Comparative study on epidemiological characteristics and public health interventions of COVID-19 among China, South Korea, the United States and France based on the poisson regression model

Objective To analyze the trend of COVID-19 epidemic and to comparatively evaluate effects of economic policies, containment and closure policies and health system policies in China , South Korea, the United States (US) and France. Methods Daily confirmed COVID-19 cases and daily comprehensive policy index, specific indicators in mainland China, South Korea, US and France were collected. Considering the lag effect of policy effects, poisson regression model was established to estimate the daily real-time regeneration (Rt) , and the log-log model with variable coefficient was used to compare the prevention and control effects of policies and measures in different countries. Results Containment and closure policies and health system policies were negatively correlated with Rt, and the cumulative lag effect weakens with the increase of lag time. Economic policies were negatively correlated with Rt only in US and France. The effect of American and French policies on Rt was weaker than that of China and South Korea. Conclusion Containment and closure policies and health system policies have a great effect on reducing Rt and controlling the epidemic, the timely and powerful comprehensive blockade measures at the early stage of the epidemic have better effects than mitigation measures. © 2023, Publication Centre of Anhui Medical University. All rights reserved.

SERS/photothermal-based dual-modal lateral flow immunoassays for sensitive and simultaneous antigen detection of respiratory viral infections

Lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA) is one of the most common analytical platforms for point-of-care testing (POCT), which is capable of large-scale primary screening and home self-testing of infectious diseases. However, the sensitivity of conventional AuNPs-based LFIA is relatively low and more prone to false negatives. Herein, we report a novel LFIA based on gold-core-silver-shell bimetallic nanoparticles (Au4-ATP@Ag NPs) emitting Surface-enhanced Raman scatting (SERS) and Photothermal (PT) effect, named SERS/PT-based dual-modal LFIA (SERS/PT-dmLFIA), for the antigen detection of infectious diseases pathogens, which displayed an excellent performance. For influenza A virus (IAV), influenza B virus (IBV), and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) N protein detection, the limit of detections (LoD) with Raman as signal were 31.25, 93.75, and 31.25 pg mL-1 respectively, and the LoDs with temperature difference (∆T) as signal were as low as 15.63, 187.5, and 15.63 pg mL-1 respectively, which were over 4-fold more sensitive than visual-based LFIA. The proposed SERS/PT-dmLFIA was used for detecting virus antigen in pharyngeal swabs and showed ideal coincidence rate of over 95% compared to the commercialized assays. In addition, we explored the development of multiplex SERS/PT-dmLFIA that can detect IAV, IBV, and SARS-CoV-2 antigens simultaneously without cross reactivity. Overall, the SERS/PT-dmLFIA for antigen detection not only exhibits high sensitivity, accuracy and specificity, but also have characteristics of rapidity and simplicity, which holds high potential for rapid diagnosis of infectious diseases in laboratory testing, mass screening, and home self-testing. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

Comparative study on epidemiological characteristics and public health interventions of COVID-19 among China, South Korea, the United States and France based on the poisson regression model.

Objective To analyze the trend of COVID-19 epidemic and to comparatively evaluate effects of economic policies, containment and closure policies and health system policies in China , South Korea, the United States (US) and France. Methods Daily confirmed COVID-19 cases and daily comprehensive policy index, specific indicators in mainland China, South Korea, US and France were collected. Considering the lag effect of policy effects, poisson regression model was established to estimate the daily real-time regeneration (Rt) , and the log-log model with variable coefficient was used to compare the prevention and control effects of policies and measures in different countries. Results Containment and closure policies and health system policies were negatively correlated with Rt, and the cumulative lag effect weakens with the increase of lag time. Economic policies were negatively correlated with Rt only in US and France. The effect of American and French policies on Rt was weaker than that of China and South Korea. Conclusion Containment and closure policies and health system policies have a great effect on reducing Rt and controlling the epidemic, the timely and powerful comprehensive blockade measures at the early stage of the epidemic have better effects than mitigation measures.Copyright © 2023, Publication Centre of Anhui Medical University. All rights reserved.

Path to sustainable development: Does digital economy matter in manufacturing green total factor productivity?

In the context of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and China's "digital power” strategy, the realization of a green shift of manufacturing has become a necessary condition to promote the economy, and the digital factor has increasingly become a new driving force. The DEA-Malmquist index and entropy method were used to measure the manufacturing green total factor productivity (GTFP) and the level of digital economy level from 2011 to 2018, respectively. This study then explored the impact of digital economy on manufacturing GTFP based on the system generalized method of moments (GMM) model, as well as the adjustment effects of talent aggregation and financial scale according to the moderating model. This research came to four conclusions. (1) The digital economy can significantly improve the manufacturing GTFP of China, and the influence shows the characteristic of a "marginal increase”;(2) notably, the perspective of manufacturing GTFP decomposition indicates that the digital economy exerts a significant positive effect on manufacturing technical efficiency during the current period but obviously hinders technical progress;(3) interestingly, a mechanistic test showed that the two dimensions of innovation environment—talent aggregation (0.385) and financial scale (0.359)—play critical moderating roles in the influencing process;and (4) the influence has evident regional heterogeneity—it is significantly positive in the east and negative in the central region and west. Finally, corresponding policy suggestions are suggested. © 2022 ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

To introduce or not? Strategic analysis of hospital operations with telemedicine

Despite its efficiency in reducing the impact of pandemics (e.g., the COVID-19), whether to introduce telemedicine as an additional way to serve chronically ill patients remains controversial for hospitals in many countries. This paper builds a stylized model to investigate a hospital's telemedicine strategy and the corresponding impacts on its operations regarding outpatient management of chronic diseases. We implement our analysis from three key concerns of the hospital in the presence of a pandemic: the differences in medical consumption and reimbursement between in-person and telemedicine modalities and the effort cost of infection reduction resulting from the pandemic. We find that in the absence of the pandemic, the hospital prefers to introduce telemedicine when the differences in medical consumption and reimbursement are both small. In the presence of the pandemic, we find that the introduction of telemedicine does not always benefit the hospital and that it is better not to introduce telemedicine in some cases since it may exacerbate the negative influence of the pandemic on the hospital's total costs. Furthermore, we surprisingly find that the hospital may set greater in-person capacity but less telemedicine capacity in response to the outbreak of the pandemic under certain conditions, which contradicts public beliefs. Finally, we show that social welfare can be improved by introducing telemedicine when the effort cost of infection reduction and the difference in reimbursement are both of moderate size. The condition under which social welfare is improved tightens with a greater difference in medical consumption. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.

Gender and Culture Differences in Consumers' Travel Behavior during the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19, as a rampant health crisis, lies at the basis of fluctuating perceptions affecting decreased demand among travelers. Recent studies have witnessed a growth of interest in the interactions between tourists' behaviors and other factors with the potential to moderate such behavior during travel. However, it remains to be discussed whether the influence of demographic aspects, especially cultural and gender differences, on tourism behaviors will be more prominent during COVID-19. The current empirical research aims to integrate demographic variables, including gender and culture, with tourists' behavior in terms of their choice of companions, travel destinations, and mode of transportation. According to the research findings, people in other countries have greater desire to travel than Chinese tourists who, in any case, prefer to travel with friends. Tourists from other countries are more willing to travel by plane and by car. Males show a more positive attitude than females to these means of transportation. Moreover, the interactive effect of gender and nationality reveals that female travelers from mainland China put the train or bus top on their agenda. These theoretical findings have the potential to provide actionable insights into how policymakers and service providers can make adjustments to bring back tourism stifled by COVID-19.

Analysis on the Relieving Effect of Local Cultural Spirit Inheritance on College Students' Anxiety

Background: On the one hand, with the development of the world's anti-globalization trend, the spread of the COVID-19 and the continuation of the Russian Ukrainian war, the psychological pressure on domestic college students' employment has increased, and some college students even suffer from anxiety. On the other hand, the rural revitalization strategy provides another way of thinking for the employment and anxiety relief from college students in China, that is, through the spiritual education of local culture, to change the employment outlook and world outlook of college students. Subjects and methods: To test the effectiveness and feasibility of local culture spirit inheritance education in alleviating college students' psychological anxiety by analyzing relevant literature and carrying out group teaching experiments, and to interview the selected research objects to understand the causes of their psychological anxiety and the impact of local culture spirit inheritance education. Result(s): Before and after the education experiment, the students in each group were tested by SAS (Self-rating Anxiety Scale). It was found that there was no significant difference in the SAS score data onto the students in each group before the experiment, but the SAS score of the group that received local culture education after the experiment was significantly lower than that of the control group that did not receive the intervention. Conclusion(s): The education of local culture and spirit inheritance to students can enable students to learn a lot of Chinese traditional cultural knowledge, so as to achieve the effect of self-cultivation and reduce students' psychological anxiety, especially the degree of employment anxiety. Copyright © Medicinska naklada - Zagreb, Croatia.

Multi-perspective Characterization of Anaphylactic Risk for COVID-19 Vaccination - A Visual Analytic Approach

Currently, communications of the COVID-19 vaccine risk and benefit have been confusing and ineffective. This research presents a visual analytical approach to enable decision-driven, multi-perspective risk characterization of COVID-19 vaccination. Using data collected from Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), we designed multiple-views dash-boards based on identified risk factors to support interactive explorations of anaphylactic risks from policy, clinical, and personal contexts. Based on the hypothetical scenarios, we showed that our visual analytical approach offers multiple benefits for risk characterization tasks, including flexibility in focusing on the subset of risk factors that are specific to user's decision context, exploring and assessing risk in multiple levels of details, and characterizing risk metrics together with uncertainties. Our method and tools have potentials of improving COVID-19 vaccine risk communication to address vaccine hesitancy and to inform public policy. © 2022 IEEE.

Turnover intention and associated factors among public health workers during the fight against COVID-19 in Guangdong Province

Objective To realize the current situation and influencing factors of turnover intention among public health workers fighting against COVID-19 in Guangdong Province, explore the moderating effect of social support, and provide evidence for improving the stability of epidemic prevention team. Methods A self-constructed online questionnaire was used to investigate the personnel of Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and primary health care institutes in Guangdong Province. Hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to examine the associated factors of turnover intention and the moderating role of social support. Results A total of 2 168 participants were collected, of which 632(29.15%) had turnover intention. Anti-epidemic public health workers with senior title, working in CDC, having a fixed establishment, sleeping ≥ 6 h, showing more job satisfaction and reporting higher leadership/colleague/relative support had lower turnover intention, while those working overnight and working overtime on rest days were more likely to report turnover intention. The interaction term "job satisfaction × family support" had a negative moderating effect on the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover intention. Conclusions A relatively high turnover intention is reported among public health workers during the fight against COVID-19 in Guangdong Province. Improving the incentive mechanism, increasing job satisfaction and providing more support to primary health workers may reduce their turnover intention. © 2022, Publication Centre of Anhui Medical University. All rights reserved.

ADAPTABLE ENGINEERING OF CELLULOSE-BASED VERTICAL FLOW ASSAYS FOR RAPID DIAGNOSTICS - THE CASE OF COVID-19

Paper microfluidics has had a rich history in medical diagnostics owing to their portability, low-cost and capacity for mass manufacture. While nitrocellulose has widespread use in commercial paper-based assays, shortages can become a bottleneck for deployment. Here, we seek to overcome this limitation by enabling swift and efficient production of cellulose-based paper assays with minimal substrate processing via protein engineering. We demonstrate good clinical and lab-based performance for both serological and antigen rapid tests and their compatibility with roll-to-roll mass manufacturing, which validates our proposed workflow for commercialization. © 2021 MicroTAS 2021 - 25th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences. All rights reserved.

CHARACTERISTICS OF COVID-19 PATIENTS WITH HYPERGLYCAEMIC EMERGENCY AND MORTALITY OUTCOMES: SINGLE CENTRE EXPERIENCE IN PAHANG

Introduction Individuals with diabetes have similar risk of contracting COVID-19 infection compared to those without diabetes. However, COVID-19 patients with diabetes are at a higher risk for severe outcomes and death. The occurrence of hyperglycaemic emergency and diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) may worsen the outcomes of COVID-19 infection. This study will determine the characteristics of COVID-19 patients admitted with hyperglycaemic emergency and mortality outcomes in Hospital Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah, Temerloh, Pahang. Methodology All electronic records of COVID-19 patients admitted from March 2021 until March 2022 were reviewed for occurrence of hyperglycaemic emergency. Data regarding demographics, clinical presentation, laboratory investigations and clinical outcomes were collected. Further analysis with patients subcategorised into 2 timelines: March-December 2021 (group 1) and January-March 2022 (group 2) reflecting two surges of COVID-19 admission to the hospital was done. Results Twenty-four COVID-19 patients with hyperglycaemic emergency [mean age 56.7 (SD 15.6) years, 54.2% female, 79.2% Malay ethnicity, 95.8% type 2 diabetes mellitus, 54.2% unvaccinated, 70.8% category 5 infection] were analysed. Majority of patients had DKA at 79.2% [mean pH 7.16(SD 0.12), mean HCO3 10.80 (SD 3.07), mean glucose at diagnosis 25.3 (SD 11.0) mmol/L]. The mean length of hospitalisation was 11.42 (SD 7.4) days and mortality rate was 63.2%. Nine DKA cases were detected in group 1 compared to 10 cases during the shorter timeline in group 2. All patients had resolved DKA but the majority succumbed later due to complications of COVID-19 infection. Mortality rates in both groups were 66.7%(n=6) and 60%(n=6), respectively. Conclusion Despite high occurrence of uncontrolled diabetes during COVID-19 infection in this cohort, only a small proportion had hyperglycaemic emergency. In both timeline of hospitalisation surge, COVID-19 patients with concomitant hyperglycaemic emergency had poorer prognosis.

PP-HumanSeg: Connectivity-Aware Portrait Segmentation with a Large-Scale Teleconferencing Video Dataset

As the COVID-19 pandemic rampages across the world, the demands of video conferencing surge. To this end, real-time portrait segmentation becomes a popular feature to replace backgrounds of conferencing participants. While feature-rich datasets, models and algorithms have been offered for segmentation that extract body postures from life scenes, portrait segmentation has yet not been well covered in a video conferencing context. To facilitate the progress in this field, we introduce an open-source solution named PP-HumanSeg. This work is the first to construct a large-scale video portrait dataset that contains 291 videos from 23 conference scenes with 14K fine-labeled frames and extensions to multi-camera teleconferencing. Furthermore, we propose a novel Self-supervised Connectivity-aware Learning (SCL) for semantic segmentation, which introduces a self-supervised connectivity-aware loss to improve the quality of segmentation results from the perspective of connectivity. And we propose an ultra-lightweight model with SCL for practical portrait segmentation, which achieves the best trade-off between IoU and the speed of inference. Extensive evaluations on our dataset demonstrate the superiority of SCL and our model.

Efficacy of Oral Decitabine/Cedazuridine (ASTX727) in the CMML Subgroup from the Ascertain Phase 3 Study

text: Background/Introduction: Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia (CMML) is an uncommon MDS/MPN overlap syndrome that has historically been included under the umbrella of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) for clinical trial and treatment. As a result, DNA methyltransferase inhibitors (DNMTi) such as decitabine or azacitidine have been the established standard of care for the treatment of CMML. The oral bioavailability of these agents has been limited due to rapid degradation by cytidine deaminase (CDA) in the gut and liver so treatment has required intravenous infusion or subcutaneous injections daily for 5-7 days every month (m) adding significant burden to older cancer patients due to daily time commitment and travel to treatment centers. In the context of pandemic SARS-CoV-2, parenteral therapy also increases contact with medical settings with increased infection risk. Oral decitabine 35 mg/cedazuridine 100 mg (ASTX727) is an oral fixed dose combination of decitabine and the CDA inhibitor cedazuridine that produced equivalent exposure (99%;90% CI 93% to 106%) to IV decitabine 20 mg/m 2 in a randomized cross-over study (Garcia-Manero et al, ASH 2019), and Median overall survival (mOS) for the entire study population in the ASCERTAIN study was approximately 32 months (Savona, 2021). Here, we present outcome data for this study for the enrolled subpopulation of patients with CMML. Methods: We used a randomized cross over design in which patients were randomized in the first 2 cycles 1:1 to either Sequence A: (decitabine 35 mg/ cedazuridine 100 mg in Cycle 1 followed by IV decitabine at 20 mg/m 2 in Cycle 2), or Sequence B: (IV decitabine in Cycle 1 followed by oral decitabine/cedazuridine in Cycle 2). We conducted an intra-patient comparison of decitabine PK (primary PK endpoint: decitabine AUC equivalence over 5 days of dosing). Cycles were repeated every 28 days (unless delays were needed). All patients received oral decitabine/cedazuridine in Cycles 3 and above until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Patients were eligible per the FDA-approved label of IV decitabine (MDS patients by FAB classification including CMML, or MDS IPSS Intermediate-1, 2 or high-risk patients). Clinical endpoints were best response according to International Working Group (IWG) 2006 response criteria, transfusion independence for at least 8 or 16 consecutive weeks, overall survival, and safety. Adverse events (AEs) were graded by Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) v 4.03. Results: Of the 133 patients enrolled and treated in ASCERTAIN, 16 (12%) had a diagnosis of CMML with demographics and as follows: median age 71.5 years, 69% Male/31% Female, median weight 87kg (range 65-124), 25% ECOG 0, 75% ECOG 1. Population disease characteristics were: 19% poor or intermediate risk cytogenetics, with median baseline hemoglobin 90 g/L, neutrophils 1.27 X 10 9/L, platelets 84 x 10 9/L, bone marrow blasts 5%, with 38% RBC transfusion dependent. Patients received a median of 7 cycles of therapy (range 3-24). Treatment-emergent adverse events of CTCAE Grade 3 or higher in > 10% of patients, independent of relationship to ASTX727, were cytopenias (neutropenia [69%], thrombocytopenia [63%], anemia [56%], leukopenia [19%]), febrile neutropenia (31%), fatigue (13%). Two patients (12.5%) had Complete Responses (CR), 8 (50%) had marrow CR ([mCR], including 3 (19%) with hematologic improvement (HI);Overall Response rate (ORR) [CR + PR+ mCR + HI] was 75%. Of six patients with baseline RBC transfusion dependence 3 (50%) became transfusion independent. Leukemia-free survival was 28.2 months and after a median follow up of more than 33 months, median overall survival had not been reached. Two patients (13%) went on to Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant (HCT). Conclusions: In the overall study, oral decitabine/cedazuridine delivered equivalent PK exposure to 5 days of IV decitabine 20mg/m 2 with a resultant clinical activity safety and efficacy profile in CMML patients consistent with the published literature (e.g Zeidan, et a 2017) and the Phase 2 experience. The use of oral decitabine/cedazuridine is a reasonable approach in CMML patients. References: Garcia-Manero, et al ASH 2019 Savona, et al, Int. MDS Symposium, 2021 Zeidan, et al, Cancer 2017: 3754-3762. [Formula presented] Disclosures: Savona: Geron: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;CTI: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Karyopharm: Consultancy, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;BMS-Celgene: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;NOVARTIS: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Ryvu: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Sierra Oncology: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Taiho: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;TG Therapeutics: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding;Takeda: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding;ALX Oncology: Research Funding;Astex: Research Funding;Incyte: Research Funding. McCloskey: Pfizer: Consultancy;Takeda: Consultancy, Speakers Bureau;Incyte: Speakers Bureau;Novartis: Consultancy;COTA: Other: Equity Ownership;BMS: Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Amgen: Speakers Bureau;Jazz: Consultancy, Speakers Bureau. Griffiths: Boston Biomedical: Consultancy;Celgene/Bristol-Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding;Abbvie: Consultancy, Honoraria;Taiho Oncology: Consultancy, Honoraria;Genentech: Research Funding;Astex Pharmaceuticals: Honoraria, Research Funding;Takeda Oncology: Consultancy, Honoraria;Novartis: Honoraria;Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Research Funding;Alexion Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy, Research Funding. Yee: Novartis: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding;Forma Therapeutics: Research Funding;Geron: Research Funding;Shattuck Labs: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Bristol-Myers Squibb/Celgene: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;F. Hoffmann La Roche: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding;AbbVie: Honoraria;Janssen: Research Funding;Onconova: Research Funding;Genentech: Research Funding;Otsuka: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;MedImmune: Research Funding;Jazz: Research Funding;Astex: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding;Tolero: Research Funding;Takeda: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;TaiHo: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Pfizer: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Paladin: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Zeidan: BeyondSpring: Consultancy;Janssen: Consultancy;Boehringer Ingelheim: Consultancy, Research Funding;BioCryst: Other: Clinical Trial Committees;AstraZeneca: Consultancy;Pfizer: Other: Travel support, Research Funding;Kura: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Committees;Incyte: Consultancy, Research Funding;Ionis: Consultancy;Daiichi Sankyo: Consultancy;Epizyme: Consultancy;Novartis: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Committees, Travel support, Research Funding;Loxo Oncology: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Committees;Genentech: Consultancy;Geron: Other: Clinical Trial Committees;Cardiff Oncology: Consultancy, Other: Travel support, Research Funding;BMS: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Committees, Research Funding;Gilead: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Committees;Aprea: Consultancy, Research Funding;Astellas: Consultancy;Astex: Research Funding;Jazz: Consultancy;Jasper: Consu tancy;Amgen: Consultancy, Research Funding;Agios: Consultancy;ADC Therapeutics: Research Funding;Acceleron: Consultancy, Research Funding;AbbVie: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Committees, Research Funding. Al-Kali: Novartis: Research Funding;Astex: Other: Research support to institution. Patel: Agios: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Celgene-BMS: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;PVI: Honoraria. Sabloff: Takeda: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;BMS: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Astellas: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Novartis: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;TaiHo: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Jaxx: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Abbvie: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Pfizer: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;ROCHE: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Celgene: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Dao: Astex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Current Employment. Fazal: Janssen Oncology: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Taiho Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Gilead Sciences: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Novartis: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Agios: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Sanofi Genzyme: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Takeda: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Glaxo Smith Kline: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;AMGEN: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Incyte: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Jazz Pharmaceuticals:Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Bristol Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Stemline Therapeutics: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Karyopharm Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau. Odenike: Celgene, Incyte, AstraZeneca, Astex, NS Pharma, AbbVie, Gilead, Janssen, Oncotherapy, Agios, CTI/Baxalta, Aprea: Research Funding;AbbVie, Celgene, Impact Biomedicines, Novartis, Taiho Oncology, Takeda: Consultancy. Kantarjian: Ipsen Pharmaceuticals: Honoraria;Astra Zeneca: Honoraria;Astellas Health: Honoraria;Aptitude Health: Honoraria;Pfizer: Honoraria, Research Funding;Novartis: Honoraria, Research Funding;Jazz: Research Funding;Immunogen: Research Funding;Daiichi-Sankyo: Research Funding;BMS: Research Funding;Ascentage: Research Funding;Amgen: Honoraria, Research Funding;AbbVie: Honoraria, Research Funding;KAHR Medical Ltd: Honoraria;NOVA Research: Honoraria;Precision Biosciences: Honoraria;Taiho Pharmaceutical Canada: Honoraria. DeZern: Bristol-Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Novartis: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Taiho: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Takeda: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Roboz: Janssen: Research Funding;AbbVie: Consultancy;Actinium: Consultancy;Agios: Consultancy;Amgen: Consultancy;Astex: Consultancy;Astellas: Consultancy;AstraZeneca: Consultancy;Bayer: Consultancy;Blueprint Medicines: Consultancy;Bristol Myers Squibb: Consultancy;Celgene: Consultancy;Daiichi Sankyo: Consultancy;Glaxo SmithKline: Consultancy;Helsinn: Consultancy;Janssen: Consultancy;Jasper Therapeutics: Consultancy;Jazz: Consultancy;MEI Pharma - IDMC Chair: Consultancy;Mesoblast: Consultancy;Novartis: Consultancy;Otsuka: Consultancy;Pfizer: Consultancy;Roche/Genentech: Consultancy. Busque: Novartis: Consultancy. Leber: Novartis: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;Pfizer: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, peakers Bureau;BMS: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;Abbvie: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;AMGEN: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;TaiHo: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Celgene: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;Otsuka: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;Astellas: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;Jazz: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau. Hao: Astex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Current Employment. Keer: Astex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Current Employment. Azab: Astex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees.

Application of Artificial Intelligence in Human Resource Management of T Insurance Company in the Post-epidemic Era

With the advent of the post-epidemic era, human resource management is the most urgent issue faced by small and medium-sized entrepreneurs during the epidemic. This paper analyzes the influence of artificial intelligence technology on the human resource management of T Insurance company by using literature and market survey method. As an emerging technology field, the popularization and application of ARTIFICIAL intelligence technology will still face some difficulties. Finally, the paper puts forward specific strategies to promote the extensive application of artificial intelligence technology in human resource management in the post-epidemic era. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Self-supervised Pretraining for Covid-19 and Other Pneumonia Detection from Chest X-ray Images

Artificial intelligence technology has made breakthroughs in computer vision and natural language processing in recent years. An important factor is that the technology analyzes tasks in a data-driven manner and automatically learns data representation from large representations of data sets for a special task. However, one of the challenges is the lacked enough labelled datasets for pneumonia detection from chest X-ray images, which usually has a small number of identically distributed labelled data for training and conflicts with data-driven deep learning. That also is the bottleneck of the development of medical imaging AI. To address this challenge, we propose a self-supervised pre-training method for Covid-19 and other pneumonia detection. The method includes pre-trained model training and transfer learning. The pre-trained model uses a self-supervised contrastive learning method to learn the general representations from source data with location-sensitive patches and multi-level features. Transfer learning includes three stages of training to specialize the representation from source data to target data. The experiments show that it has improved performance for Covid-19 detection and other pneumonia with few labelled data. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

A Feature Embedding and Multi-dilation Convolutional Neural Network for Automatic COVID-19 Lesion Detection from Lung X-ray Images

Accurate detection of COVID-19 has become one of the major challenges since the outbreak of the pandemic. An effective and rapid detection will prevent the further spread of the deadly disease and enable doctors to treat infected patients appropriately. Therefore, this paper proposes an architecture to detect COVID-19 lesion areas in lung X-ray images based on Cascade-CNN and is named as COVID-Cascade RCNN. This algorithm integrates multi-scale dilated convolution and gender characteristic data from embedding patients. Firstly, to tackle the problem posed by the different size distribution of lesions in lung X-ray images, the basic Resnet101 network is adopted to perform preliminary feature extraction on the detection images. In addition, a multi-dilation convolutional neural network is added to generate more effective multi-scale featured information. The parallel dilated convolution with different dilation rates can extract more local feature information lesion areas of various sizes, improving the model's adaptability and accuracy. Secondly, gender characteristics that generate distinct effects on COVID-19 infection were innovatively embedded into the network model to improve detection accuracy further. Finally, experimental results on public dataset BIMCV-COVID19 show that compared with the previous model, the reformed one significantly improved detection precision with an average precision mAP of 42.197%, which is 5.368% higher than the original model. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

To Introduce or Not? Strategic Analysis of Hospital Operations with Telemedicine

Despite its efficiency in reducing the impact of pandemics (e.g., the COVID-19), whether to introduce telemedicine as an additional way to serve chronically ill patients remains controversial for hospitals in many countries. This paper builds a stylized model to investigate a hospital's telemedicine strategy and the corresponding impacts on its operations regarding outpatient management of chronic diseases. We implement our analysis from three key concerns of the hospital in the presence of a pandemic: the differences in medical consumption and reimbursement between in-person and telemedicine modalities and the effort cost of infection reduction resulting from the pandemic. We find that in the absence of the pandemic, the hospital prefers to introduce telemedicine when the differences in medical consumption and reimbursement are both small. In the presence of the pandemic, we find that the introduction of telemedicine does not always benefit the hospital and that it is better not to introduce telemedicine in some cases since it may exacerbate the negative influence of the pandemic on the hospital's total costs. Furthermore, we surprisingly find that the hospital may set greater in-person capacity but less telemedicine capacity in response to the outbreak of the pandemic under certain conditions, which contradicts public beliefs. Finally, we show that social welfare can be improved by introducing telemedicine when the effort cost of infection reduction and the difference in reimbursement are both of moderate size. The condition under which social welfare is improved tightens with a greater difference in medical consumption.

Oral Decitabine/Cedazuridine in Patients with Lower Risk Myelodysplastic Syndrome: A Longer-Term Follow-up of from the Ascertain Study

[Formula presented] Background/Introduction: Lower-risk (IPSS low risk and Int-1) myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are typically treated supportively to address cytopenias. DNA methyltransferase inhibitors (DNMTi) such as azacitidine and decitabine (DEC) are FDA-approved for higher risk MDS patients (pts), and while the DEC USPI includes IPSS Int-1 pts, it is not widely used in this population. Approved intravenous (IV) or subcutaneous (SC) regimens require 5-7 days of treatment every month burdening older cancer pts due to daily travel and treatment time and may increase potential risk from pandemic SARS-CoV-2 infection. Because DNMTis are rapidly degraded by cytidine deaminase (CDA) in the gut and liver, oral availability has only been recently possible. A randomized study with CC-486, an oral formulation of azacitidine, in the Int-1 population showed a median overall survival (mOS) of approximately 17 months for both placebo and treated patients (Garcia-Manero, 2021). Oral DEC 35 mg/cedazuridine 100 mg (ASTX727) or DEC-C, is an oral fixed dose combination (FDC) of DEC and the CDA inhibitor cedazuridine (CED) resulting in equivalent exposure (99%;90% CI 93% to 106%) to standard IV DEC 20 mg/m 2 for 5 days in an intra-patient randomized cross-over study (Garcia-Manero et al, ASH 2019). Here, we present data on patients with lower risk MDS from that study. Methods: We used a randomized cross over design with pts randomized 1:1 in the first 2 cycles to either Sequence A: (DEC 35 mg/ CED 100 mg in Cycle 1 and IV DEC at 20 mg/m 2 in Cycle 2), or Sequence B (IV DEC in Cycle 1 and oral DEC/CED in Cycle 2). Cycles were repeated every 28 days unless delays were needed, and all patients received oral DEC-C in Cycles 3+ until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. We conducted an intra-patient comparison of DEC PK (DEC AUC equivalence over 5 days of dosing). Pts were eligible as per the FDA-approved label of IV DEC (MDS pts by FAB classification including CMML, or MDS IPSS Intermediate-1, 2 or high-risk pts). Clinical endpoints were best response as assessed by an independent expert panel according to IWG 2006 response criteria, transfusion independence (TI), overall survival (OS), and safety. Results: Of the 133 pts treated in ASCERTAIN, 69 had a diagnosis of lower-risk MDS (93% Int-1, 7% LR). Median age was 70.0 years (range 45-87), 65% were male, median weight was 84 kg (range 50-127), median baseline hematologic parameters were: hemoglobin 89 g/L (range 69.8-146.5), WBCs 1.50 X 10 9/L (range 0.11-7.1), platelets (plt) 86 x 10 9/L (range 5-703), bone marrow blasts 4% (range 0-18), cytogenetics: 7 (10.1%) poor-risk, 21 (30.4%) intermediate risk, 37 (53.6%) better-risk, 4 (5.7%) missing or not evaluable. 27(39%) of the pts were RBC transfusion dependent (TD) and 6 (9%) plt TD. 17 (25%) had received prior MDS treatment, 3% prior DNMTi. Pts received a median of 9 cycles of therapy (range 1-28). Treatment-emergent adverse events of CTCAE Gr 3 or higher in >10% of pts, independent of relationship to ASTX727, included cytopenias (neutropenia [59%], thrombocytopenia [58%], anemia [48%], leukopenia [26%]), febrile neutropenia (32%), and pneumonia (19%). Sixteen pts (23%) achieved Complete Response (CR), 18 (26%) had marrow CR (mCR), including 9 (13%) with hematologic improvement (HI). Overall Response rate (ORR;CR + PR+ mCR + HI) was 57%. Of those RBC or plt TD at baseline, 13 (48%) became RBC TI and 4 (67%) became plt TI. With approximately 32 months of median follow up, neither median leukemia-free survival (mLFS) nor mOS had been reached (Figure 1). Twelve pts (17%) went on to allogeneic stem cell transplant. Conclusions: Oral decitabine/cedazuridine given as a FDC in MDS pts produced equivalent PK exposure to 20 mg/m 2 IV DEC;in lower risk MDS pts with treatment indicated, the agent was generally well-tolerated with prolonged treatment and could result in mLFS and mOS which exceeds 32 months. This FDC and other dosing regimens of oral DEC-C should be further studied in this patient population. References: Garcia-Mane o, et al, ASH 2019 Savona, et al, Int. MDS Symp. 2021 Garcia-Manero, et al, Phase III, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial of CC-486 (Oral Azacitidine) in Patients with Lower-Risk Myelodysplastic Syndromes. J.Clin.Onc. 2021 39:13, 1426-1436 [Formula presented] Disclosures: McCloskey: Pfizer: Consultancy;Jazz: Consultancy, Speakers Bureau;COTA: Other: Equity Ownership;Incyte: Speakers Bureau;Takeda: Consultancy, Speakers Bureau;Novartis: Consultancy;BMS: Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Amgen: Speakers Bureau. Griffiths: Alexion Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy, Research Funding;Abbvie: Consultancy, Honoraria;Taiho Oncology: Consultancy, Honoraria;Genentech: Research Funding;Novartis: Honoraria;Takeda Oncology: Consultancy, Honoraria;Astex Pharmaceuticals: Honoraria, Research Funding;Celgene/Bristol-Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding;Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Research Funding;Boston Biomedical: Consultancy. Yee: Paladin: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;TaiHo: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Novartis: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding;Genentech: Research Funding;Geron: Research Funding;Janssen: Research Funding;Jazz: Research Funding;MedImmune: Research Funding;Onconova: Research Funding;Tolero: Research Funding;AbbVie: Honoraria;Bristol-Myers Squibb/Celgene: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Otsuka: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Shattuck Labs: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Pfizer: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Takeda: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;F. Hoffmann La Roche: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding;Forma Therapeutics: Research Funding;Astex: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding. Zeidan: Novartis: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Committees, Travel support, Research Funding;Genentech: Consultancy;Ionis: Consultancy;Astellas: Consultancy;Epizyme: Consultancy;AbbVie: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Committees, Research Funding;Jasper: Consultancy;Cardiff Oncology: Consultancy, Other: Travel support, Research Funding;BeyondSpring: Consultancy;Loxo Oncology: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Committees;Janssen: Consultancy;Acceleron: Consultancy, Research Funding;AstraZeneca: Consultancy;Kura: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Committees;Gilead: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Committees;Agios: Consultancy;Daiichi Sankyo: Consultancy;Boehringer Ingelheim: Consultancy, Research Funding;Geron: Other: Clinical Trial Committees;BMS: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Committees, Research Funding;BioCryst: Other: Clinical Trial Committees;Pfizer: Other: Travel support, Research Funding;Aprea: Consultancy, Research Funding;ADC Therapeutics: Research Funding;Jazz: Consultancy;Incyte: Consultancy, Research Funding;Amgen: Consultancy, Research Funding;Astex: Research Funding. Al-Kali: Astex: Other: Research support to institution;Novartis: Research Funding. Patel: Celgene-BMS: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;PVI: Honoraria;Agios: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Sabloff: Pfizer: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Novartis: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Astellas: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Takeda: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;ROCHE: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;TaiHo: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Jaxx: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Celgene: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory ommittees;BMS: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Abbvie: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Dao: Astex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Current Employment. Fazal: Taiho Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Stemline Therapeutics: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Sanofi Genzyme: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Novartis: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Karyopharm Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Jazz Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Janssen Oncology: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Incyte: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Glaxo Smith Kline: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Gilead Sciences: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Bristol Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;AMGEN: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Agios: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau;Takeda: Consultancy, Honoraria, Speakers Bureau. Odenike: AbbVie, Celgene, Impact Biomedicines, Novartis, Taiho Oncology, Takeda: Consultancy;Celgene, Incyte, AstraZeneca, Astex, NS Pharma, AbbVie, Gilead, Janssen, Oncotherapy, Agios, CTI/Baxalta, Aprea: Research Funding. Kantarjian: AbbVie: Honoraria, Research Funding;Novartis: Honoraria, Research Funding;Ascentage: Research Funding;Pfizer: Honoraria, Research Funding;BMS: Research Funding;Daiichi-Sankyo: Research Funding;Amgen: Honoraria, Research Funding;Ipsen Pharmaceuticals: Honoraria;Jazz: Research Funding;Astellas Health: Honoraria;Immunogen: Research Funding;Astra Zeneca: Honoraria;Aptitude Health: Honoraria;KAHR Medical Ltd: Honoraria;NOVA Research: Honoraria;Precision Biosciences: Honoraria;Taiho Pharmaceutical Canada: Honoraria. DeZern: Takeda: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisorycommittees;Taiho: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Novartis: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Bristol-Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Roboz: Novartis: Consultancy;Mesoblast: Consultancy;Jasper Therapeutics: Consultancy;Jazz: Consultancy;MEI Pharma - IDMC Chair: Consultancy;Daiichi Sankyo: Consultancy;Otsuka: Consultancy;Bristol Myers Squibb: Consultancy;Blueprint Medicines: Consultancy;Bayer: Consultancy;AstraZeneca: Consultancy;Astellas: Consultancy;Astex: Consultancy;Amgen: Consultancy;Agios: Consultancy;Actinium: Consultancy;AbbVie: Consultancy;Janssen: Research Funding;Celgene: Consultancy;Glaxo SmithKline: Consultancy;Helsinn: Consultancy;Janssen: Consultancy;Pfizer: Consultancy;Roche/Genentech: Consultancy. Busque: Novartis: Consultancy. Leber: Astellas: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;Otsuka: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;Celgene: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;TaiHo: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;AMGEN: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;Abbvie: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;BMS: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;Pfizer: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;Novartis: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau;Jazz: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau. Hao: Astex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Current Employment. Keer: Astex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Current Employment. Azab: Astex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Savona: Geron: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Karyopharm: Cons ltancy, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;CTI: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;BMS-Celgene: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;NOVARTIS: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Ryvu: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Sierra Oncology: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;Taiho: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees;TG Therapeutics: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding;Takeda: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding;ALX Oncology: Research Funding;Astex: Research Funding;Incyte: Research Funding.