Post COVID-19 Pandemic: The New Technology and Tourism Revolution for Tourism Fairs, Festivals and Events

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has helped businesses in hospitality and tourism industry to reduce costs, improve customer services as well as customer experience, enhance the efficiency of business operational and increase customer retention. The impact of Internet on tourism has been widely discussed and analyzed in tourism research. However, specific study on tourism fairs, festivals and events are less touched. During post COVID-19 pandemic, Internet and marketing are the main element of ICT that has powerful impact on tourism fairs, festivals and events. Tourism fairs, festivals and events make people united and social media become a perfect channel for participant to get their first experiences and share it to the Internet users. In addition, mobile communication technology such as mobile tablets and smartphones become significant where ease for individual to keep updated about changes on festivals and events or offer deals from businesses. Thus, essential for business in tourism fairs, festivals, and events to utilize the element of IT effectively for business continuity. In nutshell, the application of ICT in tourism fairs, festivals and events will be helping to speed up businesses' operation and make festivals and events more enjoyable and efficient. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022.

Measuring Resilience in Health Care Research: A scoping review of questionnaires

This review aimed to assess questionnaires or scales used to measure resilience in health care research and outline the domains included in the questionnaires. We used a five-step framework for developing a scoping review by Arksey and O'Malley in 2005. Studies used in this section were obtained from electronic searches conducted on CINAHL and Medline databases. The initial search yielded 4291 articles;11 papers fulfilled the inclusion criteria, with four questionnaires used to measure resilience. The domains outlined by all questionnaires were overlapping and inconsistent. The most common resilience domains are competence, acceptance and support.

Pattern of admission and outcome of patients admitted to dedicated trauma intensive care unit (ticu), emergency department, teaching hospital, north-eastern malaysia

Background: The role of dedicated Trauma ICU (TICU) in Emergency Department is vital in the chain of trauma care to ensure rehabilitation and sustainable critical care for a better survival outcome. This study is conducted to find out demographic patterns and predictors that can affect the outcomes of trauma patients.Methods: A retrospective review of all patients admitted to TICU, Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (HUSM) was carried out from January 1st, 2016 till December 31st, 2018. Data were collected from TICU admission and discharge registers and were analyse using SPSS version 23.0. Results: A total of 108 trauma patients were included in this study. All cases were exclusively blunt trauma (99.1%) and mainly attributed by road traffic injuries (92.6%). In terms of trauma clinical scoring, 25%(p= 0.001) presented with GCS score < 4, 46.9% (p=0.001) with RTS score <5.5 and 15.6% (p=0.012) with APACHE II score > 28had demonstrated prolonged ICU stay (> 7 days). Meanwhile 62.5% (p= 0.000) with GCS < 4, 75% (p= 0.000) with RTS < 5.5 and 75% (p= 0.000) with APACHE II > 28 were died in TICU. Besides that, those who had prolonged ICU stay (> 7 days) were 8.5 times higher odds to get sepsis (adj OR= 8.532;95% CI: 2.710, 26.863;p= 0.000) and 7 times higher odds to get acute kidney injury (AKI) (adj OR= 7.131;95% CI: 1.464, 34.733;p= 0.015). Meanwhile, patient who received blood transfusion led to 5 folds higher odds ofassociation with rhabdomyolysis (adj OR= 4.968;95% CI: 1.821, 13.549;p= 0.002).Conclusion: In the midst of pandemic COVID-19 it is important for ED physician to early identify and prioritise high risk trauma patient based on predictors and allows for targeted monitoring and intervention that may improve their outcome and also optimise resources accordingly.

Anticoagulation and Antiplatelet Therapy for Prevention of Venous and Arterial Thrombotic Events in Critically Ill Patients With COVID-19: COVID-PACT.

BACKGROUND: The efficacy and safety of prophylactic full-dose anticoagulation and antiplatelet therapy in critically ill COVID-19 patients remain uncertain. METHODS: COVID-PACT (Prevention of Arteriovenous Thrombotic Events in Critically-ill COVID-19 Patients Trial) was a multicenter, 2×2 factorial, open-label, randomized-controlled trial with blinded end point adjudication in intensive care unit-level patients with COVID-19. Patients were randomly assigned to a strategy of full-dose anticoagulation or standard-dose prophylactic anticoagulation. Absent an indication for antiplatelet therapy, patients were additionally randomly assigned to either clopidogrel or no antiplatelet therapy. The primary efficacy outcome was the hierarchical composite of death attributable to venous or arterial thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, clinically evident deep venous thrombosis, type 1 myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, systemic embolic event or acute limb ischemia, or clinically silent deep venous thrombosis, through hospital discharge or 28 days. The primary efficacy analyses included an unmatched win ratio and time-to-first event analysis while patients were on treatment. The primary safety outcome was fatal or life-threatening bleeding. The secondary safety outcome was moderate to severe bleeding. Recruitment was stopped early in March 2022 (≈50% planned recruitment) because of waning intensive care unit-level COVID-19 rates. RESULTS: At 34 centers in the United States, 390 patients were randomly assigned between anticoagulation strategies and 292 between antiplatelet strategies (382 and 290 in the on-treatment analyses). At randomization, 99% of patients required advanced respiratory therapy, including 15% requiring invasive mechanical ventilation; 40% required invasive ventilation during hospitalization. Comparing anticoagulation strategies, a greater proportion of wins occurred with full-dose anticoagulation (12.3%) versus standard-dose prophylactic anticoagulation (6.4%; win ratio, 1.95 [95% CI, 1.08-3.55]; P=0.028). Results were consistent in time-to-event analysis for the primary efficacy end point (full-dose versus standard-dose incidence 19/191 [9.9%] versus 29/191 [15.2%]; hazard ratio, 0.56 [95% CI, 0.32-0.99]; P=0.046). The primary safety end point occurred in 4 (2.1%) on full dose and in 1 (0.5%) on standard dose (P=0.19); the secondary safety end point occurred in 15 (7.9%) versus 1 (0.5%; P=0.002). There was no difference in all-cause mortality (hazard ratio, 0.91 [95% CI, 0.56-1.48]; P=0.70). There were no differences in the primary efficacy or safety end points with clopidogrel versus no antiplatelet therapy. CONCLUSIONS: In critically ill patients with COVID-19, full-dose anticoagulation, but not clopidogrel, reduced thrombotic complications with an increase in bleeding, driven primarily by transfusions in hemodynamically stable patients, and no apparent excess in mortality. REGISTRATION: URL: https://www. CLINICALTRIALS: gov; Unique identifier: NCT04409834.

Aquaculture Production and Value Chains in the COVID-19 Pandemic.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The purpose of this review is to summarize the impacts of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on aquaculture input supply, production, distribution, and consumption. RECENT FINDINGS: The COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdowns, social distancing, supply chain disruptions, and transport restrictions affect seafood production, distribution, marketing, and consumption. Recommendations are suggested to overcome these challenges. The COVID-19 has led to disruption of aquaculture practices worldwide. The pandemic has adversely affected the aquaculture input supply of fish stocking and feeding, which, in turn, has impacted aquaculture production. Moreover, the COVID-19 crisis has had adverse effects on value addition to aquaculture products, through the restrictions of seafood marketing and exporting. Aquatic food production is vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19 outbreak; hence, adaptation strategies must be developed to cope with the challenges. There is an urgent need for collaboration among key stakeholders to rebuild the supply chain of inputs and fish marketing for sustainable aquaculture practices. International agencies, donors, government and non-governmental organizations, researchers, and policymakers need to develop policies to support aquaculture production and supply chains.

Automatic liver tumor segmentation and identification using fully connected convolutional neural network from CT images

In recent years, one of the largest causes of death in human beings is liver tumor and cancer. In the current scenario, identifying the cancer tumor manually is very difficult and takes a lot of time as the world is battling with COVID-19. The doctors and physicians are busy in serving and curing them. To predict the stage of liver tumor and plan the treatment, the segmentation is done from CT scanned images. In this research, two-stage automatic liver segmentation and tumor identification framework using a fully connected convolutional neural network (FC-CNN) model is proposed. During the first stage, the liver region is segmented using level set method from the preprocessed (OTSU thresholding) CT images. The features are extracted and utilized to detect the liver tumor in the second stage. The developed FC-CNN is trained and tested using the extracted second order statistical textural features to classify the tumor affected and normal image. The proposed FC-CNN model is trained and tested with 3D-IRCADb-01 and Kaggle datasets. The tested results prove that the proposed FC-CNN model outperforms other reported methods. From the performance analysis, it is observed that it achieves a good accuracy and sensitivity rate of 99.11% and 98.10%, respectively. © 2022 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Single-cell RNA sequencing highlights a reduced function of natural killer and cytotoxic T cells in recovered COVID-19 pregnant women (preprint)

Pregnancy is a complex phenomenon during which women undergo immense immunological change throughout this period. Having an infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus leads to an additional burden on the highly stretched immune response. Some studies suggest that age-matched pregnant women are more prone to SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with normal healthy (non-pregnant) women, while alternative evidence proposed that pregnant women are neither susceptible nor develop severe symptoms. This discrepancy in different findings regarding the immune responses of pregnant women infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus is not well understood. In this study, we investigated how SARS-CoV-2 viral infection could modulate the immune landscape during the active infection phase and recovery in pregnant females. Using flow cytometry, we identified that intermediate effector CD8+ T cells were increased in pregnant women who had recovered from COVID-19 as opposed to those currently infected. Similarly, an increase in CD4+ T helper cells (early or late) during the recovered phase was observed during the recovery phase compared with infected pregnant women or healthy pregnant women, whilst infected pregnant women had a reduced number of late effector CD4+ T cells. CD3+CD4-CD8-NKT cells that diminished during active infection in contrast to healthy pregnant women were a significant increase in recovered COVID-19 recovered pregnant women. Further, our single-cell RNA sequencing data revealed that infection of SARS-CoV-2 had changed the gene expression profile of monocytes, CD4+ effector cells and antibody-producing B cells in convalescent as opposed to healthy pregnant women. Additionally, several genes with cytotoxic function, interferon signalling type I & II, and pro- and anti-inflammatory functions in natural killer cells and CD8+ cytotoxic T cells were compromised in recovered patients compared with healthy pregnant women. Overall, our study highlights that SARS-CoV-2 infection deranged the adaptive immune response in pregnant women and could be implicated in pregnancy complications in ongoing pregnancies.

Brief Review on Potential Production of Plastic Waste Concrete Aggregates Using Water-Assisted Melt Compounding

The plastic industry is one of the biggest and essential industries, ranging from domestic to engineering products. Nowadays, plastic waste is one of the major issues human-faced worldwide. It is predicted to worsen due to the increment in online purchasing rising from the Covid-19 situations. On the other hand, the construction industry is the largest industry in different economies and the highest consumer of raw materials. Along with the growing demand for concrete aggregates, natural stone materials are overused and eventually deplete resources. Both severe problems can be mitigated by recycling these plastic wastes to serve as an alternative to aggregates in concrete. Despite accumulative efforts, the produced plastic waste aggregates (PWA) is still inferior in strengthening the concrete due to poor interaction between both particles. Therefore, steps to further improving their properties and compatibility with concrete through various approaches are crucial. This review briefly introduces the current situation of concrete industries and global plastic waste accumulation issues. The efforts in the utilization of plastic waste aggregates in concrete alongside their properties are also discussed. Lastly, the water-assisted melt compounding and advantages in the processing of thermoplastic composites are also presented to serve as the platform for a new processing approach to be utilized in PWA production. Therefore, a better insight into the potential of producing PWA with improved physical, mechanical properties corresponds to the enhancing concrete strength via water-assisted melt compounding is offered. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Detection of sars-cov-2 from surface of patients’ leftover food packages at a covid-19 quarantine centre

In healthcare facilities, food waste and its packaging are mostly managed as non-infectious general waste. However, waste from SARS-CoV-2 positive patients, are treated as medical waste as they may be contaminated by the virus. We investigated the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 contamination from positive COVID-19 patients to their leftover food packages at a quarantine centre. Food packages surface was swabbed using prewetted cellular foam, placed into viral transport media and analysed using real time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in two samples (4.5%) from asymptomatic patients who were at day-2 positive SARS-CoV-2 with cycle threshold (Ct) value (RdRp/E), 34.96/35.72 and 37.1/36.48 respectively. Detection of SARS-CoV-2 supports that there is contamination to the waste. These poses risk of exposure as SAR-COV-2 survive on the surfaces, thus, safe handling and disposal of food waste should be maintained. However, further study involving viral culture should be explored to determine the viability of the SARS-CoV-2 from leftover food packages. © 2021, Malaysian Journal of Public Health Medicine. All rights reserved.

Environmental surface sampling of SARS-CoV-2 in selected hospitals in Malaysia.

COVID-19 has spread rapidly worldwide. The role of fomites in facilitating onward transmission is plausible. This study aimed to determine the presence of viable virus and its persistence on the surfaces of fomites in wards treating COVID-19 patients in Malaysia. This study was conducted in two stages. First, environmental sampling was performed on random days in the intensive care unit (ICU) and general wards. Then, in the second stage, samples were collected serially on alternate days for 7 days in two selected general wards. In Stage 1, a total of 104 samples were collected from the surfaces of highly touched and used areas by patients and healthcare workers. Only three samples were tested positive for SARS-COV-2. In Stage 2, three surface samples were detected positive, but no persistence of the virus was observed. However, none of the SARS-CoV-2 RNA was viable through tissue culture. Overall, the environmental contamination of SARS-CoV-2 was low in this hospital setting. Hospitals' strict infection control and the compliance of patients with wearing masks may have played a role in these findings, suggesting adherence to those measures to reduce occupational exposure of COVID-19 in hospital settings.

COVID-19: A scenario of Malaysian mortality

Objective: The main objective of this study was to reveal the death number of the individuals infected by COVID-19 according to the cluster which had been determined by the Malaysia Ministry of Health. There are four main clusters had been identi-fied. This cluster has involved infection up to the third generation. The aim of this study also was to determine the distribution of chronic disease among COVID-19 death patients by revealing the frequencies of the most common chronic diseases. Besides that, trend analysis according to the number of individuals in the ICU and the number of individuals in the ICU with ventilator support is being studied. This is very important to predict the number of ventilators needs while the trend of patients in ICU is increased. The last objective of this study is to determine the distribution of chronic diseases among male and female patients, revealing the most common chronic disease among death patients. Materials and Methods: Data collection started on March 8th 2020 till April 6th, 2020 among the individual who died with COVID-19. The collected data consist of the gender, the cluster of infection, patient chronic disease, number of daily data on COVID-19 death, individuals in the ICU, individual in the ICU with the ventilator. SPSS software version 26.0 and MINITAB 17 was used to assess the important information through descriptive statistics, multiple response analysis, and trend analysis. Results: The total COVID-19 death in Malaysia till April 6th 2020 was 62 cases. It was higher in male with 48 (77.4%) cases as compared to female which was 14 (22.6%) cases. Most of the infected cases are come from the Sri Petaling tabligh religious gathering which contributes about 11 (34.3%), travel history to oversea 11 (34.3%) and follow by close contact with Covid-19 cases 8 (25.0%). Through multiple response analyses, it was found that, most of the individuals who died with Covid-19 have chronic disease such as hypertension (31.1%), diabetes mellitus (28.4%) and heart disease (11.9%). Most of the dead patients shows that they have hypertension. Besides that, the number of covid-19 patients also was summarized according to the hospital in Malaysia. Sarawak General Hospital having the highest death of covid-19 patients followed by Kuala Lumpur Hospital. Trend analysis was plotted in order to see the pattern of the patient which being entered to ICU, and the patient which depen-dent on the ventilator used. Conclusion: The number of death cases continues on an upward trend, but it is still under control. This is because of the suc-cess of first Malaysian Movement Control Order (MCO) which is implemented by the Malaysian government on March 18th, 2020. Based on the daily increasing number of death cases reported and also the infected number of COVID-19, the Malaysian government once again announced the extension of MCO up to the 14th of April 2020. The finding from this study will provide some information about the Malaysian situation and also prepared the strategy to decrease the number of infections and death among the COVID-19.

Impact of COVID-19 on marine fisheries supply chains: Case study of Malaysia

COVID-19 cases have now been confirmed in every country in the world, and to slow the spread of the virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) has urged infected countries to impose several containment and suppression measures. Supply chain disruptions are among one of the most vulnerable food sector caused by the aspects of COVID-19 disease control (i.e., lockdown, travel restriction, or movement control order (MCO)). Thus, the main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on marine food security supply chain and management in Malaysia. To achieve this, the study systematically and specifically addresses the following objectives: (i) to review available literature on Southeast Asia food supply management and COVID-19;(ii) to conduct a survey on purchasing method preferences and perception on marine fish supplies availability;and (iii) to recommend relevant intervention and policy development to improve well-being and livelihood status among the study population. The national survey was conducted from June 1 to September 30, 2020 through Google Forms. The results from the systematic review showed that there are eight main articles within the research areas of COVID-19 and supply chain, which have been focused only in the Southeast Asia region. The web survey results indicated that the self-visit methods for marine fish supplies were the main methods before the COVID-19 pandemic, and were decreased during the MCO period. The study also indicated that the respondents genders and types of living area affected their perceptions of marine fish supplies sources and distribution. Additionally, some respondents decided to use delivery services as well as booking and purchasing via phone and online, which includes the use of social media.

Global trends on Covid-19 and food security research: A scientometric study

Recently, coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) has posed a threat to global food security. Assessing recent literature on food security in the presence of Covid-19 is important for policymakers and funding sponsors to make future decisions. While research on the health impacts of Covid-19 is rapidly emerging, there is limited evidence on the food security impacts of the pandemic, especially in the form of scientometric study. The current study aims to give an overview on the impact of Covid-19 in the context of global food security. A scientometric methodology was implemented using the Web of Science Core Collection database for the period from January 2019 to April 2021. The search strategy utilized the topic search related to Covid-19 and food security with certain constraints. Based on articles retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database, we found that the search query retrieved 734 documents within the research area of Covid-19 and food security.

A protocol for development of holistic-entrepreneur graduates: Emotional intelligence perspectives

Entrepreneurship is seen as a potential career path for overcoming the problem of unemployment among TVET graduated especially during this Covid-19 outbreaks. However, this career has yet to get a second or even a last option TVET graduates in Malaysia. Various efforts have been undertaken by the stakeholders through the first surge of the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education) and the continuation of the implementation of the Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2016-2020, the holistic development of human capital and entrepreneurial backbone graduate entrepreneurs in targeted delivery. However, based on current achievements, this is not easy to be implemented as the desire of entrepreneurship is not incredibly encouraging, especially graduates in technical and vocational courses. Therefore, this study was conducted to explore emotional intelligence attributes needed by TVET graduates to become a qualified graduated Holistic-Entrepreneur. This study was conducted qualitatively involved three phases. The first phase: data acquisition qualitatively based on document analysis;second phase: focus group discussion and, third phase: experts’ interview. The participants involved are from Ministry of Education and MTUN lecturers and they are expert in students’ development and entrepreneurship. The result shows there are six attributes of emotional intelligence needed by TVET graduates to become a holistic entrepreneur graduates. The implication of the proposed as guideline for relevant parties and TVET graduates in increasing student minded and desire towards entrepreneurship. © Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia Publisher’s Office.

Impact of COVID-19 on aquaculture sector in Malaysia: Findings from the first national survey

Malaysian aquaculture sector consists of 391,000 t of cultivated organisms produced per year with an economic value for over USD 700 million as estimated in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic caused a large global human pandemic and it is currently ongoing, affecting profoundly Malaysian aquaculture, which is vital for seafood provision and security assurance. Thus, to increase our understanding about how the pandemic affects aquaculture sectors is crucial to design possible management measures both at local and national level. To do it, we designed a survey, starting in May 2020, consisting of 25 online questions to collect information about the impact of COVID-19 on the aquaculture sectors in Malaysia. A total of 105 respondents (2625 answered questions) was captured within the Movement Control Order (MCO) period and later extended to the Conditional MCO (CMCO). Almost 90 % of respondents was unanimous in answering that, and COVID-19 had a heavy effect on aquaculture-related activities in Malaysia;80 % of them indicated the market demand and logistic bottlenecks (72 %) as major constraints on their aquaculture activities. While the major option to solve aquaculture COVID-19 related issues was the use of online market or digital platforms (76 %), a large fraction of respondents requested for specific assistance to support aquaculture activities (e.g. financial support). Most respondents (93 %) was aware about the necessity of the Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) provided by the relevant agencies during the MCO / CMCO. Present data are crucial to develop policy measures both at national and international level to support seafood sectors under pandemic.