Cumulative effects of pre-pandemic vulnerabilities and pandemic-related hardship on psychological distress among pregnant individuals.

OBJECTIVE: Our primary objective was to determine whether pre-existing vulnerabilities and resilience factors combined with objective hardship resulted in cumulative (i.e., additive) effects on psychological distress in pregnant individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. A secondary objective was to determine whether any of the effects of pandemic-related hardship were compounded (i.e., multiplicative) by pre-existing vulnerabilities. METHOD: Data are from a prospective pregnancy cohort study, the Pregnancy During the COVID-19 Pandemic study (PdP). This cross-sectional report is based upon the initial survey collected at recruitment between April 5, 2020 and April 30, 2021. Logistic regressions were used to evaluate our objectives. RESULTS: Pandemic-related hardship substantially increased the odds of scoring above the clinical cut-off on measures of anxiety and depression symptoms. Pre-existing vulnerabilities had cumulative (i.e., additive) effects on the odds of scoring above the clinical cut-off on measures of anxiety and depression symptoms. There was no evidence of compounding (i.e., multiplicative) effects. Social support had a protective effect on anxiety and depression symptoms, but government financial aid did not. CONCLUSION: Pre-pandemic vulnerability and pandemic-related hardship had cumulative effects on psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adequate and equitable responses to pandemics and disasters may require more intensive supports for those with multiple vulnerabilities.

Viral exanthems Unravelling viral rashes

Common causes of viral exanthems in Australia include herpesviruses, enteroviruses, parvovirus B19, varicella, measles and rubella viruses and mosquito-borne alphaviruses. The cause can often be diagnosed clinically from the rash distribution and morphology, confirmed only when necessary with serological or PCR tests. Most viral exanthems are self-limiting, requiring supportive care alone.

College students and COVID-19: Mental health and purpose formation

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is a disaster event associated with negative social, mental health, financial, and academic outcomes for college students. However, there is limited evidence to guide efforts to help support college students during the crisis. This study used a disaster conceptual model to evaluate the relationship between COVID-19 stressors and mental health and purpose in college students in the United States. Methods: Cross-sectional data were collected from 251 undergraduates through an online survey between April and May 2020. Results: Students were exposed to multiple COVID-19 stressors (M = 8.14, SD = 3.02). Overall, 53.0 percent reported moderate to severe levels of depression, 40.7 percent reported moderate to severe levels of anxiety, and 39.4 percent endorsed having a clear sense of purpose in life. A disaster conceptual model fit the data well (c2 [30] = 31.93, p = .37, CFI = 0.995, RMSEA = 0.02, SRMR = 0.04). COVID-19 stressors were directly associated with depression and anxiety, and inversely associated with purpose. Perceived stress was an intervening variable in this relationship. Conclusion: Findings highlight the relationship between COVID-19 disaster stressors and mental health and purpose outcomes and provide evidence which may help guide recovery efforts. © 2022 Weston Medical Publishing. All rights reserved.

PP-HumanSeg: Connectivity-Aware Portrait Segmentation with a Large-Scale Teleconferencing Video Dataset

As the COVID-19 pandemic rampages across the world, the demands of video conferencing surge. To this end, real-time portrait segmentation becomes a popular feature to replace backgrounds of conferencing participants. While feature-rich datasets, models and algorithms have been offered for segmentation that extract body postures from life scenes, portrait segmentation has yet not been well covered in a video conferencing context. To facilitate the progress in this field, we introduce an open-source solution named PP-HumanSeg. This work is the first to construct a large-scale video portrait dataset that contains 291 videos from 23 conference scenes with 14K fine-labeled frames and extensions to multi-camera teleconferencing. Furthermore, we propose a novel Self-supervised Connectivity-aware Learning (SCL) for semantic segmentation, which introduces a self-supervised connectivity-aware loss to improve the quality of segmentation results from the perspective of connectivity. And we propose an ultra-lightweight model with SCL for practical portrait segmentation, which achieves the best trade-off between IoU and the speed of inference. Extensive evaluations on our dataset demonstrate the superiority of SCL and our model.

Chinese Herbal Medicine Used With or Without Conventional Western Therapy for COVID-19: an evidence review of clinical studies

Introduction: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an acute respiratory infectious disease. At present, there is no specific and effective therapy for the treatment and prevention of this disease. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has accumulated thousands of years of experience on the use of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) to prevent and treat infectious diseases. The aim of this study was to present the evidence on the therapeutic effects and safety of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) used with or without conventional western therapy for COVID-19. Methods: Clinical studies on the therapeutic effects and safety of CHM for COVID-19 were included. We summarized the general characteristics of included studies, evaluated methodological quality of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) using the Cochrane risk of bias tool, analyzed the use of CHM, used Revman 5.4 software to present the risk ratio (RR) or mean difference (MD) and their 95% confidence interval (CI) to estimate the therapeutic effects and safety of CHM. Results: A total of 58 clinical studies were identified including RCTs (17.24%, 10), non-randomized controlled trials (1.72%, 1), retrospective studies with a control group (18.97%, 11), case-series (20.69%, 12) and case-reports (41.38%, 24). Fig.1 shows the flow diagram for the searching and screening of published articles. No RCTs of high methodological quality were identified. The most frequently tested oral Chinese patent medicine, Chinese herbal medicine injection or prescribed herbal decoction were: Lianhua Qingwen granule/capsule, Xuebijing injection and Maxing Shigan Tang. Table 1 lists the CHM used at least twice. In terms of aggravation rate, pooled analyses showed that there were statistical differences between the intervention group and the comparator group (RR 0.42, 95% CI 0.21 to 0.82, six RCTs;RR 0.38, 95% CI 0.23 to 0.64, five retrospective studies with a control group), that is, CHM plus conventional western therapy appeared better than conventional western therapy alone in reducing aggravation rate. In addition, compared with conventional western therapy, CHM plus conventional western therapy had potential advantages in increasing the recovery rate and shortening the duration of fever, cough and fatigue, improving the negative conversion rate of nucleic acid test, and increasing the improvement rate of chest CT manifestations and shortening the time from receiving the treatment to the beginning of chest CT manifestations improvement. For adverse events, pooled data showed that there were no statistical differences between the CHM and the control groups. Conclusion: Current low certainty evidence suggests that there may be a tendency that CHM plus conventional western therapy is superior to conventional western therapy alone. The use of CHM did not increase the risk of adverse events. Keywords: traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese herbal medicine, novel coronavirus pneumonia, coronavirus disease 2019, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, review, clinical study

Comparison of Saliva and Mid-Turbinate Swabs for Detection of COVID-19 (preprint)

Background: Saliva is an attractive sample for detecting SARS-CoV-2 because it is easy to collect and minimally invasive. However, contradictory reports exist concerning the sensitivity of saliva versus nasal swabs. Methods: We recruited and followed close contacts of COVID-19 cases for up to 14 days from their last exposure and collected self-reported symptoms, mid-turbinate swabs (MTS) and saliva every two or three days. Ct values and frequency of viral detection by MTS and saliva were compared. Logistic regression was used to estimate the probability of detection by days since symptom onset for the two sample types. Results: We enrolled 58 contacts who provided a total of 200 saliva and MTS sample pairs; 14 contacts (13 with symptoms) had one or more positive samples. Overall, saliva and MTS had similar rates of viral detection (p=0.78). Although Ct values for saliva were significantly greater than for MTS (p=0.014), Cohen's Kappa demonstrated substantial agreement ({kappa}=0.83). However, sensitivity varied significantly with time relative to symptom onset. Early in the course of infection (days -3 to 2), saliva had 12 times (95%CI: 1.2, 130) greater likelihood of detecting viral RNA compared to MTS. After day 2, there was a non-significant trend to greater sensitivity using MTS samples. Conclusion: Saliva and MTS specimens demonstrated high agreement, making saliva a suitable alternative to MTS nasal swabs for COVID-19 detection. Furthermore, saliva was more sensitive than MTS early in the course of infection, suggesting that it may be a superior and cost-effective screening tool for COVID-19.

Practice and technique of using a protective mask in older adults

Objective. To assess the practice and technique of using a protective mask (surgical mask) in older adults. Methods: A convenience sample of 287 older adults aged >65 years were recruited between January and February 2017 when there was no respiratory epidemic. Their practice and technique of using a mask were assessed using a questionnaire and an observational checklist, respectively. Results: Older adults' practice and technique of using a mask were unsatisfactory. 30.1% and 26.9% indicated that they never wear a mask when taking care of family members with fever and respiratory infection, respectively. None could correctly perform all 12 steps in wearing and taking off a mask. 92.3%, 96.6%, and 93.7% did not perform hand hygiene before wearing and taking off the mask and after disposing of the mask, respectively. Conclusion: Compliance of older adults with wearing masks during a non-epidemic period was low. The commonly omitted steps of wearing and taking off a mask were related to hand hygiene. We recommend using the knowledge-attitude-practice model to rectify misconceptions and strengthen awareness on the use of masks in the required situations and on commonly omitted or incorrectly performed techniques.

Chinese herbal medicine used with or without conventional western therapy for COVID-19: An evidence review of clinical studies

Objective: To present the evidence of the effectiveness and safety of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) used with or without conventional western therapy on COVID-19. Methods: Clinical studies on effectiveness and safety of CHM for COVID-19 were included. We summarized general characteristics of included studies, evaluated methodological quality of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), analyzed the use of CHM, estimated the effectiveness and safety of CHM. Results: A total of 58 clinical studies were identified including RCTs (17.24%, 10), non-randomized controlled trials (1.72%, 1), retrospective studies with a control group (18.97%, 11), case-series (20.69%, 12) and case-reports (41.38%, 24). No high methodological quality RCTs were identified. The most frequently tested Chinese patent medicine, Chinese herbal medicine injection or prescribed herbal decoction were: Lianhua Qingwen granule/capsule, Xuebijing injection and Maxing Shigan Tang. In terms of aggravation rate, pooled analyses showed that there had statistical differences between the intervention group and the comparator group (RR 0.42, 95% CI 0.21 to 0.82, 6 RCTs;RR 0.37, 95% CI 0.22 to 0.64, 4 retrospective studies with control group), that is, CHM plus conventional western therapy appeared better than conventional western therapy in reducing aggravation rate. In addition, compared with conventional western therapy, CHM plus conventional western therapy had potential advantages in increasing the resolution rate and shortening the duration of fever, cough and fatigue, improving the negative conversion rate of nucleic acid test, and increasing the number of patients with inflammatory disappearance or shortening the time from receiving treatment to beginning of inflammation disappearance. For adverse events, pooled data showed that there was no statistical difference between the CHM and the control groups. Conclusion: Current low certainty evidence suggests that there may be a tendency that CHM plus conventional western therapy is superior to conventional western therapy alone. The use of CHM did not increase the risk of adverse events.

Modeling population dynamics for information dissemination through Facebook

Online social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have become part of our daily lives. Their influence on business, politics, and society is considerable. Sensitive or unreliable information can adversely affect individuals, organizations, and governments. Due to the effects of the Covid-19 epidemic, online news is more plentiful and accessible, which raises concerns about its reliability, quality, and authenticity. This article proposes the use of population dynamics model to study information dissemination on Facebook and a Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model to examine information propagation as an outbreak of disease. We investigated 27 datasets with more than 270,000 messages, and the experiments showed that the population dynamics model is suitable for modeling the spread of information. The results revealed that information propagation could occur rapidly;after only 1–2 days. Additionally, we discovered that it is very crucial to find immediate solutions for preventing fake information as soon as it appears. This work enables us to understand the mechanism of information dissemination on social networks. This can help control and prevent the spread of misleading information, avoiding unintended consequences. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The influence and inspiration of COVID-19 epidemic on the construction of hospital sewage prevention and control system

The sources and components of hospital sewage are complex, including pathogenic microorganisms, drugs, metabolites, antibiotic resistant genes, heavy metals, contrast agents, etc. It will become an important way of epidemic spread and a serious source of environmental pollution without effective treatment. Moreover, the emerging contaminants, such as drugs, have become a hotspot in water environment and water pollution control, and the hospital sewage is one of important sources of these contaminants. Based on the impact of COVID-19 on the prevention and control system of the medical system during the current epidemic period, this review illustrated the distribution of drugs and pathogenic microorganisms in hospital sewage, summarized the progress and problems of domestic and foreign hospital sewage treatment technology, and also proposed the future development direction of hospital sewage treatment technology. More importantly, under the special circumstances of COVID-19 epidemic, higher requirements and standards are needed for the construction of hospital sewage control system. Specifically, the simultaneous degradation of drugs and disinfection of pathogenic microorganisms may be the "hotspot" for the development of hospital sewage treatment technology and equipment in the future. © 2020, Editorial Department of JCEE. All right reserved.