Lessons for a digital future from the school of the pandemic: From distance learning to virtual reality.

The unexpected onset of the pandemic emergency placed so-called Distance Learning (DL) at the center of the academic world, affecting students and teachers across all formative steps. The DL experience has opened up the way for many queries in terms of research on the front of education, besides showcasing instances of innovation within the schooling institution, both increasingly urgent and no longer deferrable. The collective shock that started in March of 2020 was an opportunity to incentivize a leap in evolution, heavily digital in nature, within the educational system; howbeit, the generation of digital natives were already, prior to the onset of COVID-19, waiting to sense greater openness in the Italian school system toward newer technologies, in addition to less standardized, more innovative, creative and hybrid didactic formulas. In the presented study-a web survey launched in the spring of 2021-a large sample of students were invited to retrace their experience with DL, and express their relating assessments and reviews. Conducting the entirety of the study remotely turned out to be a winning data collection technique given a situation, comparable to the one experienced globally, in which face-to-face meetings had become impossible. Through in-depth analysis of the different contexts-social, cultural, technological, spatial, relational-in which the DL experience took hold, this contribution holds the purpose of illustrating the main DL adaptation profiles of the sample reached, valorizing the perceptual dimension, through the systematic comparison of online and in-person didactics. Analysis of the identified forms of adaptation created an opportunity to reconstruct the image of school that the interviewees held, how much they valued it, the trust they placed therein, the developments they predicted and desired for the institution. Focusing-responsibly, and taking stock of the possible ethical implications-on the future opportunities held by technological progress, in itself boosted by the pandemic, are located within a wider experimentation of VR-equipped classrooms, in a multidisciplinary perspective, offering a concrete solution to the needs of both students and teachers.

Correlation between In Vitro Neutralization Assay and Serological Tests for Protective Antibodies Detection.

Serological assays are useful in investigating the development of humoral immunity against SARS-CoV-2 in the context of epidemiological studies focusing on the spread of protective immunity. The plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT) is the gold standard method to assess the titer of protective antibodies in serum samples. However, to provide a result, the PRNT requires several days, skilled operators, and biosafety level 3 laboratories. Therefore, alternative methods are being assessed to establish a relationship between their outcomes and PRNT results. In this work, four different immunoassays (Roche Elecsys® Anti SARS-CoV-2 S, Snibe MAGLUMI® SARS-CoV-2 S-RBD IgG, Snibe MAGLUMI® 2019-nCoV IgG, and EUROIMMUN® SARS-CoV-2 NeutraLISA assays, respectively) have been performed on individuals healed after SARS-CoV-2 infection. The correlation between each assay and the reference method has been explored through linear regression modeling, as well as through the calculation of Pearson's and Spearman's coefficients. Furthermore, the ability of serological tests to discriminate samples with high titers of neutralizing antibodies (>160) has been assessed by ROC curve analyses, Cohen's Kappa coefficient, and positive predictive agreement. The EUROIMMUN® NeutraLISA assay displayed the best correlation with PRNT results (Pearson and Spearman coefficients equal to 0.660 and 0.784, respectively), as well as the ROC curve with the highest accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity (0.857, 0.889, and 0.829, respectively).

SARS-CoV-2 Gamma and Delta Variants of Concern Might Undermine Neutralizing Activity Generated in Response to BNT162b2 mRNA Vaccination.

The Delta variant raised concern regarding its ability to evade SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. We evaluated a serum neutralizing response of 172 Italian healthcare workers, three months after complete Comirnaty (BNT162b2 mRNA, BioNTech-Pfizer) vaccination, testing their sera against viral isolates of Alpha, Gamma and Delta variants, including 36 subjects with a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. We assessed whether IgG anti-spike TRIM levels and serum neutralizing activity by seroneutralization assay were associated. Concerning Gamma variant, a two-fold reduction in neutralizing titres compared to the Alpha variant was observed, while a four-fold reduction of Delta virus compared to Alpha was found. A gender difference was observed in neutralizing titres only for the Gamma variant. The serum samples of 36 previously infected SARS-CoV-2 individuals neutralized Alpha, Gamma and Delta variants, demonstrating respectively a nearly three-fold and a five-fold reduction in neutralizing titres compared to Alpha variant. IgG anti-spike TRIM levels were positively correlated with serum neutralizing titres against the three variants. The Comirnaty vaccine provides sustained neutralizing antibody activity towards the Alpha variant, but it is less effective against Gamma and even less against Delta variants.

Do We Really Need Hazard Prevention at the Expense of Safeguarding Death Dignity in COVID-19?

To date, little is known regarding the transmission risks of SARS-CoV-2 infection for subjects involved in handling, transporting, and examining deceased persons with known or suspected COVID-19 positivity at the time of death. This experimental study aims to define if and/or how long SARS-CoV-2 persists with replication capacity in the tissues of individuals who died with/from COVID-19, thereby generating infectious hazards. Sixteen patients who died with/from COVID-19 who underwent autopsy between April 2020 and April 2021 were included in this study. Based on PMI, all samples were subdivided into two groups: 'short PMI' group (eight subjects who were autopsied between 12 to 72 h after death); 'long PMI' (eight subjects who were autopsied between 24 to 78 days after death). All patients tested positive for RT-PCR at nasopharyngeal swab both before death and on samples collected during post-mortem investigation. Moreover, a lung specimen was collected and frozen at -80 °C in order to perform viral culture. The result was defined based on the cytopathic effect (subjective reading) combined with the positivity of the RT-PCR test (objective reading) in the supernatant. Only in one sample (PMI 12 h), virus vitality was demonstrated. This study, supported by a literature review, suggests that the risk of cadaveric infection in cases of a person who died from/with COVID-19 is extremely low in the first hours after death, becoming null after 12 h after death, confirming the World Health Organization (WHO) assumed in March 2020 and suggesting that the corpse of a subject who died from/with COVID-19 should be generally considered not infectious.

VOC 202012/01 Variant Is Effectively Neutralized by Antibodies Produced by Patients Infected before Its Diffusion in Italy.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and presents a global health emergency that needs urgent intervention. Viruses constantly change through mutation, and new variants of a virus are expected to occur over time. In the United Kingdom (UK), a new variant called B.1.1.7 has emerged with an unusually large number of mutations. The aim of this study is to evaluate the level of protection of sera from 12 patients infected and later healed in Apulia Region (Italy) with Covid-19 between March and November 2020, when the English variant was not circulating in this territory yet, against the new VOC 202012/01 variant by seroneutralization assay. The sera of patients had already been tested before, using a virus belonging to the lineage B.1 and showed an antibody neutralizing titer ranging between 1:160 and 1:320. All the 12 sera donors confirmed the same titers of neutralizing antibodies obtained with a strain belonging to the lineage B.1.1.7 (VOC 202012/01). These data indicate that antibodies produced in subjects infected with variants of Sars-CoV-2 strain before the appearance of the English one, seem to have a neutralizing power also against this variant.

Real Time PCR and Culture-Based Virus Isolation Test in Clinically Recovered Patients: Is the Subject Still Infectious for SARS-CoV2?

BACKGROUND: The highly variable manifestation of the COVID-19 disease, from completely asymptomatic to fatal, is both a clinical and a public health issue. The criteria for discharge of hospitalized patients have been based so far on the negative result of Real-Time Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests, but the persistence of viral fragments may exceed that of the integral virus by weeks. The aim of our study was to verify the clearance of the virus at viral culture in patients hospitalized for COVID-19 that have clinically recovered but are still positive on nasopharyngeal swab. METHODS: The study was conducted in hospitalized patients with positive RT-PCR on nasopharyngeal swab. Patients included were from asymptomatic to severe cases and performed nasopharyngeal control swabbing on day 14 for asymptomatic patient or at least three days after remission of symptoms. RT-PCR positive specimens were sent to a biosafety level 3 laboratory for viral culture. RESULTS: We performed a combined analysis of RT-PCR and a highly sensitive in vitro culture from 84 samples of hospitalized patients. The average age was 46 ± 20.29, and 40.5% of the subjects had radiologically confirmed pneumonia, with average PaO2 of 72.35 ± 12.12and P/F ratio of 315 ± 83.15. Ct values for the N gene were lower in the first swab than in the control one (p < 0.001). The samples from 83 patients were negative at viral culture, and RT-PCR on the respective supernatants always confirmed the absence of viral growth. CONCLUSIONS: Our preliminary results demonstrate that patients clinically recovered for at least three days show the viral clearance at viral culture, and presumably they continued to not be contagious.

Sars-CoV-2 isolation from a 10-day-old newborn in Italy: A case report.

This report describes the evolution of COVID-19 in a 10 day-old-baby. The mother developed the disease immediately after childbirth and therefore a vertical transmission can be excluded. The isolation of the virus in cell culture with a cytopathic effect already visible after 48 h, indicates that the viral load of the newborn was quite high, but not serious course of the disease was observed. This paper wants to highlight the possible role of newborns and children in the spread of the disease.