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The World Health Organization (WHO) officially announced COVID-19 as a global pandemic in March 2020 which in effect transformed the society, economy, the politics and indeed our everyday life. Such a transformation of power geometries across all manner of spaces and their geographies disrupted the finite balance and wellbeing and continues to displace norms of equanimity, sanity, and hope amidst the catalogue of errors, blunders and inactivity. In India the first COVID-19 case was registered on January 30, 2020. The response of 29 States and 7 Union Territories of India has varied depending on their health, community, law and order and legislative infrastructure. This chapter will attempt to situate an analysis of coronavirus pandemic within the demographic transition framework of India. We examine the critical role of civil societies across the states, divergence of policies and practices relating to social distancing, contact tracing, and differential Public Health Agency infrastructures in operation across the States of India. What began as a stigma, followed by populist rhetoric quickly faded into intense struggle for survival even as oxygen, essential medicines and of course hospital beds became a premium in the most affluent parts of any given city. The grim reaper became a great leveller cutting across socially constructed boundaries of class, gender, age, caste and religion. The management of this pandemic and the established protocols for treatment remain tentative even as we learn lessons from yet another mutant strain. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
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The publication of this article unfortunately contained mistakes. The funding note was not correct. The corrected funding note is given below. Funding The current study was funded by;The National Key Research and Development Program of China [Grant No. 2019QY(Y)0502];The Key Research and Development Program of Shaanxi Province [Grant No. 2020ZDLSF04- 07];The National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 51905438];The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [Grant No. 31020190502009];The Innovation Platform of Bio fabrication [Grant No. 17SF0002];and China postdoctoral Science Foundation [Grant No. 2020M673471]. The original article has been corrected. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.
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INTRODUCTION: Supplementary immunization activities (SIAs) aim to interrupt measles transmission by reaching susceptible children, including children who have not received the recommended two routine doses of MCV before the SIA. However, both strategies may miss the same children if vaccine doses are highly correlated. How well SIAs reach children missed by routine immunization is a key metric in assessing the added value of SIAs. METHODS: Children aged 9 months to younger than 5 years were enrolled in cross-sectional household serosurveys conducted in five districts in India following the 2017-2019 measles-rubella (MR) SIA. History of measles containing vaccine (MCV) through routine services or SIA was obtained from documents and verbal recall. Receipt of a first or second MCV dose during the SIA was categorized as "added value" of the SIA in reaching un- and under-vaccinated children. RESULTS: A total of 1,675 children were enrolled in these post-SIA surveys. The percentage of children receiving a 1st or 2nd dose through the SIA ranged from 12.8% in Thiruvananthapuram District to 48.6% in Dibrugarh District. Although the number of zero-dose children prior to the SIA was small in most sites, the proportion reached by the SIA ranged from 45.8% in Thiruvananthapuram District to 94.9% in Dibrugarh District. Fewer than 7% of children remained measles zero-dose after the MR SIA (range: 1.1-6.4%) compared to up to 28% before the SIA (range: 7.3-28.1%). DISCUSSION: We demonstrated the MR SIA provided considerable added value in terms of measles vaccination coverage, although there was variability across districts due to differences in routine and SIA coverage, and which children were reached by the SIA. Metrics evaluating the added value of an SIA can help to inform the design of vaccination strategies to better reach zero-dose or undervaccinated children.
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Measles , Rubella , Humans , Child , Infant , Cross-Sectional Studies , Immunization Programs , Measles/prevention & control , Rubella/prevention & control , Vaccination , Measles Vaccine , ImmunizationABSTRACT
The exponential rise of healthcare problems like human aging and road traffic accidents have developed an intrinsic challenge to biomedical sectors concerning the arrangement of patient-specific biomedical products. The additively manufactured implants and scaffolds have captured global attention over the last two decades concerning their printing quality and ease of manufacturing. However, the inherent challenges associated with additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, namely process selection, level of complexity, printing speed, resolution, biomaterial choice, and consumed energy, still pose several limitations on their use. Recently, the whole world has faced severe supply chain disruptions of personal protective equipment and basic medical facilities due to a respiratory disease known as the coronavirus (COVID-19). In this regard, local and global AM manufacturers have printed biomedical products to level the supply-demand equation. The potential of AM technologies for biomedical applications before, during, and post-COVID-19 pandemic alongwith its relation to the industry 4.0 (I4.0) concept is discussed herein. Moreover, additive manufacturing technologies are studied in this work concerning their working principle, classification, materials, processing variables, output responses, merits, challenges, and biomedical applications. Different factors affecting the sustainable performance in AM for biomedical applications are discussed with more focus on the comparative examination of consumed energy to determine which process is more sustainable. The recent advancements in the field like 4D printing and 5D printing are useful for the successful implementation of I4.0 to combat any future pandemic scenario. The potential of hybrid printing, multi-materials printing, and printing with smart materials, has been identified as hot research areas to produce scaffolds and implants in regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, and orthopedic implants.
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There is a new public health crisis threatening the world with the emergency is a novel corona virus (2019-NCOV) or the severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus (SARS-COV-2). Despite our advances in medicine and research, we continue to be challenged with new pathogens that pose a threat to human lives, global economic security, and the healthcare system. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a novel corona virus that was first identified in Wuhan, Hubei province, central China, and is responsible for the 2019-20 pandemic. The virus spreads faster than its two ancestors the SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome corona virus (MERS-CoV), but has lower fatality. The global response to the corona virus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and provide thoughts regarding lessons for future pandemics. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020, and a pandemic on 11 March 2020. Multiple variants of the virus have emerged and become dominant in many countries since 2021, with the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants being the most virulent. As of 23 November 2021, more than 258 million cases and 5.16 million deaths have been confirmed, making the pandemi c one of the deadliest in history. This review aimed to discuss the COVID-19 disease beginning from virology, epidemiology and continuing with clinical manifestations, diagnosis, and its complications and to finish with available therapeutic options.
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COVID-19’s is a novel corona virus, fast spread has caused substantial damage and affected more than tens of millions of individuals around the world. People frequently wear masks to safeguard themselves and others against the transmission of coronavirus. The world health organization conveys the people to follow the social distancing to prevent the spread of Covid. Researchers have proposed several machine learning models to classify the disease, but none have identified the algorithm which gives more accuracy. Also, similar studies that have proposed various other techniques for prediction. In addition to that maintaining social distancing is also a major factor. In these regions, personally monitoring whether individuals are maintaining social distancing or not is quite impossible. This study aims to develop a highly accurate and real-time technique for the automatic detection of individuals who are not maintaining social distancing. Three state-of-the-art object identification models, namely YOLOv4, Tiny-YOLOv4 are used to detect the objects. Many results suggest that YOLO v4 has the greatest mAP value of 88.90%, followed by YOLO v4 and Tiny-YOLO v4 with mAP values of 82.24% and 74.80%, respectively. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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In recent years, lab-on-chip systems based on printed circuit board (PCB) substrates are gaining attraction primarily due to their low cost of manufacturing. Adapting inexpensive PCBs for development of immunosensors usually requires additional processing steps such as gold electroplating and electropolymerisation, that add to the manufacturing costs. In this work, we demonstrate methods to leverage electroless nickel immersion gold (ENIG) finish PCBs as electrodes for developing electrochemical immunosensors. We evaluated the performance of various parameters that impact sensor performance such as methods to clean impurities on PCB surface, optimization of redox probe concentration, and have successfully immobilized antibodies on the electrodes with cysteamine + glutaraldehyde aided process. Based on these methods, we demonstrate an application of ENIG finish PCB electrodes for detection of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein spiked in artificial saliva samples.
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Background: The first serosurvey conducted in Chennai, India in July 2020 reported sudden acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) prevalence of 18.4%. The aim of this study was to estimate the seroprevalence in the month of October 2020. Methods: We conducted a survey in 153 streets covering 51 wards and all 15 zones of the city and enrolled from each street 40 individuals >= 10 y of age. We collected 3-5 ml of venous blood and tested for anti-nucleocapsid (N) immunoglobulin (IgG) antibodies using a SARS-CoV-2 IgG assay. We estimated the weighted seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection and adjusted for test characteristics. Results: Of the 6366 sera tested, 2052 were positive for anti-N IgG antibodies. The weighted seroprevalence after adjusting for test characteristics was 30.1% (95% confidence interval [CI] 24.7 to 36.1). There was wide variation in the seroprevalence between wards, ranging from 11.0% (95% CI 5.6 to 16.4) to 48.1% (95% CI 39.5 to 56.7). Conclusions: The seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Chennai nearly doubled between July and October 2020.
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Generally, we go to a hospital for two reasons, that is, for a regular check-up for aged people and the other is during health issues. For some cases, we need an Ambulance or any means of transport to reach the hospital when the condition becomes critical. Unfortunately, in such cases, we don’t have any predictive systems which keep track of the health conditions of the people and notifies when the situation becomes abnormal. Therefore, in our paper, we have addressed this issue with the help of a system which keeps track of our health and raises an alert notification to our relatives and the doctors of the nearby hospitals or maybe a family doctor who knows our condition well, in case of any abnormal health condition. The proposed system consists of device trackers and sensors to keep track of data and uses a messaging service to send alert notification. This work can further be improvised to suit the current pandemic situation (COVID—19) which can be used as a tracker for tracing the COVID patients. We can place all the required sensors like temperature sensor, heartbeat sensor, pressure sensor, wearable sensors. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Now a days, heart diseases are exceeds up to dangerous levels which leads to death of human being. Monitoring the patient constantly is difficult or doctors are also unable to monitor particular patient for total working hours. In many critical conditions such as patient is located far away from hospital or also in case of old patient who suffering with heart disease or physical disorders, continuous monitoring of patient is not possible. This module deals with solving above problems. This module consists of a heart rate sensor and temperature sensor including a humidity sensor for moisture content which is present in the patient room. Buzzer which is provided near patient will be activated so that the surrounding persons will know the condition of the patient. A SMS is sent through GSM module to the medical advisor for preliminary precautions so that patient can be prevented from serious condition before reaching to the hospital. In this a Arduino controller device is used. The measured values are displayed through LCD which is interfaced with the controller.
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We present a low-cost electrochemical DNA biosensor based on printed circuit board (PCB) electrodes for wastewater monitoring using portable PCR instruments, such as miniPCR®, without the requirement for qPCR reagents. PCB electrodes are attractive candidates for low-cost and sensitive DNA biosensors of relevance in a pandemic such as COVID-19, and facilitate the opportunity to map disease spread in Low-Middle Income Countries (LMICs) through monitoring of environmental samples such as wastewater. The biosensor reported in this work is capable of detecting PCR amplicons through the intercalation of methylene blue (MB) with DNA, which increases the voltammogram peak current at the redox potential of MB. We describe how these changes are likely to result from the adsorption of MB-DNA complex on the electrode surface. The electrodes are reusable, easy to clean, do not undergo any surface modification and represent a cost-effective solution with long shelf-life. We also explore the impact that MB concentration and DNA length have upon our biosensor performance and provide insights useful to other investigators in the field. The sensor reported here is capable of detecting SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid gene amplicons at concentrations as low as 10pg/μ l (approximately 1.7fM) and can detect nucleotides amplified after 10 PCR cycles. Furthermore, using the PCB electrode and approaches described here, SARS-CoV-2 amplicons were detected in simulated wastewater sample, by spiking wastewater collected from a sewage treatment plant in Mumbai, India with SARS-CoV-2 RNA.