Sex disparities in food consumption patterns, dietary diversity and determinants of self-reported body weight changes before and amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 10 Arab countries.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic along with its confinement period boosted lifestyle modifications and impacted women and men differently which exacerbated existing gender inequalities. The main objective of this paper is to assess the gender-based differentials in food consumption patterns, dietary diversity and the determinants favoring weight change before and amid the COVID-19 pandemic among Arab men and women from 10 Arab countries. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted based on a convenience sample of 12,447 households' family members (mean age: 33.2 ± 12.9; 50.1% females) and information from participants aged 18 years and above was collected about periods before and during the pandemic. Results: Findings showed that, during the COVID-19 period, the dietary diversity, declined by 1.9% among females compared to males (0.4%) (p < 0.001) and by 1.5% among overweight participants (p < 0.001) compared to their counterparts. Conclusions: To conclude, gender-sensitive strategies and policies to address weight gain and dietary diversity during emergent shocks and pandemics are urgently needed in the region.

Analysis and Dynamics of Fractional Order Mathematical Model of COVID-19 in Nigeria Using Atangana-Baleanu Operator

We propose a mathematical model of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to investigate the transmission and control mechanism of the disease in the community of Nigeria. Using stability theory of differential equations, the qualitative behavior of model is studied. The pandemic indicator represented by basic reproductive number R0 is obtained from the largest eigenvalue of the next-generation matrix. Local as well as global asymptotic stability conditions for the disease-free and pandemic equilibrium are obtained which determines the conditions to stabilize the exponential spread of the disease. Further, we examined this model by using Atangana–Baleanu fractional derivative operator and existence criteria of solution for the operator is established. We consider the data of reported infection cases from April 1, 2020, till April 30, 2020, and parameterized the model. We have used one of the reliable and efficient method known as iterative Laplace transform to obtain numerical simulations. The impacts of various biological parameters on transmission dynamics of COVID-19 is examined. These results are based on different values of the fractional parameter and serve as a control parameter to identify the significant strategies for the control of the disease. In the end, the obtained results are demonstrated graphically to justify our theoretical findings.