ABSTRACT
Small air ions have the ability to charge airborne particles, thereby increasing their accumulation on surfaces. Indoor air purification by applying ionization uses electrostatic particle deposition. Respiratory pathogens, including viruses and respiratory droplets carrying viruses or other pathogens, represent bioaerosols, whose particle size distributions contain increasingly larger proportion of fine and ultrafine particles, as the evaporation process proceeds. We have generated two model aerosols: the nebulized NaCl solution, resembling human saliva, and the cigarette smoke, having relatively low water content. We have conducted real life experiments of such surrogate aerosol particle deposition without ionization, using bipolar ionization, as well as using unipolar negative air ions. Particle number concentrations have been measured in the 10 nm–10 μm particle size range. The calculated deposition rates and aerosol particle half-life times were correlated with bioaerosol pathogens based on the core pathogen sizes. Bipolar ionizers emitting equal concentrations of positive and negative ions had low impact to the particle concentration decrease. Intense negative air ionization resulted in pronounced deposition rate increases, particularly in the particle size range of viruses including the SARS-CoV-2. The impact of negative air ionization was most pronounced in the same size range where the deposition rates without ionization were the lowest. Therefore, the results are very promising from the standpoint of air purification and bioaerosol pathogen removal, bearing in mind that the effect of ions will be most pronounced if the unipolar ion rich air stream is directed towards the breathing zone.
ABSTRACT
Introduction We evaluated the prevalence, aetiologies and antibiotic resistance patterns of bacterial infections in hospitalized patients with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2. We also investigated comorbidities, risk factors, and the mortality rate in COVID-19 patients with bacterial infections. Methods This retrospective observational study evaluated medical records of 7249 randomly selected patients with COVID-19 admitted to three clinical centres between January 1 2021 and February 16, 2022. A total of 6478 COVID-19 patients met the eligibility criteria for analysis. Results The mean age of the patients with SARS-CoV-2 and bacterial infections was 68.6 ± 15.5 years (range: 24 to 94 years). The majority of patients (68.7%) were older than 65 years. The prevalence of bacterial infections among hospitalized COVID-19 patients was 12.9%, most of them being hospital-acquired (11.5%). Bloodstream (37.7%) and respiratory tract infections (25.6%) were the most common bacterial infections. Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter baumannii caused 25.2% and 23.6% of all bacterial infections, respectively. Carbapenem-resistance in Enterobacterales, A. baumannii, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were 72.6%, 93.7%, and 69.1%. Age >60 years and infections caused by ≥3 pathogens were significantly more prevalent among deceased patients compared to survivors (p<0.05). Furthermore, 95% of patients who were intubated developed ventilator-associated pneumonia. The overall in-hospital mortality rate of patients with SARS-CoV-2 and bacterial infections was 51.6%, while 91.7% of patients who required invasive mechanical ventilation died. Conclusions Our results reveal a striking association between healthcare-associated bacterial infections as an important complication of COVID-19 and fatal outcomes.
ABSTRACT
The polarity of online news publications thematically related to COVID-19 is analysed. A collection of sentiment annotations for news articles written in the Croatian language was created and compose a new Cro-CoV-Senti-articles-2020 dataset. The news article's sentiment is derived from the reactions of portal readers. In addition, well-known sentiment analysis approaches that use lexicons and machine learning algorithms have been implemented to automatically determine the sentiment of online news. Besides, the VADER framework was used in parallel. It has been found that for the purposes of crisis communication analysis when rapid analysis solutions are needed, existing tools can be used for preliminary sentiment analysis despite some technical shortcomings. However, for a more extensive analysis of the media space and highly valuable insights, some refinements are needed. This preliminary analysis, on a sample of approximately 3,400 newspaper articles related to COVID-19, finds that readers perceive as many as two-thirds of articles negatively rather than positively.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: During the COVID-19 pandemic, low-wage workers faced high exposure risk as they continued to work in essential public-facing jobs such as grocery store clerks and gas station attendants. In a context where these types of jobs were usually precarious and had no paid sick leave, we explored how low-wage workers navigated decision-making around when to take sick leave. Material: From September 2021 to April 2022, in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted in Ontario and Quebec (Canada) with 72 low-wage and public-facing workers, managers of these kinds of workers, and key informants with insight into legal and policy issues related to low-wage workers. Methods: Interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded in NVivo. Analysis followed constant comparative methods as well as situational analysis. Results: Public-facing, low-wage workers and managers described psychosocial pressures of COVID-19-related customer aggression. In a context of economic insecurity, participants described a focus on “pleasing the customer”, “not rocking the boat” and a reluctance to take sick leave when experiencing COVID-19 symptoms for fear of loss of income and loss of future work shifts. Conclusions: Workers who worked while ill weighed risks of COVID-19 against risks of loss of income (need for food, paying the rent) and decided that working while ill was least problematic. This is a problem for society as poor worker protections put the public at risk.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: As coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has reached pandemic status, authors from the most severely affected countries have reported reduced rates of hospital admissions for patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS). AIM: The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of the COVID-19 outbreak on hospital admissions and outcomes in ACS patients in a single high-volume centre in southeastern Europe. METHODS: This retrospective observational study aimed to investigate the number of hospital admissions for ACS, clinical findings at admission, length of hospitalisation, major complications and in-hospital mortality during the COVID-19 outbreak and to compare the data with the same parameters during an equivalent time frame in 2019. For the ST-elevated myocardial infarction (STEMI) subgroup of patients, changes in ischaemic times were analysed as well. RESULTS: There was a significant reduction of 44.3% in the number of patients admitted for ACS during the COVID-19 outbreak when compared with the same period in 2019 (151 vs 271; 95% confidence interval 38.4-50.2, pâ¯<â¯0.01) with a higher mortality rate (13.2% vs 7.2%, pâ¯= 0.03). In 2020, patients with non-ST-elevated myocardial infarction presented more often with acute heart failure (3.3% vs 0.7%, pâ¯= 0.04). During the COVID-19 outbreak, we observed increases in the total ischaemic time (303⯱ 163.4 vs 200.8⯱ 156.8â¯min, pâ¯<â¯0.05) and door-to-balloon time (69.2⯱ 58.4 vs 50.5⯱ 31.3â¯min, pâ¯<â¯0.01) in STEMI patients. CONCLUSIONS: These findings should increase the awareness of morbidity and mortality related to missed or delayed treatment of ACS among the public and the healthcare services.