COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Technology, Users' Privacy and Security

Nowadays, the entire world is struggling to adapt and survive the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic, the new mutations in the Coronavirus disease is causing damage and disruption across the world. Taking preventive measures to control the spreading of the virus, including lockdowns, curfews, social distancing, masks, vaccination are not enough to stop the virus. Many countries have sought to support their contact tracers with the use of digital contact tracing apps to manage and control the spread of the virus. Using the new technologies to adapt the prevention measures furthermore enhancing the existing ones, will definitely be more efficient. There are many contact tracing apps that have already been launched and used since 2020. There has been a lot of speculations about the confidentiality and security aspects of these apps and their possible violation of data protection principles. In this paper we propose a system of contact tracing, we explain how this system treats sensible information to preserve the user's identity and protect their personal information. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Clinical characteristic of thoracic malignancy patients with coronavirus disease 2019 related to mitigation strategy in dharmais national cancer center hospital, Indonesia

AIM: This study aims to describe the clinical data and disease severity of thoracic malignancy patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and its relation to the mitigation process at the Dharmais National Cancer Center, Indonesia. METHODS: A total of 5256 cancer patients registered from May 2020 to March 2021. There were 681 cancer patients diagnosed with COVID-19. Forty-five thoracic malignancy patients were enrolled. Data from medical records were obtained at the Dharmais Cancer Hospital, then analyzed using SPSS version 25. Comparative result was considered significant, as p < 0.05. RESULTS: There were 12.9% of total patients registered infected by COVID-19, which 6% with thoracic malignancy dominated by non-small cell lung carcinoma (57.8%). Patients who have asymptomatic (31.1%), mild (13.3%), and moderate COVID-19 disease (8.9%) were alive. Patient with severe disease (46.7%) tends to deteriorate. Neutrophilia (mean 78.0%), lymphopenia (mean 13.0%), high neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (mean 13.1), hyperuricemia (mean 31.6 mg/dL), high fibrinogen (mean 521.7 mg/dL), and high d-dimer (mean 3821.6 ng/mL) were significantly associated with disease severity (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Only small number of cancer patients affected by COVID-19 and mostly does not progress to severe disease, showing that the strict mitigation strategy was successful. Severe disease patients have a poor prognosis, with neutrophilia, lymphopenia, high neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, hyperuricemia, high fibrinogen, and high d-dimer may be valuable for predicting poor prognosis.

Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio as mortality predictor of advanced stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with COVID-19 in Indonesia.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to compare the mortality rate between advanced-stage non-small cell lung cancer patients (NSCLC) with and without COVID-19. This study also explores the possible laboratory characteristics used for prognostication in patients with NSCLC and COVID-19. Additionally, this study evaluated potential differences in laboratory values between the case and control groups. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This is a single-center retrospective cohort study conducted in Dharmais National Cancer Hospital, Indonesia, enrolling patients with NSCLC undergoing chemotherapy or targeted therapy between May 2020 and January 2021. All patients with NSCLC and COVID-19 in these periods were enrolled into the case group. The control group was age-matched NSCLC patients without COVID-19 that was derived from the NSCLC cohort through randomization. RESULTS: There were 342 patients with NSCLC between May 2020 and January 2021. Twenty-seven (7.9%) of the patients were infected by COVID-19. To facilitate comparison, thirty-five age-matched controls with NSCLC were selected from the cohort. The mortality rate in patients with COVID-19 was 46.2%. Eleven patients (40.7%) had severe COVID-19, of which none survived. NLR >8.35 has a sensitivity of 83.3%, specificity of 92.9%, LR+ of 12, and LR- of 0.18. The AUC was 0.946 (95% CI 0.867-1.000), p<0.001. PLR >29.14 has a sensitivity of 75.0%, specificity of 71.4%, LR+ 2.62, LR- 0.35, and AUC 0.851 (95% CI 0.706-0.996), p=0.002. Both NLR and PLR were associated with shorter time-to-mortality in the unadjusted and adjusted model CONCLUSIONS: NLR and PLR are independent predictors of mortality in COVID-19 patients with NSCLC.