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Aims: During the pandemic, youth were particularly vulnerable to experiencing financial hardship, education and employment disruption, and mental health impacts. Ensuring governments and services are prepared to support youth during future outbreaks or novel pandemics should be a key priority. This work aimed to explore youth experiences during COVID-19 and gather youth opinions on government responses to inform planning, policy, and decision-making for future pandemics. Method(s): Youth (ages 15-25) from Ireland and two provinces in Canada (British Columbia and Ontario) were interviewed at three time points during the COVID-19 pandemic. A thematic analysis was conducted using an inductive approach. This research was primarily youth-led and developed. Result(s): Across all three time points, youth experienced mental health and service uptake challenges, with mixed views on pandemic response. Opportunities for personal and societal growth were identified, with desire for incorporating youth voices into governmental decision making processes. Youth offered recommendations for effectively communicating accurate information, prevention of misinformation, and expressed needs regarding service accessibility throughout the pandemic and beyond. Conclusion(s): This work provides insights into the opinions of young people on government and information sharing during the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recommendations were developed to ensure youth are consulted and represented in future pandemics.
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The coronavirus pandemic is a global health emergency which has had widespread unforeseen mental health consequences. Those with borderline personality disorder are predisposed to poor coping strategies to manage such stress and require intense psychological input which was not widely available during the peak of the pandemic. It is likely that the coronavirus outbreak has had a significant impact on the mental stability of such patients aggravating deliberate self-harm behaviours. A 20-year old psychiatric in-patient with borderline personality disorder, held under Section III of the mental health act, presented to the adult plastic surgery team in Bristol with localised infection of her right forearm. Foreign bodies were easily palpable and imaging revealed linear metal objects. The patient reported that she had removed metal strips from her collection of face masks and inserted them into her forearm as an act of deliberate self-harm. The patient was taken to operating theatre for removal of these foreign bodies under general anaesthetic. After twenty-four hours of antibiotics she was discharged safely back to the psychiatric ward. Despite the epilogue of the COVID-19 pandemic facemasks are still mandatory within the hospital setting. Clinicians need to be aware of these unusual circumstances where a form of protective equipment was deconstructed to cause actual bodily harm. The purpose of this report is to promote awareness of this type of injury especially in those suffering from mental illness. The authors would suggest an alternative mask without any form of metal.
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Background: Pregnant individuals are at increased risk of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) hospitalization and death, and primary and booster COVID-19 vaccination is recommended for this population. Method(s): Among a cohort of pregnant individuals who received prenatal care at 3 healthcare systems in the United States, we estimated the cumulative incidence of hospitalization with symptomatic COVID-19 illness. We also identified factors associated with COVID-19 hospitalization using a multivariable Cox proportional hazards model with pregnancy weeks as the timescale and a time-varying adjustor that accounted for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 circulation;model covariates included site, age, race, ethnicity, insurance status, prepregnancy weight status, and selected underlying medical conditions. Data were collected primarily through medical record extraction. Result(s): Among 19 456 pregnant individuals with an estimated due date during 1 March 2020-28 February 2021, 75 (0.4%) were hospitalized with symptomatic COVID-19. Factors associated with hospitalization for symptomatic COVID-19 were Hispanic ethnicity (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 2.7 [95% confidence interval {CI}, 1.3-5.5]), Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander race (aHR, 12 [95% CI, 3.2-45.5]), age <25 years (aHR, 3.1 [95% CI, 1.3-7.6]), prepregnancy obesity (aHR, 2.1 [95% CI, 1.1-3.9]), diagnosis of a metabolic disorder (aHR, 2.2 [95% CI, 1.2-3.8]), lung disease excluding asthma (aHR, 49 [95% CI, 28-84]), and cardiovascular disease (aHR, 2.6 [95% CI, 1.5-4.7]). Conclusion(s): Although hospitalization with symptomatic COVID-19 was uncommon, pregnant individuals should be aware of risk factors associated with severe illness when considering COVID-19 vaccination. Copyright © 2022 Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Infectious Diseases Society of America. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.
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SARS-CoV-2 infectious virions have been reported in exhaled breath, but their source remains elusive: breath sampling systems used to date do not separate breath aerosols by size, fail to prevent salivary/fomite contamination, or aerosol size evolution before sample capture. We hypothesised that sampling end-tidal, oral exhaled breath condensate (EBC), after separating large droplets by inertial impaction 4cm from the lips, would quantify viral loads in distal lung-derived fine aerosols (FA). We used a collector (PBM-HALE ) that captures mechanically aerosolised viruses to sample adult participants for <30 min under informed consent;cases symptomatic for <5 days (n=30) or >5 days (n=12), positive by nasopharyngeal swab RT-PCR (Ct>=13.1), were sampled in clinical triage 'red zones', or COVID-19 wards with no mechanical ventilation or open windows. Salivary alpha amylase activity (Salimetrics LLC), or SARS-CoV-2 viral load (VIASURE SARS-CoV-2 (ORF1ab and N gene)) after QIAsymhpony DSP midi extraction, was quantified in 0.2mL FA EBC fractions. No salivary alpha amylase activity was detected in healthy participant FA EBC (>1:1,750 dilution of paired saliva vs assay detection limit (n=300)). No SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in FA EBC (1.18mL +/- 0.32 total volume) among any COVID-19 cases (Aug 2020-Jan 2022) at limits of detection of 120 genomes/mL FA EBC or 4.72 genomes/min exhalation. No pre-extraction spike-in control reaction inhibition was observed. No ambient contamination of the alveolar FA EBC was detected with this sampling device. The alveolar fraction of orally exhaled tidal breath lacks detectable SARS-CoV-2 viral load.
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Analyzing chest X-ray is the must especially when are required to deal of infectious disease outbreak, and COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a large effect on almost every facet of life. As COVID-19 was a disease only discovered in recent history, there is comparatively little data on the disease, how it is detected, and how it is cured. Deep learning is a powerful tool that can be used to learn to classify information in ways that humans might not be able to. This allows computers to learn on relatively little data and provide exceptional results. This paper proposes a customized convolutional neural network (CNN) for the detection of COVID-19 from chest X-rays called basicConv. This network consists of five sets of convolution and pooling layers, a flatten layer, and two dense layers with a total of approximately 9 million parameters. This network achieves an accuracy of 95.8%, which is comparable to other high-performing image classification networks. This provides a promising launching point for future research and developing a network that achieves an accuracy higher than that of the leading classification networks. It also demonstrates the incredible power of convolution. This paper is an extension of a 2022 Honors Thesis (Henderson, Joshua Elliot, "Convolutional Neural Network for COVID-19 Detection in Chest X-Rays” (2022). Honors Thesis. 254. https://red.library.usd.edu/honors-thesis/254 ). © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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In 2021, the British Columbia (BC) Interior experienced a series of unprecedented disasters, ranging from extreme heat and wildfires to catastrophic flooding and evacuations. Along with these severe weather events, BC was affected by COVID-19 outbreaks and public health restrictions. Despite these challenges, communities worked to ensure that youths who are at risk for increased mental health challenges continued to have access to services that promote well-being, such as individual placement and support programs for supported employment and education. This Open Forum presents program considerations and adaptations in Foundry Penticton, one of 12 province-wide integrated youth hubs, to ensure service delivery during acute and chronic disasters.
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The COVID-19 pandemic forced much of schooling online and limited students' access to informal learning opportunities such as afterschool programs. The purpose of this study was to investigate how fourth-and fifth-grade students engaged in an online engineering program and what factors influenced their engagement. We drew on a four-dimensional model of student engagement to describe how students engaged in the afterschool engineering program and to identify the factors that enhanced or inhibited engagement. Using a case study design, we drew on interviews with six program mentors and ten students and observation data from weekly Zoom sessions throughout the 2020–2021 school year. We found examples of all four dimensions of engagement, but also of disengagement. The program influenced student engagement in multiple ways, including through the program mentors' social, pedagogical, and managerial roles, students' interest in and enjoyment of engineering, the drawbacks and benefits of the online learning environment and Zoom's affordances, and the nature of the program's activities. We connect these factors to the different dimensions of engagement. We conclude with a discussion of how our findings add to research on engineering education in informal online settings and offer implications for practitioners. © 2022, Purdue University Press. All rights reserved.
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Background and aims: National Health Service England (NHSE) plans to eliminate Hepatitis C (HCV) in England by 2025, five years earlier than World Health Organisation goals. With a reported HCV prevalence of ∼6% in male prisons, and ∼12% in female prisons, secure environments are an essential component of this elimination plan. In 2020, NHSE defined HCV micro-elimination as ³95% of prison residents tested within the previous 12 months, ³90% of RNA positive patients treated or initiated on treatment and presence of a robust system to review ongoing testing and treatment performance to ensure these targets are maintained. Method: To support NHSE in their HCV Elimination Program, a partnership between Gilead Sciences, Practice Plus Group (PPG) and the Hepatitis C Trust (HCT)was formed in 2019. PPG is the provider of healthcare to 47 English prisons with approximately 30, 000 residents. PPG Regional BBV Lead Nurses, and Gilead Medical Scientists worked with prison and HCV stakeholders to optimise test and treat pathways for new prison admissions. Whole prison HCV Intensive Test and Treat events (HITTs) were also run in targeted prisons to ensure testing of residents who were incarcerated before these optimisations were implemented. Results: Following pathway optimisation across the PPG network of 47 prisons, the HCV screening within 7 days of prison entry increased from 41% in May 2019 to 84% in October 2021. This increase was achieved despite there being significant restrictions to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 being in place across all English prisons. HITTs have been performed in 15 PPG prisons to-date. 1, 909 new RNA+ diagnoses were made during this time with 1, 848 patients started on direct-acting antiviral treatments. By November 2021, 16 out of the 47 prisons have been given micro-elimination status by NHSE with 4 more having submitted data demonstrating achievement of this target and awaiting decision. A further 4 more prisons are on track to achieve micro-elimination by April 2022. Conclusion: This partnership has demonstrated that, even during a global pandemic, it is possible to achieve the micro-elimination of HCV in a defined setting. Maintenance of micro-elimination status is essential if we are to achieve the WHO HCV targets, requiring robust pathways that are regularly adapted to the changing environment, and systems for tracking performance, both of which have been put in place by this partnership.
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The efficacy of home visiting of adolescent who are at risk of self-harm has a great dependency on the communication between the patient and the healthcare professional. Face-to-face encounters with health care professional and patients have heightened importance to counteract negative COVID-19 related social isolation effect. One alternative to simulated learning is to use video sequences to recreate a variety of communication-based scenarios that may be encountered. The aim was to repurpose a web-based Reusable Learning Object (RLO) into an interactive 360° environment. This provides an immersive and interactive sense of interactivity with an adolescent. The usability of the immersive resource evaluated with 24 medical students from several institutions around the European Union. The ASPIRE framework was adapted for conversion of the initial material as the steps are flexible enough to adapt to the unique characteristics of 360° video and interactive elements. The System Usability Score (SUS) suggested the RLO had above average usability (73.5) and the Slater-Usoh-Steed Presence Questionnaire (SUS-PQ) results showed a moderate to high feeling of presence (4.6). The SUS scale suggested the RLO’s strengths were its ease of use, simplicity and rapid uptake. These 16 questions had a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.85 indicating good reliability of capturing the users’ experiences of the RLO. Discussion involved limitations of functionality and potential for Virtual Reality (VR), but with strength in the ASPIRE adaptions to facilitate the new direction of online co-creation processes. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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The rapid spread of COVID-19 across many parts of the United States (U.S.) in the early spring of 2020 required universities across the country to make dramatic changes, the most visible of which was closing their campuses to faculty and students and moving instruction online. Information about how universities, engineering programs, and engineering faculty in the U.S. responded to the changes remains limited. The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify the changes engineering faculty made to policies, practices, and courses and to begin to understand how the changes affected undergraduate engineering students. We utilized a cross-section research design in which we collected data from over 200 engineering faculty via an online survey. We analyzed the data descriptively and using basic inferential statistics. We found that all universities moved instruction online and most closed campuses. Multiple offered additional financial aid to students. Few engineering units took steps beyond what university leaders already had. Engineering faculty implemented a range of changes to their courses, including the elimination of assignments. We observed that most changes made assignments less collaborative and interactive. Finally, faculty reported hearing about students' multiple concerns, ranging from academic and technical challenges to challenges at home. We encourage universities to offer more support to faculty and students as online learning continues across the U.S. In particular, we recommend more outreach to students to build and maintain strong ties to the university and engineering units.
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Indigenous peoples experience a disparate burden of chronic diseases and lower access to health education resources compared with other populations. Technology can increase access to health education resources, potentially reducing health inequities in these vulnerable populations. Although many Indigenous communities have limited access to the Internet, this barrier is decreasing as tribes and Indigenous-serving organizations work to improve TechQuity. Using Arksey and O'Malley's framework, we conducted a scoping literature review to identify technology-based health education interventions designed for Indigenous adults. We searched multiple databases, limiting papers to those written in English, describing interventions for participants 18 years of age or older, and published between 1999–2020. The review yielded 229 articles, nine of which met eligibility criteria. Findings suggest a paucity of technology-based health education interventions designed for Indigenous peoples and limited testing of the existing resources. Future health disparity research should focus on development and rigorous testing of such interventions.