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The classical infectious disease diffusion model has a deficiency of static parameters, which will lead to server prediction error. Therefore, this article used three different parameter fitting methods to construct a dynamic update mechanism of outbreak spread parameters and reversed fitting through the actual data of the epidemic. The best epidemic transmission parameters can effectively predict the growth of the outbreak in the next cycle. Then, we take the second wave of the outbreak in India as an example, the dynamic update mechanism of the epidemic spread parameters can effectively improve the accuracy of the prediction of the evolution of the novel coronavirus epidemic. According to the test results,we believe it can help the government make correct decisions, implement effective control and realize the reasonable allocation of emergency resources. © 2022 IEEE.
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Within ASEAN, Brunei is one of the low population density nations successfully combating the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. As of 4th January 2023, over 2.6 hundred thousand confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 225 deaths, had been reported in Brunei. This paper outlines the COVID-19 trends in Brunei and strategies taken by the health authorities to contain the pandemic. Three waves of COVID-19 have hit Brunei, with the first case of COVID-19 reported on 9th March 2020. The adoption of the "whole of nation approach” has proven to be effective in managing the outbreak. Early and decisive interventions taken by authorities and the public's cooperation have been a remarkable success story. The key success factors are effective pandemic containment measures, public communication strategy, and enhanced surveillance mechanisms supported by the mass testing program and contact tracing. A national vaccination strategy ensuring adequate vaccine distribution and effective administration has been rolled out to render lasting protection against the infection. National COVID-19 Recovery Plan Framework and a gradual COVID-19 de-escalation plan were implemented to ensure a smoother transition to the new normal. This review provides valuable insights into the development of a robust pandemic leadership model and highlights the lessons and strategies that other countries can adopt for any future uncertainties. © 2023, HH Publisher. All rights reserved.
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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created an urgent need for accurate early diagnosis and monitoring. A label-free rapid electrochemical point-of-care (POC) biosensor for SARS-CoV-2 detection in human saliva is reported here to help address the shortcomings of traditional nucleic acid amplification methods and give a quantitative assessment of the viral load to track infection status anywhere, using disposable electrochemical sensor chips. A new chemical construct of gold nanoparticles (GNp) and thionine (Th) are immobilized on carboxylic acid functionalized carbon nanotubes (SWCNT-COOH) for high-performance biosensing. The sensor uses saliva with a one-step pretreatment and simple testing procedure as an analytical medium due to the user-friendly and non-invasive nature of its procurement from patients. The sensor has a response time of 5 min with a limit of detection (LOD) reaching 200 and 500 pM for the freely suspended spike (S) protein in phosphate buffer saline (PBS) and human saliva, respectively. The sensor's performance was also proven for detecting a COVID-19 pseudovirus in an electrolyte solution with a LOD of 106 copies/mL. The results demonstrate that the optimized POC sensor developed in this work is a promising device for the label-free electrochemical biosensing detection of SARS-CoV-2 and different species of viruses.
Subject(s)
Biosensing Techniques , COVID-19 , Metal Nanoparticles , Nanotubes, Carbon , Humans , SARS-CoV-2 , COVID-19/diagnosis , Gold , Point-of-Care SystemsABSTRACT
Background: Age and multiple comorbidities have been reported to influence the case fatality rate of COVID-19 worldwide, so also in Malaysia;however, to date, no scientific study among the local population has been published to confirm this. This study aimed to determine the overall demographics and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 non-survivors in Malaysia, stratified by age (< 65 vs. >= 65 years old). The mortality was also compared between two half-year periods: March-August 2020 and September 2020-March 2021. Method(s): Daily reports containing demographics and medical history of COVID-19 non-survivors from March 2020 to March 2021 were obtained from the Malaysian Ministry of Health website. All information was extracted retrospectively and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics with SPSS. Result(s): Of 1192 COVID-19 non-survivors, the overall mean (SD) age was 64.8 (15.7) years, with 64.7% male. Death was seen mostly among 50- to 64-year-olds (33.1%) and 65- to 74-year-olds (24.8%). The presence of underlying hypertension (61.8%) and diabetes mellitus (48.2%) were the most common comorbid diseases encountered in the COVID-19 non-survivors. Underlying hypertension, stroke, heart disease and dyslipidaemia were significantly higher among COVID-19 non-survivors who were >= 65 years old compared to those < 65 (p < 0.05). Mortality was a lot higher in September 2020-March 2021 compared to March 2020-August 2020 (91.3% vs. 8.3%). Conclusion(s): Older age, male gender and the presence of multimorbidity (hypertension, diabetes mellitus, stroke and heart disease) are risk factors that contribute to mortality due to COVID-19 in Malaysia, especially among those >= 65 years old. Copyright © The Author(s) 2022.
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Chemotherapeutics and biotherapeutics agents have been explored as a potential treatment for COVID-19. This study was aimed to elucidate latest update related to biotherapeutics and chemotherapeutics against COVID-19 and its variants as well as the product specifications and marketing dynamics of its pharmacotherapies. There are several chemotherapeutics that have been studied for the treatment of COVID-19, including Paxlovid (Nirmatrelvir & Ritonavir) fixed dose combination, nirmatrelvir and ritonavir fixed dose combination, Remdesivir (Vekulary/Covifor) fixed dose combination, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, molnupiravir, favipiravir, Infliximab (Remsima®) fixed dose combination tocilizumab (Actimera), casirivimab+imdevimab (Ronapreve) fixed dose combination, ivermectin, methylprednisole. These drugs have been repurposed for use in COVID-19 due to their antiviral properties and ability to reduce inflammation. The COVID-19 death cases have significantly reduced because of tested efficacy of advanced biotherapeutics and chemotherapeutics. As for marketing dynamics, the demand for chemotherapeutics for the treatment of COVID-19 has increased significantly since the outbreak of the pandemic. Hence, the prices of anti-viral and monoclonal antibodies in top COVID-19 affected countries is also presented here. Considering the molecular interactions, therapeutic activity, efficacy, and adverse effects, the USFDA and the WHO recommended the aforementioned drugs. The chances of approval seems favouring biotherapeutics as these have the best characteristics among the chemotherapeutics. Overall, this review contributes to the scientific understanding of the COVID-19. This can help to inform future research and development efforts and contribute to the overall advancement of knowledge in the field of medicine. © 2022, HH Publisher. All rights reserved.
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The study's objective was to assess the features and content of the COVID-19 mobile applications accessible in the Apple AppStore. A content analysis, comparison, and functionality evaluation of a few COVID-19 related mobile applications was performed. The search for COVID-19 related apps in the iOS AppStore took place between February 1 and March 31, 2022. The mobile applications received a maximum of 7 points (basic feature assessment) and 8 points overall (functionality assessment). The requirements were fully met by receiving one point. Frequencies from descriptive statistics were used to allude to the applications' features according to the app's basic purpose. A total of 234 applications were recognized using the keywords to exploreCOVID-19 related mobile applications in Apple AppStore. However, 58 mobile applications (24.8%) relevant to COVID-19 were evaluated. According to the findings of an evaluation of basic aspects of mobile applications, 89.7% require an internet connection, 70.7% have a size of less than 50 MB, 96.6% require no funding, 58.6% include educational content, and 60.3% offer advice from the applications. In terms of score, 41.4% scored three or below, whereas 58.6% scored four or above. Functionality assessment wise, 79.3% included information regarding COVID-19, 12.1% included COVID-19 contact tracing, 17.2% had vaccination status, a health authority maintained 50%, 31.0% included COVID-19 statistics, and 25.8% were able to report ART/PCR test. In terms of score, 91.4% scored three points or less, and 8.6% scored four points or more. This study has discovered several applications that could effectively prevent COVID-19 pandemic spread. Based on the findings, mobile applications that would be recommended are the ones supported by the government health administration of the respective country. App development companies' applications show that competent healthcare personnel was not involved in developing the applications. Online consultation with healthcare professionals might help the public who do not have access to the nearest hospital. © 2022, HH Publisher. All rights reserved.
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All the teaching and learning activities except laboratory-based practicals remained conducted virtually during the transition from the Covid-19 pandemic to the endemic phase. The problem-based assignment for Pharmaceutical Analysis was conducted virtually. This study aims to evaluate students' level of engagement and perception of virtual engagement to complete an online problem-based assignment on real situations using the cooperative Jigsaw model. Jamboard was used as an online communication tool to connect the students and facilitators. The content of the written discussion posted on the Jamboard and the questionnaire survey were analysed to establish the level of engagement. The student's perception of virtual engagement was based on a questionnaire survey using descriptive analysis. Analysis of the student's opinion posted on the Jamboard showed the presence of cognitive, social, and teaching components in the level of engagement during the virtual discussion. The information from the internet is borderless and the facilitators need to be knowledgeable to explain, guide, and stimulate higher-order thinking among the students. With careful course design, the Jigsaw cooperative activity on real problem-based questions could use to facilitate collaborative problem-solving skills among the students. © 2022, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused severe public health and economic consequences around the world. It is of great importance to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy, especially the stock market. To this end, we proposed to use several state-of-art sparse principal component analysis (PCA) methods for the stock data of the CSI 300 index from February 1, 2019 to February 1, 2021. To show the influence of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we divide this period into two periods, i. e., before and after January 1, 2020. Based on this division, we attempted to extract the principal components and construct portfolio accordingly. The results show that the proportion of principal components representing the market declined after the outbreak. For the constitution in the first two principal components, the important stock sets are substantially different after the outbreak. The stocks from the health care sector start to play an important role in the portfolio of the CSI 300 index after the outbreak. Compared with the CSI 300 index, the first two principal components from the sparse PCA methods can obtain higher returns with a much smaller set of stocks in the portfolio. In conclusion, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led to changes in both proportion and constitution of the principal component of the stocks in the CSI 300 index. © 2021, Editorial Department of Journal of University of Science and Technology of China. All rights reserved.
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Isopropanol is an extremely widely used chemical product. With the outbreak of COVID-19 worldwide, the export demand of isopropanol keeps increasing, and the supply is in short supply. In order to meet the demand of isopropyl alcohol in the international market, the existing production process faces new challenges and needs to be improved and upgraded. In this design, Aspen Plus was used to simulate the existing hydrogenation process of acetone to isopropanol, and it was improved and optimized to establish an annual output of 5 kT isopropanol and a variety of by-products of different specifications. The process adopts double-effect distillation and heat pump distillation to reduce energy consumption, and a set of waste liquid recovery device is designed to effectively recover the by-products and achieve the purpose of improving economic benefits. Simulation results of Aspen Plus show that energy consumption, carbon emission, water consumption and solid waste utilization rate can be reduced by 36.73%, 40%, 45% and 80% respectively, meeting the requirements of “Made in China 2025”. © 2022 SPIE. All rights reserved.
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Well-being is a complex concept with objective and subjective elements that contribute to life satisfaction. Medical students experience inevitable transition from pre-clinical to clinical training with increasingly more independence and responsibility. This study aimed to identify well-being issues in undergraduate clinical students. The emotional, physical, social, spiritual, occupational and intellectual aspects of well-being were focused on. A thorough literature search was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Studies reporting issues from the six aspects of well-being in undergraduate clinical students, and published in peer-reviewed journals in English language from the year 2000 to 2020 with full-text available online were included. The initial search from PubMed, OVID Medline, Psych INFO and CINAHL Plus retrieved 623 articles with 51 studies included in this review. Evidence from the previous studies demonstrated poor well-being among undergraduate clinical students. Stress, lack of exercise, low peer and family support, and mistreatment by clinicians and patients were common well-being issues encountered. Based on this literature review, the five aspects of well-being except the emotional aspect were less explored. Thus, it will be of interest to investigate well-being issues among Malaysian undergraduate clinical students from the physical and occupational aspects, which are further impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identify possible contributing factors. Undergraduate clinical students are faced with several well-being issues. Thus, early detection of these issues is important to avoid devastating consequences to students and patients. © Malaysian Association of Education in Medicine and Health Sciences and Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia. 2021
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As the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues, hospitals in Wuhan have invested great efforts to combat the epidemic. The risk of nosocomial infection and cross infection should not be ignored, and the treatment of non-COVID-19 patients was challenged. According to the characteristics of COVID-19, our hospital has established a transitional ward, enforced the screening and exclusion procedures of COVID-19. We also scientifically formulated and smoothly operated various programs and procedures for the treatment of emergency and critical patients, so that non- COVID-19 patients can be treated in time, ensuring medical safety and nursing quality, also effectively avoiding the spread of COVID-19 in non-isolated areas of the hospital, which has played a very important role at the outbreak stage of the epidemic.