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Background: Healthcare workers (HCWs) in India are facing physical and psychological pressure. The pandemic has significant psychological impacts. Hence, we wanted to assess the mental stress and social stress among HCWs during the second wave of COVID-19. Aim and Objectives: Assessment of the mental distress among HCWs of tertiary care level institution during second wave of COVID-19 with the following objectives: (1) To know the sociodemographic characteristics of the HCWs of tertiary care center and (2) to assess the psychological stress among healthcare workers of a tertiary health center. Material(s) and Method(s): It is a cross-sectional and observational study conducted in hospital setting, in a tertiary care setting. Data were collected from 196 HCWs of the institute. Institutional ethical clearance was taken before the study. Structured questionnaire included sociodemographic variables, work-related variables, and variables to assess social stress. We used hospital anxiety and depression scoring questionnaire to assess anxiety and depression. Data were collected through personal interviews and online through Google forms after taking informed consent. Descriptive statistics and Chi-square tests are used analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Version 21 for Statistical analysis. Result(s): A total of 196 HCWs, 121 doctors, 74 nursing staff, and one ward staff participated in the study. Nursing staff were at higher risk for anxiety and depression, that is, 29% and 25% than others. Females were slightly more anxious (29%) and depressed (17%) than males. HCWs who are Muslim by religion were at more mental distress. Media exposure of more than 3 h had increased risk of mental distress. HCWs with other frontline COVID warrior as a partner were both anxious (40%) and depressed (20%). Anxiety (35%) was more among those who's family members got COVID positive. About 25% of them faced social stigma, 55% of them faced issue of isolation with in the community, and 14% of them faced acts of violence which is unacceptable. Conclusion(s): Although its second wave HCWs are still having psychological distress which needs to be addressed. Social stress that they are facing is significant and is associated with higher anxiety and depression, which has to be taken seriously.Copyright © 2023, Mr Bhawani Singh. All rights reserved.
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Despite intensive research since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, it has remained unclear precisely which components of the early immune response protect against the development of severe COVID-19. Here, we perform a comprehensive immunogenetic and virologic analysis of nasopharyngeal and peripheral blood samples obtained during the acute phase of infection with SARS-CoV-2. We find that soluble and transcriptional markers of systemic inflammation peak during the first week after symptom onset and correlate directly with upper airways viral loads (UA-VLs), whereas the contemporaneous frequencies of circulating viral nucleocapsid (NC)-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells correlate inversely with various inflammatory markers and UA-VLs. In addition, we show that high frequencies of activated CD4+ and CD8+ T cells are present in acutely infected nasopharyngeal tissue, many of which express genes encoding various effector molecules, such as cytotoxic proteins and IFN-γ. The presence of IFNG mRNA-expressing CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in the infected epithelium is further linked with common patterns of gene expression among virus-susceptible target cells and better local control of SARS-CoV-2. Collectively, these results identify an immune correlate of protection against SARS-CoV-2, which could inform the development of more effective vaccines to combat the acute and chronic illnesses attributable to COVID-19.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , SARS-CoV-2 , Humans , CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes , Seroconversion , NucleocapsidABSTRACT
The lack of an in-depth system for determining exposure to COVID-19 has left people with a need for an autonomous method of tracking/monitoring user habits and active COVID-19 cases. The COVID Risk Aversion System (CRS) was created to track users and how often they encounter these risks around them. This project currently uses Ontario as a testbed. The CRS system consists of two main components: an in-house server and user application. Using internal and external technologies, CRS logs how often users interact with other users who have the application and the locations they visit. A server was developed to store every location that each user encounters and then categorizes a quantified risk to that specific location based on multiple factors. Risk is determined by COVID-19 cases in the area, risk values of people at given locations, and regional per capita cases of COVID-19. The server alters area risk based on decreasing or increasing cases within a specific region. Every hour, the server checks Ontario's COVID-19 statistics and updates the database's values, and then recalculates the dynamic values for all locations stored in the system. The client-side application reports the user's location every 5 minutes and requests information on all users geographically close to that person using Vincenty's formula. Twice a day, the application updates the user's risk based on the interactions the user has had throughout the day. Users can also view a map of Ontario that displays regional risk and can check the risk of specific locations. CRS aims to be an effective method at reducing the user's exposure to COVID-19.
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The aim of this study was to determine the immue function of human leukocyte antigens and some vital indicators in Covid 19 patients. This study was conducted at Ibn Al-Khatib hospital, Baghdad. Sixty four blood sample of Covid 19 patients (32male and 32female patients), while healthy volunteers group 15 male and 15 female with age between 10 to 60. Level of IL-1b, CD4, WBC, ESR, Urea, sugar test, were measured,results showed a significant increase (P<0.01) in each measured of IL-1b, CD4, WBC, ESR, Urea, Sugar. The more infection of Covid 19 with some factors such as, smoking, chronic diseases. The measurement of the level of IL-1b, CD4 by means of the enzyme - linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and WBC, PLT, measurement method using ABX micros 60 hematology analyzer, Urea, Sugar semi-automated chemistry analyzer using Mindray BC-5000. The data was analyzed with Graph pad prism software. © 2023 Author(s).
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The aim of this study was to determine the immune function of human leukocyte antigens and some vital indicators in Covid 19 patients. This study was conducted at Ibn Al-Khatib hospital, Baghdad. Sixty four blood sample of Covid 19 patients (32 male and 32 female patients), while healthy volunteers group 15 male and 15 female with age between 10 to 60. Level of IL-1b, CD4, WBC, ESR, Urea, sugar test, were measured results showed a significant increase (P<0.01) in each measured of IL-1b, CD4, WBC, ESR, Urea, Sugar. The more infection of Covid 19 with some factors such as, smoking, chronic diseases. The measurement of the level of IL-1b, CD4 by means of the enzyme - linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and WBC, PLT, measurement method using ABX micros 60 hematology analyzer, Urea, Sugar semi-automated chemistry analyzer using Mindray BC-5000. The data was analyzed with Graph pad prism software. © 2023 Author(s).
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The global prevalence of COVID-19 disease and the overwhelming increase in death toll urge scientists to discover new effective drugs. Although the drug discovery process is a challenging and time-consuming, fortunately, the plant kingdom was found to have many active therapeutics possessing broad-spectrum antiviral activity including those candidates active against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses (SARS-CoV). Herein, nine traditional Chinese medicinal plant constituents from different origins (Glycyrrhizin 1, Lycorine 2, Puerarin 3, Daidzein 4, Daidzin 5, Salvianolic acid B 6, Dihydrotanshinone I 7, Tanshinone I 8, Tanshinone IIa 9) previously reported to exhibit antiviral activity against SARS-CoV were virtually screened in silico (molecular docking) as potential inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 target proteins. The tested medicinal plant compounds were in silico screened for their activity against two key SARS-CoV-2 target proteins; 3CLpro, and Spike binding-domain proteins. Among the tested medicinal plant compounds, Salvianolic acid B 6 (Sal-B) showed promising binding affinities against the two specified SARS-CoV-2 target proteins compared to the reference standards used. Hence molecular dynamics simulations followed by calculating the free-binding energy were carried out for Sal-B providing information on its affinity, stability, and thermodynamic behavior within the two SARS-CoV-2 target proteins as well as key ligand-protein binding aspects. Besides, the quantum mechanical calculations showed that Sal-B can adopt different conformations due to the existence of various rotatable bonds. Therefore, the enhanced antiviral activity of Sal-B among other studied compounds can be also attributed to the structural flexibility of Sal-B. Our study gives an explanation of the structure activity relationship required for targeting SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro and Spike proteins and also facilitates the future design and synthesis of new potential drugs exhibiting better affinity and specificity. Besides, an ADME study was carried out on screened compounds and reference controls revealing their pharmacokinetics properties.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.
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The study investigated performance of the stock market, foreign exchange market and the cryptocurrencies market as a result of COVID-19 outbreak. Event studies methodology was employed to determine the abnormal return (AR) and corresponding cumulative abnormal return (CAR) following the first confirmed case of the pandemic and the first recorded case of fatality, after controlling for the concurrent effect of crude price fluctuations. Consistent with previous studies, the paper documented evidence of negative reaction of –0.34% and –1.01% for the Nigerian stock market and the cryptocurrency market respectively at the announcement of first case of the pandemic's outbreak. The study also documented negative and statistically significant effects of –1.71% and –0.78% for Nigerian stock market and the cryptocurrency market respectively when the first case of death was announced. Adverse effect of the pandemic was found to be stronger when the first case of death was announced compared to first reported case of the outbreak. However, negative but insignificant effect was recorded for the foreign exchange market. The paper concluded that negative reaction for the stock market is consistent with market panic and policy uncertainty during the pandemic. Furthermore, adverse effect of the pandemic on the cryptocurrency market was due to increased co-movement of the market with regulated financial markets such as the stock market as well as correlation of returns between the markets. Copyright © 2023 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
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Vaccination of healthcare providers has recently gained focused attention of public health officials. As HCPs have direct contact with the population, and HCPs significantly influence the population, this study aimed to compare the acceptance rate, advocacy rate, and beliefs about the COVID-19 vaccine among HCPs in two time periods. In this repeated cross-sectional study, different HCPs were assessed in two periods ten months apart, i.e., November to December 2020 and September to October 2021, which were before and after COVID-19 vaccine approval by authorities. The study was conducted in Qatif Central Hospital, Eastern Region of Saudi Arabia. There were 609 respondents: 236 participants in the first period and 373 participants in the second period. Only 13 participants did not get the COVID-19 vaccine. There was around a 40% difference in the acceptance rate between the two study periods; the latter period was higher at 94.7%. Furthermore, 24.1% was the difference between the willingness to advocate the COVID-19 vaccine for others; the first period had a lower percentage (60.1%). Overall, results of the study showed that vaccine hesitancy, as well as the willingness to advocate for the vaccine, were improved between the pre-vaccine approval period and post-vaccine approval period, showing that the efforts made by the government improved COVID-19 acceptance and advocacy among HCPs. However, vaccine hesitancy is not a new issue, and for a better understanding of HCPs' beliefs, a qualitative study is needed.
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Objective The goal of this study is to compile published data reporting neurological immune-related adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination, not including those relating to hematologic abnormalities such as thrombosis or hemorrhage. Background COVID-19 vaccination has been repeatedly shown to reduce the incidence and severity of COVID-19 infection. The expedited timeline of these vaccines has given rise to many discussions pertaining to their safety. Many neurological and non-neurological adverse events have been linked to COVID-19 vaccination including acute MI, anaphylaxis, appendicitis, Bell's palsy, deep vein thrombosis, disseminated intravascular coagulation, encephalomyelitis, transverse myelitis, and many others. Design/Methods The following databases were searched in April 2021 using different keywords: PubMed, Medline, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, Science, Direct, MedRxiv, and Lens.org. Studies were included if they reported any adverse immune-related neurological events secondary to COVID-19 vaccination. Studies were excluded if they were not in English, included self-reported events only, or did not report primary data. Screening and extraction were conducted by 2 different reviewers using Covidence. Results The search strategy yielded 18 studies which reported a total of 61 patients who had received a COVID-19 vaccination and experienced = 1 neurological adverse events. Most reported adverse events were facial nerve palsy (52.5%), reactivation of herpes zoster (11.5%), Guillian-Barre syndrome (6.6%), demyelinating disease (6.6%), and neuropathy (11.5%). Other reported adverse effects were delirium, periauricular vesicular rash, bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, visual disturbance, gait disturbance, serotonin syndrome, and vestibular ataxia (16.4%). Conclusions The symptoms were time-limited and self-resolving in nature. In addition, the incidence of the reported events following COVID-19 vaccination compared to the general population is similar. Hence, there is little to no evidence suggesting a causal relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and neurological adverse events.
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Objectives: We sought to identify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Oman Dental College (ODC) students' management of their educational and student life. Methods: We conducted a quantitative cross-sectional online survey study using SurveyMonkey. During the 2019-2020 academic year, 383 ODC students across six levels of education were invited to participate in the survey. Descriptive statistics were applied to the students' demographic profiles, and other characteristics of the participants' data were analyzed. Cronbach's alpha was calculated for internal consistency. A univariate analysis was carried out to identify the differences between genders and between the Bachelor of Dental Surgery levels in relation to the questionnaire themes. A Pearson's correlation test evaluated the association between students' perception of risks due to the pandemic and the other relevant themes. Results: A 50.9% response rate revealed that five of the themes showed internal reliability ranging from excellent to acceptable, namely: performance of exercise, effect of the pandemic on their families, use of a facemask, college's online services, and students' mental health (0.51, 0.59, 0.70, 0.78, and 0.90, respectively). More than half of the participants felt encouraged to engage in self-directed learning using online resources. They felt some level of nervousness, worry, anxiety, or tension as well as stress during the pandemic. Statistical differences between levels of education were noted in the ODC's-online teaching services (p < 0.001) and students' mental health (p = 0.03). There was no difference between female and male students. The ODC's online services theme positively related to the students' mental health theme (r = 0.22, p < 0.001). Conclusions: ODC students experienced some mental health issues during the pandemic, including anxiety, stress, and sleeping issues. However, the majority of them were healthy. Most students were satisfied with the online teaching provided by ODC. It was also evident that faculty were always connected with the students. A positive relationship was noted between the management of online lectures and students' mental health.
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The lack of an in-depth system for determining exposure to COVID-19 has left people with a need for an autonomous method of tracking/monitoring user habits and active COVID-19 cases. The COVID Risk Aversion System (CRS) was created to track users and how often they encounter these risks around them. This project currently uses Ontario as a testbed. The CRS system consists of two main components: an in-house server and user application. Using internal and external technologies, CRS logs how often users interact with other users who have the application and the locations they visit. A server was developed to store every location that each user encounters and then categorizes a quantified risk to that specific location based on multiple factors. Risk is determined by COVID-19 cases in the area, risk values of people at given locations, and regional per capita cases of COVID-19. The server alters area risk based on decreasing or increasing cases within a specific region. Every hour, the server checks Ontario's COVID-19 statistics and updates the database's values, and then recalculates the dynamic values for all locations stored in the system. The client-side application reports the user's location every 5 minutes and requests information on all users geographically close to that person using Vincenty's formula. Twice a day, the application updates the user's risk based on the interactions the user has had throughout the day. Users can also view a map of Ontario that displays regional risk and can check the risk of specific locations. CRS aims to be an effective method at reducing the user's exposure to COVID-19. © 2022 IEEE.
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Background: COVID-19 disease was highly infectious causing a declaration of a global pandemic and the scientists believed that developing a safe and effective vaccine was the solution. Various vaccine candidates were announced by different health authorities. Many factors affect the acceptance of vaccines. This study aims to explore the perceptions, attitudes, and expectations of healthcare professionals (HCPs) toward COVID-19 vaccines. Method: A qualitative study approach was conducted by using face-to-face semi-structured interviews with HCPs in Mosul city, Iraq. Results: Twenty-five HCPs participated in the interviews. After qualitative analysis four main themes emerged: perception of vaccines; participants believed that vaccines were vital inventions, motivations to take the vaccine; most HCPs were motivated based on the scientific evidence regarding COVID-19 vaccines, expectations about the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines; participants had different opinions based on the type of the vaccine and the available data, side effects experienced; severe side effects were expected but only mild adverse reactions were experienced by the majority. Conclusion: HCPs had good knowledge about COVID-19 vaccines which was not affected by rumors and misinformation. In contrast to their expectations, the experienced side effects of the first and the second doses were mild to moderate in severity. The majority of HCPs based their choice of the vaccine on the efficacy and safety profile of the available options.
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BACKGROUND: Drug induced liver injury (DILI) is a rising morbidity amongst patients with COVID-19 clinical syndrome. The updated RUCAM causality assessment scale is validated for use in the general population, but its utility for causality determination in cohorts of patients with COVID-19 and DILI remains uncertain. METHODS: This retrospective study was comprised of COVID-19 patients presenting with suspected DILI to the emergency department of Weill Cornell medicine-affiliated Hamad General Hospital, Doha, Qatar. All cases that met the inclusion criteria were comparatively adjudicated by two independent rating pairs (2 clinical pharmacist and 2 physicians) utilizing the updated RUCAM scale to assess the likelihood of DILI. RESULTS: A total of 72 patients (mean age 48.96 (SD ± 10.21) years) were examined for the determination of DILI causality. The majority had probability likelihood of "possible" or "probable" by the updated RUCAM scale. Azithromycin was the most commonly reported drug as a cause of DILI. The median R-ratio was 4.74 which correspond to a mixed liver injury phenotype. The overall Krippendorf's kappa was 0.52; with an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.79 (IQR 0.72-0.85). The proportion of exact pairwise agreement and disagreement between the rating pairs were 64.4%, kappa 0.269 (ICC 0.28 [0.18, 0.40]) and kappa 0.45 (ICC 0.43 [0.29-0.57]), respectively. CONCLUSION: In a cohort of patients with COVID-19 clinical syndrome, we found the updated RUCAM scale to be useful in establishing "possible" or "probable" DILI likelihood as evident by the respective kappa values; this results if validated by larger sample sized studies will extend the clinical application of this universal tool for adjudication of DILI.
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COVID-19 , Chemical and Drug Induced Liver Injury , Causality , Chemical and Drug Induced Liver Injury/epidemiology , Chemical and Drug Induced Liver Injury/etiology , Humans , Retrospective StudiesABSTRACT
Objective: To assess the length of stay (LoS) variation for COVID-19 inpatients among the four regions of the Southern Business Unit (SBU). Methods: This is a comparative retrospective study of the LoS of COVID-19 inpatients in the four regions of the SBU in the KSA. Data was collected from the Ministry of Health (MoH) in all hospitals in the SBU. Participants were all patients admitted with confirmed COVID-19 between March 2020 and February 2021. Variables included region (variable of interest), demographics, comorbidities, and complications. Multilinear regression was performed to control for any factors that might have had an association with LoS. Results: The mean LoS of the total sample was 10 days and Bisha (the reference) was 7 days. Compared to Bisha, LoS in Jazan was 34% longer, in Najran 62% longer, and Aseer 40% longer. We observed that other factors also had an association with LoS, compared to Bisha, compared to the references, Saudi patients had a 15% shorter stay; admission to ICU increased LoS by 57%; patients who died during hospitalization had a 39% shorter LoS; the complications from COVID-19 of acute kidney injury and ARDS increased LoS by 22% and 48% respectively. Conclusion: After statistically controlling for confounders, this study reveals that LoS was significantly impacted by region in the SBU in the KSA. We recommend that further study be conducted to illuminate the underlying causes of this variation which may be organizational or structural to ensure high quality of care, access to care, and equity of resources throughout all regions of the SBU in accordance with the new Model of Care in Vision 2030.
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The global breakout of COVID-19 and raised death toll has prompted scientists to develop novel drugs capable of inhibiting SARS-CoV-2. Conducting studies on repurposing some FDA-approved glucocorticoids can be a promising prospective for finding a treatment for COVID-19. In addition, the use of anti-inflammatory drugs, such as glucocorticoids, is a pivotal step in the treatment of critical cases of COVID-19, as they can provoke an inflammatory cytokine storm, damaging lungs. In this study, 22 FDA-approved glucocorticoids were identified through in silico (molecular docking) studies as the potential inhibitors of COVID-19's main protease. From tested compounds, ciclesonide 11, dexamethasone 2, betamethasone 1, hydrocortisone 4, fludrocortisone 3, and triamcinolone 8 are suggested as the most potent glucocorticoids active against COVID-19's main protease. Moreover, molecular dynamics simulations followed by the calculations of the binding free energy using MM-GBSA were carried out for the aforementioned promising candidate-screened glucocorticoids. In addition, quantum chemical calculations revealed two electron-rich sites on ciclesonide where binding interactions with the main protease and cleavage of the prodrug to the active metabolite take place. Our results have ramifications for conducting preclinical and clinical studies on promising glucocorticoids to hasten the development of effective therapeutics against COVID-19. Another advantage is that some glucocorticoids can be prioritized over others for the treatment of inflammation accompanying COVID-19. The global breakout of COVID-19 and raised death toll has prompted scientists to develop novel drugs capable of inhibiting SARS-CoV-2.
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BACKGROUND: This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of tocilizumab in mechanically ventilated patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: This retrospective multicenter study included adults (≥18 years) diagnosed with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) from nasopharyngeal swab, and requiring invasive mechanical ventilation during admission. Survival analyses with inverse propensity score treatment weighting (IPTW) and propensity score matching (PSM) were conducted. To account for immortal bias, we used Cox proportional modeling with time-dependent covariance. Competing risk analysis was performed for the extubation endpoint. RESULTS: A total of 556 (tocilizumab = 193, control = 363) patients were included. Males constituted the majority of the participants (69.2% in tocilizumab arm,74.1% in control arm). Tocilizumab was not associated with a reduction in mortality with hazard ratio [(HR) = 0.82,95% confidence interval (95%CI): 0.62-1.10] in the Inverse propensity score weighting (IPTW) analysis and (HR = 0.86,95% CI: 0.64-1.16) in the PSM analysis. However, tocilizumab was associated with an increased rate of extubation (33.6%) compared to the control arm (11.9%); subdistributional hazards (SHR) = 3.1, 95% CI: 1.86-5.16). CONCLUSIONS: Although tocilizumab was not found to be effective in reducing mortality, extubation rate while on mechanical ventilation was higher among tocilizumab treated group.
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Antibodies, Monoclonal, Humanized , COVID-19 Drug Treatment , Respiration, Artificial , Adult , Antibodies, Monoclonal, Humanized/therapeutic use , Humans , Male , Retrospective Studies , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
This document reports the summary of a study on crop yield assessment using remote sensing and crop simulation models. The study mainly focuses on linking insurance and technology. The study will use existing environment, weather and management data along with satellite-derived crop spatial data in crop models to assess crop yields at gram panchayat (GP) level together with spatial information generated from near real time high resolution satellite images. The project background, activities, integration of crop model with remote sensing, training program on crop yield assessment using remote sensing and crop simulation models,and key findings are discussed in detail.
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The emergence of the damn Coronavirus inspired many researchers to seek information and to collect datasets aiming to conduct different analyses using text tweets from the Twitter platform. Twitter offers not only tweets but, retweets mentions, replies, quotes, direct messages, and many others to be pulled when making a request. While this research intends to gather tweets only and neglect the rest, a small program applied during scraping Twitter and before filtration to skip retweets and replies. The type of needed data obliges researchers to think about which keyword should be chosen. Fetching infected people direct this study to use sentences connected with logical operators. This step succeeded in obtaining the desired data. Although this data is filled with noise that makes it unsuitable to preserve, several steps are applied to isolate fake and duplicate accounts. A recent API was used to classify accounts to overcome automated accounts to achieve and ensure the originality of the dataset. This research will state gradually and step by step how to bypass any nuisance noise, also using available metadata to locate tweets and to present an acceptable and logical geolocated dataset suitable for further operations. This dataset has been extracted according to the geospatial information provided with the tweets. Statistics will be demonstrated according to the availability of such information. The study is trying to submit a reasonable geolocated dataset to approve its contribution by providing the most important information. The collected dataset reflects its importance on societies and how they interact with this crisis. Also, diagnosing weaknesses and strengths to gain benefits for future decision making, and hoping to avoid worst possibilities. © 2021 IEEE.