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This contribution addresses the telephone calls from coronavirus tracers to patients mediated by interpreters through the analysis of a series of real conversations during the communication of PCR tests results, hazards of this situation, hygiene instructions, lockdown orders, and related health issues. The focus will be on culture-related aspects of the communication related to the perception of risk and the asymmetry of knowledge, as reflected on the discourse of the tracers and the responses from patients (many of them immersed in situations of helplessness, unemployment, mental disorders, indigence or simply defiance against legal and health restrictions), as well as on the mechanisms that interpreters use to bridge communication. Critical incident analysis will be used as a methodological approach to select, analyse, and reflect on examples, to be able, not only to offer objective results about the characteristics of the discourse and the nature of the mechanisms used by interpreters, but also to provide criticism and suggestions for the interpreting practice. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
ABSTRACT
As a contribution to the concept of resilience and its construction at the local scale, the article explores the actions developed by the municipalities of the Province of Mendoza during the period of Preventive and Mandatory Social Isolation (ASPO) that was imposed in the Argentine Republic through the Decree 260/2020, between March 20 and July 17, 2020;in relation to preparation, organization, prevention, response and recovery in the face of the Health Emergency by COVID-19. The policies are organized into categories and subcategories that allow analyzing decision-making at different scales and months in relation to Risk Management with corrective and prospective approaches. Subsequently, these actions are classified according to their importance, in relation to the process of building resilience, allowing conclusions to be drawn and proposals to be generated in this regard. © 2023, Corporation for the Management and Reduction of Disaster Risk in Chile (GRID-Chile). All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Renal involvement in COVID-19 infection is varied and worsens its outcome and prognosis. However, the association of COVID-19 infection with glomerulonephritis is exceptional. We report a 46-year-old woman with COVID-19 who had an acute kidney injury and ANCA associated glomerulonephritis two weeks after the onset of the disease. The kidney biopsy showed a crescentic glomerulonephritis and the presence of anti-glomerular basement membrane antibodies (GBM-Abs). She was treated with steroids and oral cyclophosphamide with good response without requiring plasmapheresis. Plasma anti GBM-Abs were negative. This case suggests that the presence of anti-GBM-Abs in the kidney, was temporally related to COVID-19 pulmonary damage. The absence of plasma antibodies is probably due to transient production and glomerular adsorption, but with unknown pathogenic role. © 2022 Sociedad Medica de Santiago. All rights reserved.
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In recent years, the education has been influenced by the implementation of new learning strategies due to the confinement caused by the spread of COVID-19. Teachers adopted audiovisual resources that allow them to teach their classes remotely. However, the transition to this modality has been sudden, forced, and evolving “on the fly" in response to the pedagogical adaptations. A structured implementation of audiovisual media in education is required, since it represents an important part of access to information in our times. For this goal, we propose strategies for the development of complementary offline and online audiovisual content to help teach practical courses in a Biomedical Engineering bachelor program. In particular, we present content created for a Medical Imaging Systems course. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Before the COVID-19 pandemic, telephone interpreters in Spain were used to communicating administrative issues, medical instructions, and even humanitarian social assistance rendered by social workers and psychologists. However, since March 2020 these interactions have been heavily replaced by conversations mediated by telephone interpreters related to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus infection. This contribution describes the provision of telephone interpreting during the COVID-19 pandemic using the information reported by the interpreters of the company Dualia Teletraducciones as a case study. It focuses on healthcare-related services and clients, offering data related to the frequency of use of telephone interpreting, the most common languages used, and the evolution of clients and services (Emergency Rooms, tracers, pandemic hotels, etc.). This article also describes the hiring, training and quality monitoring processes, including the main tools developed to facilitate remote interpreting during the pandemic. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.
ABSTRACT
Background: The clinical spectrum of SARSCoV-2 infection that caused the epidemic appears tobe wide since asymptomatic infection to severe viralpneumonia with respiratory failure and even death.Despite its viral nature antibiotics are prescribed frequently to patients, largely due to suspected bacterialco-infections. Among the responsible factors of antimicrobial resistance: Overuse of Antibiotics,Underuse, and Misuse of Antimicrobials, PoorInfection Control Practices, International Travel,Poverty, etc. Understanding patterns and predictorsof antibiotic prescribing helps to identify opportunities for interventions, target antibiotic stewardshipstrategies to improve antibiotic use.Objective: To determine the impact and influence of the SARS-CoV-2 and its co-infections onthe current antimicrobial resistance situation.Methods: We conducted a review using PubMed,the search yielded 82 citations where 66 failed tomeet the inclusion criteria and 16 were includedin this review.Results: Co-infection rates for SARS-COV-2have been estimated between 6.1% and 8.0%,72% were treated with antibiotics, of whom 15%received anti-fungal treatment.Discussion: Experts in the topic argue thatCOVID-19 will result in an increase in antimicrobial resistance rates (AMR). Patientsadmitted during the pandemic are at risk of beingtreated with broad spectrum antibiotics despitethe low prevalence of coinfection, being exposedto procedures that are known risk factors forAMR development. While the counterpart fromother experts argue that COVID-19 will not leadto increased AMR rates because of the decreasedtransmission factors in healthcare and community settings, international travel and all the others antimicrobial resistance factors.Conclusion: The impact of COVID-19 on antimicrobial resistance rates remains to be determined and it is likely to be heterogeneous due tovariation in health care practices. Antibiotic prescribing should be regulated according to nationalguidelines and used only when needed. Theglobal impact is yet unknown and will becomeclear in time as data become available.
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The Covid-19 pandemic newly brings food resilience in cities to our attention and the need to question the desired degree of food self-sufficiency through urban agriculture. While these questions are by no means new and periodically entering the global research focus and policy discussions during periods of crises — the last time during the global financial crisis and resulting food price increases in 2008 — urban and peri-urban agriculture continue to be replaced by land-uses rendering higher market values (e.g. housing, transport, leisure). The loss of priority for urban agriculture in urban land-use planning is a global trend with only a few exceptions. We argue in this essay that this development has widely taken place due to three blind spots in urban planning. First, the limited consideration of social and ecological vulnerabilities and risk-related inequalities of urban inhabitants, food shortage among them, in the face of different scenarios of global change, including climate change or pandemic events such as Covid-19. Second, the disregard of the intensified negative environmental (and related social) externalities caused by distant agricultural production, as well as lacking consideration of nutrient re-cycling potentials in cities (e.g. from wastewater) to replace emission intensive mineral fertilizer use. Third, the lack of accounting for the multifunctionality of urban agriculture and the multiple benefits it provides beyond the provision of food, including social benefits and insurance values, for instance the maintenance of cultural heritage and agro-biodiversity. Along these lines, we argue that existing and new knowledge about urban risks and vulnerabilities, the spatially explicit urban metabolism (e.g. energy, water, nutrients), as well as ecosystem services need to be stronger and jointly considered in land-use decision-making. © 2021 The Authors
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To minimise the risk of coronavirus spread with the negative effects caused by COVID-19 in the health of the population it is necessary to search for alternatives from the organizational point of view to pay permanent attention to the surveillance and control of this disease. Objective: To provide methodological recommendations for the establishment and functioning of the Technical Working Group for the prevention and control of COVID-19 in primary health care. Results: For the establishment of the group it was necessary to define the purposes, define the composition and determine the working methodology. For each area, the tasks to be carried out were specified, which reflect the operational disposal to provide a rapid and effective response. Conclusions: The formation and development of a technical working group constitutes a dynamic and necessary process to ensure in times of COVID-19 the prevention, mitigation, preparation and response to the challenges of this disease.