Patients with age more than 50 years old were associated with higher rate of complications from COVID-19 infection (P = 0.037) and flare of RMD (P = 0.038). Interestingly, RMD disease activity was not associated with poorer outcome of COVID-19 infection (P > 0.05). Conclusion(s): This single center experience on RMD patients with COVID-19 infection showed co-morbidities, no vaccination, age 50 and above were associated with poorer outcomes which was consistent with previous studies. In contrary, RMD disease activity was not associated with poorer outcomes of COVID-19 infection.

Cashierless Checkout Vision System for Smart Retail using Deep Learning

As Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic strikes the world, retail industry has been severely impacted by staff shortage and high risk of virus outbreak. However, most of existing smart retail solutions is associated with high deployment and maintenance cost that are infeasible for small retail stores. As an effort to mitigate the issue, a computer vision-powered smart cashierless checkout system is proposed based on You Only Look Once (YOLO) v5 and MobileNet V3 for product recognition along with 3-stage image synthesis framework that includes crop and paste algorithm, GAN-based shadow synthesis and light variation algorithm. By using 3000 images generated from the framework, proposed model was trained and optimized with TensorRT. Experimental result shows that the lightweight model can be deployed on affordable edge devices like Jetson Nano while achieving high Mean Average Precision (mAP) of 98.2%, Checkout Accuracy (cAcc) of 89.17% with only 0.142s of inference time. © 2022, Success Culture Press. All rights reserved.

CRYPTOCOINOPOLY: A Real Time Online Multiplayer Board Game

With the insurgence of cryptocurrency and the thriving business of mobile games, games related to cryptocurrency have gained enormous interests in recent years. This paper presents a real time online multiplayer board game, Cryptocoinopoly, which is a hybrid of the existing Cryptocoinopoly board game and Monopoly. Unity (a cross-platform game engine) has been used in the development process together with Photon Unity Networking (PUN), which is a Unity package for creating online multiplayer games. At the level, Cryptocoinopoly is represented by Remote Database, Game Server, Network, Application (Game), Local Database and Client components. Notable functions such as allowing users to play the game with multiple people and for no matter how many rounds they desire;allowing users to invest into the cryptocurrency market at any time and allowing users to trade their assets with other players have been successfully implemented. Functionality testing and debugging have been conducted under constrained conditions with limited resources due to the on-going Covid-19 situation. Despite the challenges, all functional and non-functional requirements of the prototype have been fulfilled. © 2021 IEEE.

Prevalence of alcohol-tolerant and antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens on public hand sanitizer dispensers.

BACKGROUND: Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, alcohol-based hand sanitizer dispensers (HSDs) have been installed in most public and clinical settings for hygiene purposes and convenient application. AIM: To determine whether sanitizer-tolerant bacterial pathogens can colonize HSDs, spreading diseases and antibiotic resistance. METHODS: Sampling was conducted from operational automatic HSDs, specifically the dispensing nozzle in direct contact with sanitizer. Culture-dependent cultivation of bacteria and MALDI-TOF were employed to assess microbiological contamination. Bacterial isolates were selected for rapid killing and biofilm eradication assays with alcohol treatment. Antibiotic minimum inhibitory concentration assays were performed according to the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute guidelines. Virulence potential of bacterial isolates was evaluated in the Caenorhadbitis elegans infection model. FINDINGS: Nearly 50% of HSDs from 52 locations, including clinical settings, food industry, and public spaces, contain microbial contamination at 103-106 bacteria/mL. Bacterial identification revealed Bacillus cereus as the most frequent pathogen (29%), while Enterobacter cloacae was the only Gram-negative bacterial pathogen (2%). Selecting B. cereus and E. cloacae isolates for further evaluation, these isolates and associated biofilms were found to be tolerant to alcohol with survival up to 70%. They possessed resistance to various antibiotic classes, with higher virulence than laboratory strains in the C. elegans infection model. CONCLUSION: HSDs serve as potential breeding grounds for dissemination of pathogens and antibiotic resistance across unaware users. Proper HSD maintenance will ensure protection of public health and sustainable use of sanitizing alcohols, to prevent emergence of alcohol-resistant pathogens.

Facilities management: towards flexible work arrangement (FWA) implementation during Covid-19

Purpose This study aims to examine the key components to facilitate flexible work arrangement (FWA) and the issues and challenges arisen in preparing the workplace for FWA during Covid-19, and to recommend better approach of FWA implementation in workplace. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted extensive literature review and case studies approach using interviews and observations to determine the key components to facilitate FWA and the issues and challenges arisen in preparing the workplace for FWA during Covid-19, and to recommend better approach of FWA implementation in workplace. Three offices that owning FWA experience during Covid-19 and featuring flexible workspace concepts, elements and layouts in Klang Valley, Malaysia were chosen as case studies. Findings Findings have suggested that there are four components required to form flexible workspace for FWA adoption, such as open plan workspace design, task-oriented space, hot desking policy and IT infrastructure. Interestingly, the interview findings do not support the idea that the flexible furniture can facilitate FWA;instead, they believe that versatile, acoustical and aesthetical furniture may be installed when necessary. Among the issues and challenges faced were rearranging and designing open office plan layout, hot desk relocation and reconfiguration of spaces where people may congregate. Lastly, this research recommends that innovative planning software and tools, smart technology and apps, modern IT technology and infrastructure, and digital apps can be introduced to the workplace to help FM manage and monitor the facilities operations, workplace situations and occupancy rates. Originality/value Since the outbreak of Covid-19, FWA such as "Work From Home" and remote working have become the mainstream in the workplace, affecting how the workplace looks and feels as flexible working is fundamentally related to the flexible workspace. From Facilities Management (FM) perspective, FWA is the biggest consequence of Covid-19, but it also presents opportunities and certain challenges to incorporate a new office environment and employees' needs in terms of FWA into the corporate culture.

Role of Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic literature review

Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) as a means of prevention during the COVID-19 pandemic have gained increasing attention. NPIs are important to reduce infectious diseases and flatten the curve of infection. However, data or literature on the effectiveness of NPIs is scarce. In this review, we aim to investigate the effectiveness of NPIs in the community based on previous literature. A literature search was conducted on seven databases (OVID, EBSCOHOST, WOS, SCOPUS, TRIP, JSTOR, and PUBMED) using the PICO method which yielded 208 articles from 12th March to 1st April 2020. A PRISMA flow diagram and extraction tables were used to analyze the final 14 eligible articles spanning nine countries. There were nine articles on human surveillance, two on patient and contact management, two on community restrictions, and one article discussing the combination of NPIs (quarantine, closure of facilities, and transit site surveillance). With the use of NPIs, there was a significant reduction of infection episodes among the target population. There has been an increasing demand for scientific evidence on NPIs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and present policy recommendations rely heavily on expert judgement. Randomized trials are required to obtain better evidence for these interventions. However, this review will help experts create feasible and widely acceptable policies and protocols for mitigation plans in the absence of definitive evidence. © 2021 UPM Press. All rights reserved.