CoviFake: A Framework to Detect and Analyze Fake COVID19 Tweets

Along with the unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on human lives, a new crisis of fake and false information related to disease has also emerged. Primarily, social media platforms such as Twitter are used to disseminate fake information due to ease of access and their large audience. However, automatic detection and classification of fake tweets is challenging task due to the complexity and lack of contextual features of short text. This paper proposes a novel CoviFake framework to classify and analyze fake tweets related to COVID-19 using vocabulary and non-vocabulary features. For this purpose, first, we combine and enhance 'CTF' and 'COVID19 Rumor' datasets to build our COVID19-sham dataset containing 25,388 labelled tweets. Next, we extract the vocabulary and 12 non-vocabulary features to compare the performance of six state-of-the-art machine learning classifiers. Our results highlight that the Random Forest (RF) classifier achieves the highest accuracy of 94.53% with the combination of top 2,000 vocabulary and 12 non-vocabulary features. In addition, we developed a large-scale dataset of CoviTweets containing 7.88 million English tweets posted by 3.8 million users during two months (March-April, 2020). The analysis of CoviTweets leveraging our framework reveals that the dataset contains 1.64 million (20.87%) fake tweets. Furthermore, we perform an in-depth examination by assigning a 'fakeness score' to hashtags and users in CoviTweets. © 2022 IEEE.

A review of thermal impact of surface acoustic waves on microlitre droplets in medical applications

The surface acoustic waves (SAW) propagate inside the microdroplets resulting in kinetic and thermal impacts. The kinetic drives fluid particles inside the droplet while thermal impact increases the liquid’s temperature. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the research investigations related to internal kinetics and heating inside the microdroplet caused by the acoustic waves. The main factors that affect the kinetics and convection heat transfer are the piezoelectric materials, shape of the interdigital transducer (IDT) and mode of acoustic waves. Internal streaming (kinetic) leads to particle mixing, particle manipulation, cell sorting, cell patterning, cell separation, measuring the concentration of immunoglobulin and so forth. The effect of changing the mode of waves and the shape of IDT on the relevant applications are presented. Internal convection heat transfer is important where heating of the liquid is essential for many applications such as monitoring blood coagulation in the human plasma and an acoustic tweezer for particle trapping. Experimental methods developed by researchers to realise uniform temperature with constant heating and cooling cycles are also discussed. Such methods are widely used in the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect COVID-19 infection. The heating of the droplet can be efficiently controlled by changing the input power and by varying the duty factor. © The Author(s) 2022.

Correlation of severity of disease and changes in basic hematlological parameters in patients of COVID-19

Objective: To determine the correlation between disease severity and changes in basic hematological parameters in cases of Covid-19 in a tertiary care center. Materials and methods: This Cross Sectional analytical study was done in Khyber Teaching Hospital from March to June 2020. Covid-19 cases diagnosed by nasal swab PCR were included in the study. Clinical features were noted by doctor on duty and complete blood count was done. Data was analyzed by SPSS. Mean and standard deviation were used for quantitative data. Frequency and percentages were used for qualitative data. Shapiro Wilk’s test was done to find normality of the data. Rank biserial correlation test was applied to determine association between ordinal (decreased, normal and increased cell counts) and dichotomous (severe and non-severe disease) variables. Levels of hemoglobin leukocyte count and platelet counts in severe cases were shown by box plots. Results: Mean age of 101 cases of Covid-19 was 56±15.7 years. Male to female ratio was 1.5:1. Commonest clinical features were generalized body aches and fever, seen in 53(52.5%) and 48(47.5%) cases respectively. 36 (35.6%) cases were serious and needed ventilatory support. In serious cases, hemoglobin and platelet count was normal in most of the cases i.e. 16(44.4%) and 30(83.3%) respectively, while the leukocyte count was increased in 26 (72%) which was statistically significant (p=.017, OR=1.124). Conclusion: Leukocyte count is high in cases of Covid-19. There is no significant correlation between severity level and hemoglobin and platelet count. The raised total leukocyte count is associated with severe disease in Covid19.

Molecular epidemiology of SARS-COV-2 in Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan: A real world clinical experience

The coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) outbreak represents a thankfully rare yet extremely salient incident that had an adverse effect on individuals, families, and societies throughout the world. COVID-19 has the highest infectivity and spreading rate as compared to other human coronaviruses. SARS-CoV-2 was recognized as the disease causative agent that initially targets humans' respiratory system that may lead to multi-organ failure and death. To date, COVID-19 spread to 220 countries/regions of the world, including Pakistan. This study aimed to examine the prevalence of COVID-19 among the general population in District Mardan of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan. A total of 4199 suspected individuals (2898 were males, and 1301 were females) were screened through RT-PCR. The age of suspected individuals was ranging from 10-90 years, and the average age was found 42 +/- 20.8 years. Among all suspected individuals, 753 were SARS-CoV-2 positive and diagnosed with COVID-19. Among the positive individuals, 500 (66%) were males, and 253 (34%) were females. The overall prevalence was found at 17.93%. Most of the SARS-CoV-2 positive individuals were belonging to age -group 31 to 40 (n=182), followed by age-group 21 to 30 (n=166). The prevalence of COVID-19 in the Mardan district is very high and needs WHO recommended SOPs to control the spread of COVID-19.

Uncommon Presentations of COVID-19

A Novel Corona virus, SARS-CoV-2 causing COVID-19 disease has become a global public health problem with varied presentations. The common clinical presentations include pneumonia, myocarditis, gastroenteritis, delirium, though few uncommon cases also came into light showing features of spontaneous pneumothorax, pneumomediastinum, encephalopathy, stroke, psychosis, bowel ischemia, pancreatitis, thrombosis and adrenal insufficiency. These features were more often seen in critically unwell patients with high morbidity and mortality;presented either late in the disease course or early prior to even common symptoms. Our aim of the article is to summarize 'Uncommon Presentations' which might get misdiagnosed, possibly leading to further transmission or delayed diagnosis resulting in poor outcome.