National fruit fly surveillance programme

This annual report summarizes the results of the 2021-2022 National Fruit Fly Surveillance Programme (NFFSP) in New Zealand. The report shows that despite the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the programme was successful in meeting its objectives. A total of 139 individual trap runs were used to service the 7878 Lynfield traps in use, with no new traps established but several relocated to improve coverage. From the 2587 trap-run submissions, a total of 8183 vials were submitted, and no exotic fruit flies were detected. Thirteen samples collected in fruit-fly traps were categorized as "specimens of interest," while 9 specimens were submitted by trappers as passive surveillance samples. All lure batches tested during the season met the required standard, and field checks were made to ensure that all lures sent to trappers had been calibrated within the last 12 months. The report concludes that the trapping network was effective in supporting New Zealand's claims of area freedom.

Lifestyle Intervention Delivery during the Covid Era

Due to the physical and social limitations brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the intervention team for US Study to Protect Brain Health through Lifestyle Intervention to Reduce Risk (U.S. POINTER), found that delivering a lifestyle intervention faced many more challenges than studies from previous experience. Funded by the Alzheimer's Association, U.S. POINTER, a Phase 3, multicenter, randomized clinical trial testing whether random assignment to 2 years of a Self-Guided versus a Structured lifestyle intervention results in different cognitive trajectories in 2000 older adults at increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia, has faced many challenges during this time, especially with regard to the delivery of the intervention. U.S. POINTER randomized participants to one of two intervention groups. Participants in the selfguided group attend 2-3 team sessions per year and are provided with a rich menu of resources providing the participant with information needed to manage his or her own lifestyle change, whereas participants in the structured group follow a rigorous structure designed to facilitate lifestyle changes, including direct access to a Navigator, an Interventionist, regular group sessions (38 sessions over 2 years), and access to numerous tools for physical fitness training, diet, cognitive training, and health monitoring. Both interventions were designed to be conducted in person and in groups of 10-15 older adults who have cardiovascular disease risk factors. The pandemic made in-person delivery of our intervention unsafe for our high-risk cohort. Therefore, our intervention committee adapted the protocol to allow our group-based interventions to be conducted via a virtual format during the main COVID-19 era and then back to an in-person format as COVID-19 restrictions became more fluid and participants became more comfortable with in person contact. Shifting to a virtual-only format presented challenges for some of our older adult participants who were not familiar with video conferencing or technology in general. In addition, the Coordinating Center's Intervention Oversight Committee made modifications to the participant contact schedule in order to provide ample support for successful behavior change during this isolating time. New participant facing adherence reports were created to help provide feedback on intervention goals. These reports were used in meetings with individual participants as well as group sessions to help motivate our participants and maintain adherence. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic introduced an opportunity for us to add two additional participant surveys: (1) one specifically on the impact of COVID on mental health, including attitudes about safety precautions, and (2) an exit survey for participants who were enrolled prior to the COVID-19 era (March 2020). Both of these surveys will be extremely useful as the intervention committee and the study as a whole begins to think about the differing intervention delivery experiences that ranged from ''usual'' to ''completely remote'' to ''hybrid.''.

Supporting decision making on public health and social measures in response to COVID-19- The PHSM calibration tool : Dominic Cocciolone

Public health and social measures (PHSM) are preventative measures taken by individuals, communities and government institutions at national and local levels to prevent and reduce transmission of an infectious disease - in this instance SARS-CoV-2. The decision to introduce, adapt or lift PHSM should be based primarily on a situational assessment of the intensity of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the capacity of the health system to respond to subsequent increases in hospital admissions, but must also consider the effects these measures may have on the general welfare of society and individuals. The WHO Regional Office for Europe developed an online public health and social measures (PHSM) calibration tool to assist Member States in decision-making relating to PHSM implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The tool, designed to be used primarily by policy-makers in national and local government authorities, provides guidance based on a situational-level assessment framework that is determined by the level of community transmission and the overall capacity of health systems and public health services within a country or region to respond. By using a combination of country-reported and user-input data, the tool automatically generates a situational assessment and corresponding PHSM guidance for users, summarized in a downloadable report. Reference https://phsm.euro.who.int/calibrationTool

THE EFFECT OF HIDDEN CELIAC DISEASE ON COVID-19 IN THE COMMUNITY

Background: Celiac disease (CeD) is an autoimmune disorder characterized by an inflammatory immune response against gluten and increased susceptibility to bacterial and viral infections. After the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began, several studies showed no difference in infections rates of SARS-CoV-2 between patients with CeD and the general population. However, all studies were based on diagnosed CeD patients who are likely on a gluten-free diet;the immune system of these patients is similar to the general population, which is not likely to show an increased risk of COVID-19. On the contrary, individuals with undiagnosed CeD are likely to be susceptible to viral infections due to abnormally overactivity of the immune system. We aimed to evaluate the frequency of SARSCoV- 2 positivity and related to hospitalization in hidden CeD patients and diagnosed CeD and compare the vaccination rate in these groups. Methods: Based on the previous community cohort of subjects who were tested for CeD serology, we categorized them into three groups: hidden CeD, diagnosed CeD, and seronegative controls. Data of COVID-19 were obtained from January 2020 through September 2021, utilizing polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test results for SARS-CoV-2 and corresponding hospitalization records. Results: A total of 207 hidden celiac disease, 68 diagnosed CeD, and 22,213 seronegative controls were included in the study. Table 1 summarizes the COVID-19 PCR tests, positivity rate, hospitalization, and vaccination rate. Remarkably, about two thirds of the community in the study population were tested for SARS-CoV-2. SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests were more frequently conducted in the diagnosed CeD group (78%), compared to the undiagnosed CeD (68%) or seronegative group (63%) (p=0.01). The positivity rate among subjects tested for SARSCoV- 2 was higher in the seronegative group (15.3%) than that of undiagnosed CeD (14.3%) or diagnosed CeD (7.5%), but it was not statistically significant. Of 2,125 subjects with positive SARS-CoV-2 results in the seronegative group, about 8.1% (n=172) were hospitalized, while only one patient with undiagnosed CeD (out of 20 positive cases) was hospitalized. Interestingly, vaccination rates among the three groups were similar (48% in the seronegative group, 49% in the undiagnosed CeD, and 53% in the diagnosed CeD). Conclusions: This study demonstrated no difference in susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection in undiagnosed or diagnosed CeD. Testing rate is higher in diagnosed CeD, which is likely to be related to health-seeking behavior. (Table Presented)

Truths and lies about covid-19 in ecuador: Knowledge breakdown and its social effects

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant a major crisis for Ecuador. It seriously affected the population's economic situation and involved immediate decisions in educational issues, as well as uncertainty and negative expectations in labor issues. As an involuntary social experiment, it showed three types of knowledge breakdown: the population's practical and everyday knowledge, scientific knowledge and knowledge about science, and emotional knowledge. Building these knowledge types makes things easier to spread false information, misunderstanding of science, and emotional confusion. To do this, the article is based on a nation-wide survey with over 2,000 households in Ecuador, carried out between May and July 2020. These data enable a review of the pandemic's social impacts, including the pre-existing structures that made them possible. © 2021 Universidade Federal de Goias. All rights reserved.

Remote Innovations on the Cloud

2020 was a year of change in many ways. One of these aspects of change was the acceleration and adoption of remote workflows, leveraging collaboration tools for motion picture and television, born from the mandate to work from home virtually in every corner of the world. While Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) had changed the industry in 2020, it accelerated moving these core production workloads to the cloud. Per Bob Chapek (CEO, Disney), 'I would say COVID-19 accelerated the rate at which we made this transition, but this transition was going to happen anyway.' Cloud has helped customers navigate this new terrain, and we have witnessed technology providers and content creators collaborating like never before to push the art of the possible. People turned to entertainment to keep their spirits high, consuming content via streaming providers or broadcasters and the media and entertainment industry delivered. This is the story of a few companies that came together to contribute to that progress, adapting to the flexibility of modular design, while focusing on the end goal of a holistic post-production workflow anywhere in the world. © 2002 Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Inc.

Social-Emotional Learning Amidst COVID-19 School Closures: Positive Findings from an Efficacy Study of Adventures Aboard the S.S. GRIN Program

School closures because of natural phenomena, such as COVID-19, have emphasized the importance of effective distance learning strategies when there are no in-person alternatives. Although infrequently mentioned in discussions of student performance, social-emotional skill building came to the forefront of conversations due to the isolation and stresses created by stay-at-home protocols. Our original research study describes the implementation of a game-based online social-emotional learning program during in-person learning and how we adapted implementation to distance learning due to COVID-19 based on schools’ infrastructure, preparations, and resource availability. In addition to the successful implementation, the results have indicated that the program was significantly and positively associated with gains in students’ social emotional skills. © Copyright © 2021 Li, Flynn, DeRosier, Weiser and Austin-King.

Professional tennis's constellational response to COVID-19. (Special Issue: Sport and the coronavirus crisis.)

Tennis's dispersed power relations have made its semiorganized response to COVID-19 "constellational" rather than hierarchical. The author uses the term "constellational" in two senses. First, what might appear to be a disorganized set of stars in the night sky can, with a bit of orientation, be tracked into discernible and more meaningful patterns. In tennis, constellations are clusters of tour events that are linked through geography, court surface, governing bodies, key sponsors, and other forms of patronage. Second, the author invoked the language of "constellations" to draw upon the popular connotation of "stars": iconic figures on- and off-court who speak and act in ways that carry outsize importance to the game's audience. This constellational set of power relations has led to conflicted messaging - only sometimes valuing public health. Both prestigious tournaments and star players have emerged as important stakeholders, as tennis assesses its future - and organizational structure - postpandemic.