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The impact of Post COVID-19 Condition is ongoing despite the declaration that the COVID-19 pandemic has ended. In this study, we explore the prevalence of PCC among healthcare workers (HCWs) in four African Countries and its influence on their professional performance. This study was conducted as an online cross-sectional survey of healthcare workers from four African countries (Cameroon, Egypt, Nigeria, and Somalia) between the 20th of December 2021 to 12th of January 2022. We determined the prevalence of PCC based on the WHO case definition and assessed variables associated with a higher prevalence of PCC in these countries using univariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses. A total of 706 HCWs from four African countries were included in this survey. Most of the HCWs were aged between 18-34 years (75.8%, n=535). Our findings showed that 19.5% (n=138) of the HCWs had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. However, 8.4% (n=59) were symptomatic for COVID-19 but tested negative or were never tested. Two-thirds of the HCWs (66.4%, n=469)have received a COVID-19 vaccine and 80.6% (n=378) of those vaccinated had been fully vaccinated. The self-reported awareness rate of PCC among the HCWs was 16.1% (n=114/706) whereas the awareness rate of PCC among COVID-19-positive HCWs was 55.3 % (n=109/197). The prevalence of PCC among HCWs was 58.8% (n=116). These changes include the self-reported symptoms of PCC which included headache (58.4%, n=115), fatigue (58.8%, n=116), and muscle pain (39.6%, n=78). Similarly, 30% (n=59) and 20.8% (n=41) of the HCWs reported the loss of smell and loss of taste long after their COVID-19 infection, respectively. Some HCWs (42%, n=83) believed that their work performance has been affected by their ongoing symptoms of PCC. There was no significant difference in the prevalence of PCC among the vaccinated and unvaccinated HCWs (p > 0.05). Of the socio-demographic variables, age (older HCWs between 45-54 years; OR:1.7; 95% CI: 1.06, 10.59; p = 0.001) and location (Egypt; OR:14.57; 95% CI: 2.62, 26.76; p = 0.001) were more likely to have experienced PCC than other age groups and countries respectively. The study revealed low prevalence of PCC among the surveyed HCC. In addition, it observed the need for adequate medical and psychological support to HCWs with PCC, improve their COVID-19 vaccination uptake, and conduct mass advocacy campaigns on PCC.
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Headache , Taste Disorders , Myalgia , COVID-19 , FatigueABSTRACT
Social media has been well-established in health-related purposes, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Preliminary reviews have summarized social media uses for a distinctive health purpose such as health interventions, health campaigns, medical education, and disease outbreak surveillance. The most recent thorough review of social media uses for health purposes, however, was conducted in 2013. A systematic review that covers various health purposes is needed to reveal the new usages and research gaps that emerge in recent years. This study aimed to provide a systematic review of social media uses for health purposes that have been identified in previous studies. The researchers searched for peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2010 and 2020 in.10 databases covering medicine, public health, and social science. After classifying the articles in terms of publication year, journal area, country, method, social media platform, and social media use for health purposes, the researchers provided a review of social media use for health purposes identified in these articles. This study summarized 7 social media uses for various health purposes by health organizations, health researchers and practitioners, and the public. Social media can be used for various health purposes. Several new usages have emerged since 2013 including advancing health research and practice, social mobilization, and facilitating offline health-related services and events. Research gaps exist regarding advancing strategic use of social media based on audience segmentation, understanding the impact of health identity development, and addressing privacy concerns and evaluating the impact of social media in health interventions. © 2023 Author(s).
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The development of medical facilities is crucial in Indonesia's remote island since COVID-19-19 disease collapses the hospital system. This work is intended to develop the COVID-19 vessel as a medical support system with a dynamic positioning system to give medical health care for Indonesia's remote island. The COVID-19 vessel is named KM. LOTUS is arranged similarly with Type B medical facility standards. Conceptual design and performance calculation comprised weight calculation, medical facility arrangement, resistance and powering test, seakeeping performances are evaluated. The ship is equipped with an ambulance boat to increase mobility capabilities for smaller waters, such as narrow straits and estuaries. It is placed behind the ship, uses an autonomous system to climb up to the top of the deck. The resistance test has a value of 66.6 kN and a power of 383 HP at a ship speed of 12.22 knots. The seakeeping analysis was carried out using the strip theory method by simulating a ship speed of 12.22 knots representing Maluku sea condition. It can be found that different incoming waves will produce different oscillatory movements of heave, pitch, and roll. © 2023 American Institute of Physics Inc.. All rights reserved.
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This study aimed to find out the level of stress and coping methods among elderly in Sulaimanya city during the pandemic COVID-19. Through the snowballing sampling method, 394 elders were included to this study. After validation, two scales were used in this study;stress subscale from Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and a culture-bound scale for determining coping methods. The results of this study showed that participants experienced a mild level of stress. Male participants, elders who live with their family, unvaccinated elders, physically passive elders have had higher stress level than female, elderly home, vaccinated, physical active elders. The findings also indicated that spiritual connection was the most common coping method used by the sample. Results of this study are the first and foremost way to share elder's unexpressed messages;it also can be a way for verbalizing their unspoken feelings. These results may also inform the elder's caregivers that elder's stress level and illness anxiety was not very high, strengthening their social support and spiritual connection may help them to reduce their distress into a lesser degree.
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Urban transportation planning has become a matter of urgency in small cities and, in particular, the need to develop planning models for Tikrit city has become pressing. Questionnaire forms and household interviews were used among families in the city, with 22% asked to complete a full interview, 68% offered paper questionnaires to be retrieved on completion, and the rest contacted electronically due to the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The data from the 4,150 questionnaires collected showed that the characteristics of the community are compatible with those found in other studies and official statistics, with the community of Tikrit being youthful society, with an average of 88.3% of residents not exceeding 60 years of age. After statistical checks were performed on the obtained data, trip generation models were developed using various methods of cross-classification to match vehicle ownership with both income and family size. Using the developed models, the total number of trips by purpose across four sectors were extracted. A comparison of the results across models showed significant difference between the methods, suggesting that the family size variable should be adopted for such modelling as an easily obtainable and relevant variable. © 2023 AIP Publishing LLC.
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Every country in the globe has been profoundly affected by the coronavirus epidemic, and these countries are struggling with how to clean the affected areas quickly and effectively. This project aims to contribute to the fight against the spread of the coronavirus by quickly, safely, and effectively cleaning medical clinics. Regular cleaning and disinfection might reassure people and increase their confidence in the lessened risk of the spread of communicable diseases. Robots that use ultraviolet C (UVC) sanitizers can quickly and effectively clean the clinic rooms. In addition to cleaning patient seating areas, clinical equipment, restrooms, and above controls. The use of UVC technology effectively eliminates airborne germs in medical clinics. The results of UVC disinfection performance indicated a 92% reduction in the total bacterial count (TBC) at 0.5 metres from the robot after 8 minutes of UVC irradiation. © 2023 Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved.
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We compare the self-employment intentions of women from different contexts, namely, Egypt and Spain after two recent incidents of global economic collapse - the 2008 global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. We draw on occupational choice and human capital theories to better understand how the self-employment intentions of women with different age, perceptual and human capital profiles vary in periods of crisis. Consistent with previous studies, the results suggest that intentions of self-employment vary with the specific perceptual and human capital attributes of women. However, the macroeconomic conditions and the context matter since the findings also show that the factors that drive the self-employment intention of women differ from one global shock to another. Moreover, the impact of each global shock in every context is different. These findings provide new guidance for policymakers by acknowledging the relevance of the heterogeneity of women, economic periods and contexts to the choice of self-employment.
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Background: Admission to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) is compulsory for children with a severely complicated form of COVID-19, who are hemodynamically unstable. Our study determined the degree to which our PICU preparedness measures impacted patient outcomes and infection control management within the PICU of Minia University Hospital in Egypt. Methods: 179 pediatric patients, admitted to the PICU isolation unit with suspected or confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19, were studied retrospectively. We conducted descriptive analyses on the patients' characteristics and outcomes and the basic concepts and procedures for PICU readiness are discussed. Results: The patients ranged in age from one month to sixteen years, with an average age of 8.60 +/- 4.84 years, 44.69 % of whom were males. Fever, shortness of breath, and cough were the most common symptoms on admission. The most common comorbidities were neurological disorders, heart disease, and respiratory disease, with percentages of 27 %, 25 %, and 23 %, respectively. Overall, mortality was 22.9 %. Only 21 (0.5%) of the hospital's healthcare staff were infected. The infection did not spread to other non-COVID parts of the hospital. Conclusion: Our PICU strategies and preparation ensured adequate prevention of infection spreading to other units and HWCs, as well as lowering mortality and improving COVID-19 patients' outcomes.
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The anesthesia technicians/technologists (ATs) have expanded coordinated efforts with physicians in the perioperative environment. They are acting vigorously for the setup, operation, and maintenance of the necessary equipment that the anesthesia team of today and the future will use to care for the patient. Several tasks can be performed efficiently by ATs such as set up adjustment with complex procedures, escorting patients, solving trouble shooting, and assisting with patient's monitoring. This chapter is dedicated to serve the current and prospective ATs awareness with regional anesthesia procedures. It dissects the preparation, equipment set up, different types of regional blocks, and explain management of consequences during performing the procedures. Recommendations for regional anesthesia techniques during COVID-19 crisis are discussed to provide safety for both patients and healthcare providers. We hope this chapter provides the adequate information for our ATs in their daily collaborative work. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
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Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a congener of chloroquine, is widely used in prophylaxis and the treatment of malaria, and also as a cure for rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, and various other diseases. Physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling (PBPK) has attracted great interest in the past few years in predicting drug pharmacokinetics (PK). This study focuses on predicting the PK of HCQ in the healthy population and extrapolating it to the diseased populations, i.e., liver cirrhosis and chronic kidney disease (CKD), utilizing a systematically built whole-body PBPK model. The time vs. concentration profiles and drug-related parameters were obtained from the literature after a laborious search and in turn were integrated into PK-Sim software for designing healthy intravenous, oral, and diseased models. The model's evaluation was performed using observed-to-predicted ratios (Robs/Rpre) and visual predictive checks within a 2-fold error range. The healthy model was then extrapolated to liver cirrhosis and CKD populations after incorporating various disease-specific pathophysiological changes. Box-whisker plots showed an increase in AUC0-t in liver cirrhosis, whereas a decrease in AUC0-t was seen in the CKD population. These model predictions may assist clinicians in adjusting the administered HCQ doses in patients with different degrees of hepatic and renal impairment.
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With over twelve months since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, its morbidity and mortality continue to be a critical health threat despite various instituted preventive and control efforts. Information on the multi-regional public perspective of the diseases is limited. Therefore, this study investigated public knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards COVID-19 across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and South Asia (SA) regions of the world. In an online pretested questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey, respondents (n = 2738) were recruited using a convenience sampling technique and data obtained were subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics. The majority of respondents had bachelor's degrees or higher (91.1%) and were aged between 18 and 39 years (88%). Most of the respondents had satisfactory knowledge (73%, 15.4 ± 2.5), attitudes 76.8%, 7.1 ± 1.1, and perceptions (73.4%, 11±2.8). Participants with higher educational levels and scientific backgrounds were 1.71 times (95% CI: 1.44;2.03;p < 0.001) more likely to have a better knowledge of COVID-19. Respondents from the SA region were significantly more likely (OR: 1.4;95% CI: 1.16, 1.68;p < 0.001) to possess satisfactory knowledge of COVID-19. Meanwhile, respondents from the MENA region (OR: 7.81;95% CI: 6.12, 9.97;p < 0.001) have better attitudes and are more optimistic about ending the pandemic than those from the SSA. Despite the satisfactory knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions towards the regional efforts observed, we emphasize continued adherence by the public to the health regulations and safety measures of countries in these regions. There is a need for the low and middle-income countries to improve awareness of COVID-19 preventive practices.
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Safe and effective vaccination remains the mainstay of control of COVID-19 because there is still no universally recommended treatment. This strategy is however being threatened by vaccine hesitancy and resistance due to fear of adverse events and safety concerns. It is, therefore, necessary to study post-vaccination adverse events (AE) in various populations and geographical areas. The objective of this study was to analyze the adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination in five major immunization centers of Kwara State Nigeria. A retrospective descriptive study of the adverse events following AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination that were reported from five immunization centers of Kwara State, North-central Nigeria from March to July 2021 was carried out. Statistical Package for Social Science version 26 was used for analysis. Adverse event classification and severity were compared based on age, gender, and time to onset of adverse event and vaccine dose type using the Chi-square test. The incidence of COVID-19 vaccine AE was 1.6%. There was female predominance (51.6%) and a mean age of 41.6±13.7 years. Most of the AE (95.8%) were systemic and mild (81.1%) without a requirement for any therapeutic intervention. Fatal outcome was not reported in any of the AE and the time to outcome of AE was 2 days in most cases (45.3%). No significant association was found between the variables studied and the adverse event type and severity. The low incidence and mild nature of adverse events reported in this study will add to the body of knowledge regarding vaccine adverse events and may eventually impact vaccine uptake.
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Nurses are one of the most important personnel that plays a major role in ensuring safe and high-quality care to the patients. Their attitudes toward patient safety could affect the patient experience in the hospital setting. Contrasting evidence in the previous study on the relationship between duration of working experience with the attitude toward patient safety warranted further exploration in the current pandemic era. The purpose of this study was to determine the perception of attitude towards patient safety and other associated factors. A cross-sectional study was conducted involving nurses from selected teaching hospitals in Klang Valley, Malaysia during the Covid-19 pandemic period. Data was collected using validated online Safety Attitude Questionnaires (SAQ). The target group was nurses in charge of general medical and surgical wards and was conveniently sampled. A total of 152 nurses participated and had working experience of more than 2 years (93.4%). The majority of positive responses were observed in 4 domains which were the teamwork climate, safety climate, job satisfaction, and stress recognition. The highest positive responses were found for the safety climate domain. In terms of negative responses, it was observed to be highest in the preparation of the unit management domain. However, there was no significant association between any domains with age group, gender, or working experience. In conclusion, the perception of the nurses toward patient safety attitude might be influenced by the managerial style, geographical work setting, and different job scopes. The leaders in a healthcare facility or service delivery should consider focusing on a strategy to ensure adequate management support for the medical personnel that might influence their attitude to patient safety culture in the future.Copyright © 2022 Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications. All rights reserved.
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The Covid-19 virus has substantially transformed many aspects of life, impacted industries, and revolutionized supply chains all over the world. System dynamics modeling, which incorporates systems thinking to understand and map complex events as well as correlations, can aid in predicting future outcomes of the pandemic and generate key learnings. As system dynamic modeling allows for a deeper understanding of the manifestation and dynamics of disease, it was helpful when examining the implications of the pandemic on the supply chain of semiconductor companies. This tutorial describes how the system dynamics simulation model was constructed for the Covid-19 pandemic using AnyLogic Software. The model serves as a general foundation for further epidemiological simulations and system dynamics modeling. © 2022 IEEE.
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The COVID-19 disease has infected many countries, causing generalized impacts on different income categories. We carried out a survey among households (n = 412) representing different income groups in Nigeria. We used validated food insecurity experience and socio-psychologic tools. Data obtained were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The earning capacities of the respondents ranged from 145 USD/month for low-income earners to 1945 USD/month for high-income earners. A total of 173 households (42%) ran out of food during the COVID-19 pandemic. All categories of households experienced increasing dependency on the general public and a perception of increasing insecurity, with the high-income earners experiencing the greatest shift. In addition, increasing levels of anger and irritation were experienced among all categories. Of the socio-demographic variables, only gender, educational level of the household head, work hours per day, and family income based on society class were associated (p < 0.05) with food security and hunger due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although psychological stress was observed to be greater in the low-income earning group, household heads with medium and high family income were more likely to have satisfactory experiences regarding food security and hunger. It is recommended that socio-economic groups should be mapped and support systems should target each group to provide the needed support in terms of health, social, economic, and mental wellness.
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In response to global education disruption, teachers must adopt remote teaching methods that incorporate the information, communication, and technology (ICT). However, many teachers are inexperienced with technology, as remote learning is uncommon, particularly in primary and secondary schools. Thus, there is a pressing need to identify teachers' readiness to implement remote teaching during global crises. Specifically, this study aimed to determine their readiness in terms of attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and ICT efficacy for implementing remote teaching during the learning disruption period. This study was a cross-sectional study conducted among 4,985 primary and secondary school teachers across five zones of Malaysia (North, South, East, and West in Western Malaysia). These participants were selected using random sampling techniques. The instrument, a survey questionnaire with a 5-Likert scale, had 26 items covering four dimensions of readiness: attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and ICT efficacy. This instrument has been validated by three academics and demonstrated a high level of internal consistency (α = 0.81). The findings revealed that teachers' readiness was high across all four dimensions (M = 3.73, SD = 0.645). The highest was the attitude (M = 3.88, SD = 0.598), and the lowest was the subjective norm (M = 3.63, SD = 0.696). Based on these findings, this study offers recommendations for maintaining momentum when conducting remote teaching in the face of current and future learning disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings are important for policymakers and school leaders to design appropriate interventions and support effective remote teaching implementation. © 2022, City University of Hong Kong Press. All rights reserved.
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This study aims to assess corporate zakat payment during the Covid-19 Pandemic Period. This is intriguing due to the fact that Covid-19 caused lockdown, recession, and financial crisis that could affect the company. Unlike business activities and performance which are significantly affected by locked down policies due to the Covid 19 Pandemic charitable activities including Corporate Zakat exhibit a more positive resilient response to continuously support those in need and affected by covid 19 during the pandemic period. This study employs a qualitative method based on the data provided. The outcome indicates that Covid-19 pandemic period had no impact on corporate zakat payment, as some businesses continued to pay zakat during the pandemic. This demonstrates that Covid-19 had no direct impact on zakat payments made by corporations. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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When the pandemic COVID-19 erupted and spreaded throughout the world, numerous rules and regulations were implemented to ensure the safety of everyone. The outcome of Covid-19 resulted in a global shutdown, where cases continued to grow rapidly that directly affected the normal processes in all business sectors. While the future is still uncertain, business plan must keep on progressing by managing all the obstacles to ensure the business goal is delivered efficaciously while keeping the impact as low as possible. In the early stage of the outbreak, there was limited knowledge and experience to manage a drilling campaign virtually, to ensure all plans are smooth despite all the restrictions to avoid additional cost and schedule impact to the company. Since the outbreak was quite abrupt, the main challenge faced by the team was to ensure a continuous operation like any other year before but with additional enforcement of stringent COVID-19 SOP and to come up with new modus operandi with stringent SOP at every location. During this pandemic, the operation is exposed to the risk of being on standby mode due to equipment unavailability, unreadiness of manpower or delay in vessel movement. Knowing that drilling operation is so dynamic, that a slight change to the drilling sequence could lead to operation shutdown if the required services are not readily onboard. This uncomplimentary impact is due to the new rules or regulations implemented on the manpower and equipment movement to reduce risk of Covid-19 infection. Therefore, a thorough planning is crucial to ensure the success of operation, in fact a few fallback plans must be in placed to minimize the cost and schedule exposure. This paper will address the challenges in managing equipment and manpower throughout the operation for BX-Project together with the solutions to ensure the governance, rules and regulations of Covid-19 are being followed. The approaches taken during this campaign is used as a baseline to run a drilling operation during Covid-19 pandemic in the upcoming year. Lessons learnt captured from this campaign can be replicated by other projects and finding the more efficient ways to implement the best practices. This pandemic has challenged our perseverance to deliver the project objectives while maintaining the dedication, health, focus as well as creativity to overcome unfamiliar circumstances. Copyright © 2022, Offshore Technology Conference.
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Many governments around the world have launched their open government data (OGD) portal to improve the government's transparency by sharing their data with the public such as National Covid-19 Immunization Programmed (NCIP), which has been published at https://github.com/CITF-Malaysia/citf-public. However, increasing the number of datasets, data types, volume and complexity will be raised the integration issues. There-fore, it is essential to evaluate and analyses those huge amounts of these datasets. NCIP provides multiple data sources and datasets. These may raise the Big Data (BD) issues and pose various evaluation and analysis problems to produce valuable information. To generate meaningful linked data to support the purposes of this research study, the relationship between these disparate datasets needs to be identified and construct a comprehensive framework. In order to understand the causes of OGD development of big data, this study involves a detailed examination and comparison of existing theories and actual approaches to handle public sector open data concerns. According to the review, the framework was dominantly adopted over architecture, infrastructures, theoretical and conceptual framework in previous research to examine the revolution of government public accessible data. According to the findings, most existing frameworks do not con-sider the demand for public open data in health such as NCPI. Previous re-search on OGD for health has a lesser number of advanced BD frameworks. In the public sector, there is still a lack of investment and use of Big Data. The findings will aid academics in doing empirical research on the revealed need, as well as offer decision-makers with a better understanding of how to leverage OGD adoption in health by taking relevant actions. © School of Engineering, Taylor's University.