Patients with Omicron variant infection can safely undergo elective orthopedic surgery: a retrospective cohort study (preprint)

Background COVID-19 is believed to be associated with significantly increased risks of morbidity and mortality. However, there are lack of reports on how infection with the COVID-19 Omicron variant affects the perioperative prognosis. Therefore, this study sought to find out perioperative differences in laboratory test results and complications between orthopedic surgery patients who were COVID-19 positive and negative at admission, to explore whether patients infected with the Omicron variant need to delay their orthopedic elective surgery.Methods A single-center cohort study of 54 orthopedic inpatients with COVID-19 Omicron variant infection were 1:1 matched to those who did not have a history of COVID-19, laboratory parameters including blood routine, inflammatory factors, coagulogram markers and postoperative complications were recorded and compared.Results Differences can not be found in the incidence of perioperative complications and mortality rates between the group infected with the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant and the uninfected group, as well as no statistical differences in laboratory test indicators.Conclusions The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant does not appear to pose a huge threat to elective orthopedic surgery, patients with Omicron variant infection can safely undergo elective orthopedic surgery without delay.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Consumer Behavior-Evidence From China's Stock Market.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically reshaped consumers' grocery shopping behavior. Meanwhile, change in consumer shopping behavior might further exert a considerable and far-reaching impact on the food retail industry. Although the existing literature provides investigation on the impact of the pandemic on the retail industry, very few studies discuss the impact of changes in consumer shopping behavior on the stock market performance of the retail industry. This paper investigates selected food retailers listed in China's stock market. To overcome the problems of the Chow test, the Quandt-Andrews test was used to identify the dates of breakpoints of structural change in the stock price performance of those selected companies. The results suggest that there has indeed been an industry-wide structural change in the stock market performance during the pandemic. The study found that the dates of breakpoints for the selected companies were concentrated in the first half of 2020, when China was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic the most. Our survey shows that under strict epidemic prevention and control measures, consumers have gradually adapted to the new normal of epidemic prevention to a certain extent, established safety awareness, and changed their consumption behavior. Our study on stock price data implies that Chinese consumers experienced a shift from physical store offline purchases to online purchasing model.

Evaluation of the early-stage entrepreneurship activity in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (measured by total cases and deaths per 100K people) on the early-stage entrepreneurship activity (measured by the Kauffman Early-Stage Entrepreneurship indicators) in the United States. The empirical analyses are based on the panel dataset of 51 States between 2020 and 2021. The findings show that the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affects early-stage entrepreneurship activity. Further analyses indicate the positive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the startup's early survival rate. However, new entrepreneurs' rate and opportunity share are negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Implications for the post-COVID-19 era are also discussed.

The Effects of Passenger Risk Perception During the COVID-19 Pandemic on Airline Industry: Evidence From the United States Stock Market.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a dramatic reshaping of passenger risk perception for airline industry. The sharp increase in risk aversion by air passenger has caused a disastrous impact on the tourism service industry, particularly airline industry. Although the existing literature has provided a lot of studies on the impact of the pandemic on travel industry, there are very few studies discussing the impact of change in passenger risk perception on the stock market performance of airline industry. This study considers two types of airline companies, full-service and low-cost. In order to overcome the traditional problem of the Chow test, Quandt-Andrews test is used to identify structural change points during the pandemic in the stock prices of United States airline companies. The result shows that an industry-wide structural change in the stock market performance indeed is found to take place during the pandemic for United States airline companies. Meanwhile, no significant difference is found in the structural change date between the two types of airline companies. The selected airline companies are found to be clustered toward the end of 2020 (November and December) in their structural change dates. Although the strike of the COVID-19 pandemic on airline industry has proven to be widespread and profound, our investigation implies that air passengers have gradually adapted to the new normal of travel activities at some level and partly rebuild their sense of safety under the strict epidemic-control measures.

The Significant Effects of the COVID-19 on Leisure and Hospitality Sectors: Evidence From the Small Businesses in the United States.

This paper uses the daily seasonally-adjusted data for net revenues and openings of small businesses in the accommodation, food services, leisure, and hospitality sectors in the United States from January 10, 2020, to June 24, 2021. The results from the Dorta-Sanchez bootstrap unit-root test for a random walk with drift show that the COVID-19 crisis has significantly affected revenues and openings of small leisure and hospitality firms. Moreover, the results remain valid when the data for the national level and 51 states are considered.

Assessment of radiation doses and image quality of multiple low-dose CT exams in COVID-19 clinical management

<h4>Purpose</h4> The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first reported in December 2019 from an outbreak of unexplained pneumonia in Wuhan (Hubei, China) that subsequently spread rapidly around the world. Because of the public health emergency, chest CT has been widely used for sensitive detection and diagnosis, monitoring the changes of lesions and also for treatment evaluation. The purpose of this study was to investigate radiation dose and image quality of chest CT scans received by COVID-19 patients and to evaluate the oncogenic risk of multiple chest CT examinations. <h4>Methods</h4> A retrospective review of 33 patients with RT-PCR confirmed COVID-19 infection was performed from January 31, 2020 to February 19, 2020. The date of each CT exam and respective radiation dose for each exam was recorded for all patients. Multiple pulmonary CT scans were obtained during diagnosis and treatment procedure. Scan frequency, total scan times, radiation dose, and image quality were determined. <h4>Results</h4> Thirty-three patients (15 males and 18 females, age 21–82 years) with confirmed COVID-19 pneumonia underwent a total of 143 chest CT scans. The number of CT scans per patient was 4 ± 1, with a range of 2–6. The time interval between two consecutive chest CT scans was 3 ± 1 days. The average effective dose from a single chest CT scan was 1.21 ± 0.10 mSv, with a range of 1.02–1.44 mSv. The average cumulative effective dose per patient was 5.25 ± 1.52 mSv, with a range of 2.24–7.48 mSv. The maximum cumulative effective dose was 7.48 mSv for six CT examinations during COVID-19 treatment. Based on subjective image quality analysis, the visual scoring of CT findings was 11.23 ± 1.35 points out of 15 points. <h4>Conclusions</h4> The frequency, total number and image quality of chest CT scans should be reviewed carefully to guarantee minimally required CT scans during the COVID-19 management.

The Impact of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic on Investor Sentiment-Evidence From A-Share Listed Companies in China.

In a DID model, this study examines the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the investor sentiment in the financial market of China using monthly panel data on newly listed Chinese companies between October 2019 and June 2020. The outbreak of the pandemic is shown to exert a significant negative impact on investor sentiment. A future industry heterogeneity analysis shows that the pandemic has driven up investor sentiment in the pharmaceutical sector while having a significantly negative impact on non-pharmaceutical sectors. The pandemic is shown to have a negative impact on the private sector and foreign-invested sector in China while a significantly positive impact on the state-owned sector. This study contributes to the existing literature on the investigation of how significant the impact of public health emergencies on investor sentiment is.

Impact of COVID-19 outbreak on the long-range transport of common air pollutants in KUWAMS

As a background sampling site in western Japan, the Kanazawa University Wajima Air Monitoring Station (KUWAMS) continuously observes the air pollutants, including PM1, PM2.5, organic carbon (OC) and element carbon (EC). Data for September 2019 to April 2020 were compared with data for September 2018 to April 2019. The mean concentrations of both PM1 and PM2.5 were 4.10 micro g/m3 (47%) and 5.82 micro g/m3 (33%) lower, respectively in the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) period (January to April) than in the same period in 2019. Notably, the average concentrations of both classes of particulate matter (PM) in the COVID-19 period were the lowest for that period in all years since 2016. OC and EC also considerably lower (by 69 and 63%, respectively) during the COVID-19 period than during the same period in 2019. All pollutants were then started to increase after the resumption of the work in 2020. The pollutant variations correspond to the measure implemented during the COVID-19 period, including the nationwide lockdown and work resumption. Furthermore, the reductions in the ratios PM1/PM2.5 and OC/EC during COVID-19 period indicate lighter pollution and fewer emission sources. This analysis of the changes in the pollutant concentrations during the epidemic and non-epidemic periods illustrates the significance of the dominant pollution emissions at KUWAMS and the impact of pollution from China that undergoes long-range transport to KUWAMS.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on China's Manufacturing Sector: A Global Value Chain Perspective.

This paper, based on the notion of Trade in Value Added (TiVA), combines the global trade analysis project (GTAP) model with the value-added model in seeking to simulate and assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on China's manufacturing sector in global value chain (GVC) reconfiguration. The empirical study provides three major results. First, at the macroeconomic level, the pandemic wreaks a negative impact on all the economies, including the U.S., in regard to import & export trade, GDP and social welfare policy. Second, nation-level simulation shows that there's a remarkable disparity across different pandemic scenarios in the level of division of labor and of GVC participation for China and its trade partners. Third, sector-level analysis shows that the impacts of the pandemic include promoting the level of GVC participation and of labor division in China's manufacturing sector (electromechanical equipment and computer goods). This paper also provides policy advice for Chinese government: participation in higher-end GVCs, introduction of further structural reforms and retention of foreign investors, and active responses to GVC reconfiguration and cross-border capital flow.

Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, investor sentiment, and medical portfolio: Evidence from China, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, and U.S

This study explores whether investor sentiment, driven by Coronavirus-related news (CRNs) and economic-related announcements (ERAs) associated with the Coronavirus outbreak, is priced in medical stock portfolios in China, Hongkong, Korea, Japan, and U.S. We find that the CNRs and ERAs do not trigger irrational investment behaviours towards medical stocks. CRNs exert significant and positive effects on the five markets' medical portfolios. ERAs also pose positive and significant effects on five markets' medical portfolios. Furthermore, ERAs have stronger effects on the institutional investor sentiment than the individual investor sentiment. Total effects of CRNs and ERAs on five markets' medical stock portfolios are positive and significant, meaning the optimistic investor sentiment on the medical industry, which plays the critical role in preventing this unprecedented infectious disease.

Efficacy and safety of the extracorporeal shockwave therapy in patients with postherpetic neuralgia: study protocol of a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) is one of the most common types of chronic neuropathic pain, which seriously affects quality of the life because of pain severity and poor response to the currently available treatments. The main strategies for PHN management are medication and invasive interventional therapies;however, these approaches have many adverse effects, so it is important to find another effective and safe treatment for PHN. METHODS: A single-center, single-blind randomized clinical trial will evaluate 98 study participants randomized in a 1:1 ratio into control and experimental groups. The control group will receive conventional treatment including medication therapy and invasive interventional therapy. The experimental group will receive extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT) in addition to conventional therapy. The primary outcome is pain intensity assessed on a visual analogue scale (VAS);the secondary outcomes are the following: quality of life assessed by the 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), psychological state for anxiety and depression measured by the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), and sleep quality measured by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Assessors blinded to the randomization will collect data during the intervention period at baseline and weeks 1, 4, and 12. The plasma levels of tumor necrosis factor-αand interleukin-6 will be assessed before and after ESWT to explore the biochemical mechanisms of ESWT in the treatment of PHN. DISCUSSION: This randomized controlled trial will evaluate the effectiveness and safety of ESWT in patients with PHN and thus will provide clinical evidence for its use in the management of PHN and explore the potential biochemical mechanisms of this treatment. TRIAL REGISTRATION: www.ChiCTR.org.cn , identifier: ChiCTR1900025828. Registered on 10 September 2019.

Triaging patients in the outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus (preprint)

In the end of 2019, the epidemic of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) occurred in Wuhan and spread rapidly. Changsha, a city located south to the epicenter, was soon impacted. To control the transmission of the coronavirus and avoid nosocomial infection, triage procedures based on epidemiology were implemented in a local hospital of the city. This retrospective study analyzed the data collected during the triage period and found that COVID-19 patients were enriched seven folds into the Section A designated for rapid detection and quarantine. On the other side, roughly triple amounts of visits were received at the Section B for patients without obvious epidemiological history. Eight COVID-19 cases were spotted out of 247 suspected patients. More than 50% of the suspected patients were submitted to multiple rounds of nucleic acid analysis for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Of the 239 patients who were diagnosed as negative of the virus infection,188 were successfully revisited and none was reported as a COVID-19 case. Of the eight COVID-19 patients, three were confirmed only after multiple rounds of nucleic acid analysis. Besides comorbidities, delayed sharing of epidemiological history added another layer of complexity to the diagnosis in practice. While SARS-CoV-2 epidemic is being alerted in many countries, our report will be helpful to other colleagues in rapid identification of COVID-19 cases and controlling the transmission of the disease.