ABSTRACT
Background: COVID-19 has resurfaced in India, where it is rapidly spreading and wreaking havoc in rural areas. An effort has been undertaken to assess the levels and patterns of COVID-19 active cases in the southern states of India. To trace and reason out anomalous trends in the COVID-19 curve so that particular actions such as lockdown, de-lockdown, and healthcare improvisation can be implemented at the appropriate time. Methods: The data has retrieved from the government websites through a platform called Kaggle. The entire duration of COVID - 19 were classified into three compartments: Phase one, Resting phase, and Phase two. The Case Fatality Rate in south Indian states was analysed corresponding to the phases, and a compartmental model for COVID-19 dynamics in the region was proposed. Results: The quadratic regression model was fitted and found to be the best model for the phases except for the resting phase. Phase one was comparatively less fitted when compared to phase two. In most of the south Indian states, the active cases in phase one were almost more than four times that of phase two. The average CFR value in phase one was lower than the subsequent phase in all of the southern Indian states. In phase one, Telangana, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu had the highest CFR (4.77,4.22, and 3.71, respectively), whereas Lakshadweep and Kerala had the lowest CFR (0.27 and 0.71, respectively). In the resting phase, the CFR stabilized in all states and reached a value between 0.2 to 2. The trend was similar in phase two also, CFR of Lakshadweep, Kerala, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh (0.143, 0.416,0.553, 0.803) were very low, while the CFR of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu (1.237, 1.306, 1.490) were very high. Conclusion: The first and second phases of the COVID-19 virus in south Indian states had different characteristics. A District-level working group with the autonomy to respond to rapidly changing local situations must be empowered to tackle the next phase. The upcoming phases could be more peaked in less time and could be a hectic situation for the health care system.
ABSTRACT
As remote teaching has become the forefront of education during the COVID-19 pandemic, anatomy curricula have been forced to adapt to provide quality education for core competencies. In particular, in-person laboratory components have been largely reduced or removed from anatomy teaching to comply with social distancing guidelines. While this has compromised typical learning environments, it offers a unique opportunity to implement remote teaching practices in anatomy and assess their impact on students? learning. The Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at McGill University has initiated a hybrid teaching strategy for the anatomy laboratory curriculum that combines limited hands-on cadaveric dissection with remote laboratory-adjacent activities using a 3-D software application (Complete Anatomy 2021). During the Fall 2020 semester, first-year medicine and dentistry students had the opportunity to experience both teaching formats while learning respiratory and cardiovascular anatomy. Our study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of this hybrid curriculum delivery format by comparing in-person versus digital teaching approaches implemented within the same cohort on the following outcomes: (i) student and instructor experiences, (ii) students? approach to learning (SAL) and performance, and (iii) faculty time, resources, and cost considerations. Given that hands-on cadaver-based learning is considered the gold standard in anatomy education, we hypothesized that the in-person teaching format would be associated with higher deep and lower surface learning scores, higher grades, and higher resource requirements. The qualitative feedback revealed greater student preference for in-person dissection learning. Comparisons of SAL between in-person and remote delivery formats revealed no significant differences in students? deep or surface approach scores between in-person and remote delivery formats during the respiratory (deep: p = 0.63;surface: p = 0.84) or cardiovascular (deep: p = 0.18;surface: p = 0.22) anatomy laboratory sessions. Further, no significant differences were noted in mean grades on the laboratory exam when correlated with the respective in-person vs. remote learning format for both respiratory (p = 0.65) and cardiovascular (p = 0.18) blocks. Together, these findings suggest that irrespective of the teaching method utilized, students adopted similar approaches to learning anatomy and performed equally well in summative assessments. Pending a thematic analysis of instructors? experiences, resource use, and cost considerations, findings from this study will help guide educational policy revisions aimed at maintaining student-centered learning during current and future disruptions to in-person teaching.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Many studies have been carried out in modelling COVID-19 pandemic. However, region-wise average duration of recovery from COVID-19 has not been attempted; hence, an effort has been made to estimate state-wise recovery duration of India's COVID-19 patients. Determining the recovery time in each region is intended to assist healthcare professionals in providing better care and planning of logistics. METHODS: This study used database provided by Kaggle, which takes data from the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. The simple Linear Regression model between incidence, prevalence, and duration was used to assess the duration of COVID-19 disease in various Indian states. RESULTS: The fitted model suits ideal for most of the states, except for some union territories and northeastern states. The average time to recover from disease was ranging from 5 to 36 days in Indian states/union territories except for Madhya Pradesh. Tamil Nadu has an average recovery time of 7 days with an value of 0.96, followed by Odisha, Karnataka, West Bengal, Kerala and Chhattisgarh and the average recovery duration was estimated as 7, 13, 17, 11, 14 and 12 days respectively. CONCLUSION: The average recovery from COVID-19 was ten or less days in twenty percentage of states, whereas in forty-four percentage of states/union territories had an average recovery duration between ten to twenty days. However, around twentyfour percentage of states/union territory recovered between twenty to thirty days. In the rest of Indian states/union territories, the average duration of recovery was more than thirty days.