ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND Vaccination against COVID-19 is crucial for controlling this scourge. COVID/vaccination deniers often rationalise their unfounded fears by citing rare vaccination side-effects. One of the most frequently cited side effects is myocarditis, especially in younger persons. Malta has very high vaccination rates. This study was carried out to ascertain whether admissions to hospital for myocarditis changed during the vaccination rollout, up to October 2021, when 83.4% of Malta’s population of circa half a million had had their first 1st dose. METHODS Malta is served by one large regional hospital (Mater Dei Hospital). Anonymous data for admissions with a diagnosis of myocarditis (ICD I40, I41, I51.4) were obtained for 01/2016-10/2021. Myocarditis discharges and 95% confidence intervals were plotted for 2016-2020. Myocarditis discharges for Jan-Oct 2021 were plotted separately. RESULTS There were no outlier values for myocarditis discharges in either direction for any age for either sex. CONCLUSION Myocarditis, independent of vaccination, is commonest in young males, half resolving and some developing dilated cardiomyopathy, possibly leading to transplantation or death. The ongoing mass vaccination with novel messenger RNA vaccines resulted in reports of myocarditis in male teens, this being a rare side effect. The lack of significantly increased rates of myocarditis admission in any age age/sex group in Malta confirms that only rarely, myocarditis may be temporally associated with COVID vaccination which almost invariably runs a benign course and that this risk is very low, far lower than myocarditis due to actual COVID infection.
ABSTRACT
The SARS-COV-2 imposed dramatically changes in our lives, habits, lifestyles, relationships, jobs. A strategic sector heavily affected by the pandemic is the education one. Although several distance learning initiatives supported the training courses activities, practical sessions have been greatly penalized. In this paper, a solution to remotely perform experiments on an IoT device, namely an Arduino Uno R3 board, is proposed. The novelty of our approach is to remotely allow not only the software deployment over a specific hardware configuration, but also to set the hardware configuration of the IoT device. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
In this innovative practice full paper we present the implementation of the distant laboratory for the Internet of Things teaching and training. The recent outbreak of the SARS-COV-2 virus and related COVID-19 pandemic throughout the world has caused governments across the world to shut down schools and universities, to slow down the spread of the coronavirus that is causing the disease. As a result, some universities and schools have switched from physical classrooms to virtual or online classrooms. This approach is working well for theoretical subjects and courses, but it is not straight forward in the case of laboratory subjects and courses that require access to hardware resources. The IOT-OPEN.EU remote laboratory infrastructure presented in this paper is a timely solution. In this paper, we present current advances in distant learning, distant laboratory models, and the IOT-OPEN.EU remote laboratory implemented as part of the IOT-OPEN.EU ERASMUS+ project, along with short analysis on current advances in distant learning, where students are interacting with physical hardware remote way.