A novel textual track-data-based approach for estimating individual infection risk of COVID-19.

With the recurrence of infectious diseases caused by coronaviruses, which pose a significant threat to human health, there is an unprecedented urgency to devise an effective method to identify and assess who is most at risk of contracting these diseases. China has successfully controlled the spread of COVID-19 through the disclosure of track data belonging to diagnosed patients. This paper proposes a novel textual track-data-based approach for individual infection risk measurement. The proposed approach is divided into three steps. First, track features are extracted from track data to build a general portrait of COVID-19 patients. Then, based on the extracted track features, we construct an infection risk indicator system to calculate the infection risk index (IRI). Finally, individuals are divided into different infection risk categories based on the IRI values. By doing so, the proposed approach can determine the risk of an individual contracting COVID-19, which facilitates the identification of high-risk populations. Thus, the proposed approach can be used for risk prevention and control of COVID-19. In the empirical analysis, we comprehensively collected 9455 pieces of track data from 20 January 2020 to 30 July 2020, covering 32 provinces/provincial municipalities in China. The empirical results show that the Chinese COVID-19 patients have six key features that indicate infection risk: place, region, close-contact person, contact manner, travel mode, and symptom. The IRI values for all 9455 patients vary from 0 to 43.19. Individuals are classified into the following five infection risk categories: low, moderate-low, moderate, moderate-high, and high risk.

Clinical characteristics of 1139 mild cases of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant infected patients in Shanghai.

In March 2022, the Omicron variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) surged during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Shanghai, but over 90% of patients were mild. This study included 1139 COVID-19 patients mildly infected with the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 in Shanghai from May 1 to 10, 2022, aiming to clarify the demographic characteristics and clinical symptoms of patients with mild Omicron infection. The clinical phenotypes of Omicron infection were identified by model-based cluster analysis to explore the features of different clusters. The median age of the patients was 41.0 years [IQR: 31.0-52.0 years] and 73.0% were male. The top three clinical manifestations are cough (57.5%), expectoration (48.3%), and nasal congestion and runny nose (43.4%). The prevalence of nasal congestion and runny nose varied significantly across the doses of vaccinations, with 23.1% in the unvaccinated population and 30%, 45.9%, and 44.3% in the 1-dose, 2-dose and 3-dose vaccinated populations, respectively. In addition, there were significant differences for fever (23.1%, 26.0%, 28.6%, 18.4%), head and body heaviness (15.4%, 14.0%, 26.7%, 22.4%), and loss of appetite (25.6%, 30.0%, 33.6%, 27.7%). The unvaccinated population had a lower incidence of symptoms than the vaccinated population. Cluster analysis revealed that all four clusters had multisystemic symptoms and were dominated by both general and respiratory symptoms. The more severe the degree of the symptoms was, the higher the prevalence of multisystemic symptoms will be. The Omicron variant produced a lower incidence of symptoms in mildly infected patients than previous SARS-CoV-2 variants, but the clinical symptoms caused by the Omicron variant are more complex, so that it needs to be differentiated from influenza.

Fair Assignment for Reserved Nucleic Acid Testing

Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is now treating the health of millions of people worldwide. The Chinese government now applies nucleic acid testing as a tool to detect patients from healthy people to control the spread of COVID-19. However, people may come to the nucleic acid testing stations simultaneously, leading to long queues and wasting time. In this paper, we proposed the reserved nucleic acid testing method, which could be easily implemented via Web applications associated with nucleic acid testing. Its key idea is to assign people to different pre-scheduled time slots so that the number of people arriving at a certain time slot can be controlled under the capacity, and thus congestion can be relieved. The key question is how to assign people in a fair manner. We propose a concise model to formalize and analyze the minimum total envy and pairwise fairness assignment problem for a variety of reservation-based applications, including nuclear acid testing. Its objective is to maximize the sum of each person's utility under the capacity constraints of time slots. The decision variables are the time slot assignment of each person. We show that the envy-freeness solution is usually unavailable. However, we can minimize the total envy through appropriate arrangements and realize pairwise fairness with equal-chance shuffling.

Role of Telemedicine in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.

BACKGROUND: Telemedicine plays an important role in the management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), particularly during a pandemic such as COVID-19. However, the effectiveness and efficiency of telemedicine in managing IBD are unclear. OBJECTIVE: This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to compare the impact of telemedicine with that of standard care on the management of IBD. METHODS: We systematically searched the PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Scopus databases on April 22, 2020. Randomized controlled trials comparing telemedicine with standard care in patients with IBD were included, while conference abstracts, letters, reviews, laboratory studies, and case reports were excluded. The IBD-specific quality of life (QoL), disease activity, and remission rate in patients with IBD were assessed as primary outcomes, and the number of in-person clinic visits per patient, patient satisfaction, psychological outcome, and medication adherence were assessed as secondary outcomes. Review Manage 5.3 and Stata 15.1 were used for data analysis. RESULTS: A total of 17 randomized controlled trials (2571 participants) were included in this meta-analysis. The telemedicine group had higher IBD-specific QoL than the standard care group (standard mean difference 0.18, 95% CI 0.01 to 0.34; P.03). The number of clinic visits per patient in the telemedicine group was significantly lower than that in the standard care group (standard mean difference -0.71, 95% CI -1.07 to -0.36; P<.001). Subgroup analysis showed that adolescents in the telemedicine group had significantly higher IBD-specific QoL than those in the standard care group (standard mean difference 0.42, 95% CI 0.15 to 0.69; I2=0; P.002), but there was no significant difference between adults in the 2 groups. There were no significant differences in disease activity, remission rate, patient satisfaction, depression, self-efficacy, generic QoL, and medication adherence outcomes between the telemedicine and standard care groups. CONCLUSIONS: Telemedicine intervention showed a promising role in improving IBD-specific QoL among adolescents and decreased the number of clinic visits among patients with IBD. Further research is warranted to identify the group of patients with IBD who would most benefit from telemedicine.

Epidemiology of and Risk Factors for COVID-19 Infection among Health Care Workers: A Multi-Centre Comparative Study.

Healthcare workers (HCWs) worldwide are putting themselves at high risks of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by treating a large number of patients while lacking protective equipment. We aim to provide a scientific basis for preventing and controlling the COVID-19 infection among HCWs. We used data on COVID-19 cases in the city of Wuhan to compare epidemiological characteristics between HCWs and non-HCWs and explored the risk factors for infection and deterioration among HCWs based on hospital settings. The attack rate (AR) of HCWs in the hospital can reach up to 11.9% in Wuhan. The time interval from symptom onset to diagnosis in HCWs and non-HCWs dropped rapidly over time. From mid-January, the median time interval of HCW cases was significantly shorter than in non-HCW cases. Cases of HCWs and non-HCWs both clustered in northwestern urban districts rather than in rural districts. HCWs working in county-level hospitals in high-risk areas were more vulnerable to COVID-19. HCW cases working in general, ophthalmology, and respiratory departments were prone to deteriorate compared with cases working in the infection department. The AR of COVID-19 in HCWs are higher than in non-HCWs. Multiple factors in hospital settings may play important roles in the transmission of COVID-19. Effective measures should be enhanced to prevent HCWs from COVID-19 infection.

Traditional Chinese medicine combined with pulmonary drug delivery system and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: Rationale and therapeutic potential.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive pulmonary interstitial inflammatory disease of unknown etiology, and is also a sequela in severe patients with the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Nintedanib and pirfenidone are the only two known drugs which are conditionally recommended for the treatment of IPF by the FDA. However, these drugs pose some adverse side effects such as nausea and diarrhoea during clinical applications. Therefore, it is of great value and significance to identify effective and safe therapeutic drugs to solve the clinical problems associated with intake of western medicine. As a unique medical treatment, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has gradually exerted its advantages in the treatment of IPF worldwide through a multi-level and multi-target approach. Further, to overcome the current clinical problems of oral and injectable intakes of TCM, pulmonary drug delivery system (PDDS) could be designed to reduce the systemic metabolism and adverse reactions of the drug and to improve the bioavailability of drugs. Through PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science, and CNKI, we retrieved articles published in related fields in recent years, and this paper has summarized twenty-seven Chinese compound prescriptions, ten single TCM, and ten active ingredients for effective prevention and treatment of IPF. We also introduce three kinds of inhaling PDDS, which supports further research of TCM combined with PDDS to treat IPF.

Morphogenesis and cytopathic effect of SARS-CoV-2 infection in human airway epithelial cells.

SARS-CoV-2, a ß-coronavirus, has rapidly spread across the world, highlighting its high transmissibility, but the underlying morphogenesis and pathogenesis remain poorly understood. Here, we characterize the replication dynamics, cell tropism and morphogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 in organotypic human airway epithelial (HAE) cultures. SARS-CoV-2 replicates efficiently and infects both ciliated and secretory cells in HAE cultures. In comparison, HCoV-NL63 replicates to lower titers and is only detected in ciliated cells. SARS-CoV-2 shows a similar morphogenetic process as other coronaviruses but causes plaque-like cytopathic effects in HAE cultures. Cell fusion, apoptosis, destruction of epithelium integrity, cilium shrinking and beaded changes are observed in the plaque regions. Taken together, our results provide important insights into SARS-CoV-2 cell tropism, replication and morphogenesis.