Building Occupancy Simulation and Analysis under Virus Scenarios

During the COVID-19 pandemic, regulations on building usage and occupancy density were brought to the forefront, as research indicated that transmission was most likely to occur in indoor environments. Public health officials and building managers had to decide how to best use their buildings while curtailing the infection risk for their occupants.In this article, we present a systematic simulation-based methodology for estimating the infection risk for a building's occupants under different scenarios of building usage. We have evaluated our simulations against some real-world building usage data from a university campus building;our experiments demonstrate the realism of our simulations. Based on this finding, we have developed a virus transmission model that estimates the potential infection transmission risk given the behaviors of a building's occupants. Our methodology enables building managers to simulate alternative building usage scenarios and estimate their relative infection transmission risk. We argue that such risk estimate comparisons can be useful in making decision about alternative building usage options. © 2022 Association for Computing Machinery.

Impact of climatic factors on viability of SARS-CoV-2 and transmission prospective of COVID-19: An overview

The emergence of the new coronavirus disease-19 (Covid-19) from exotic wild animal market in Hubei, China during the late December 2019 has spread in 250 countries and territories posing menace to health of people around the globe. Coronavirus disease-19 has a great impact on public health, mortality and economy. The causing agent of Covid-19 is severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Due to unavailability of the potential drug or treatment for Covid-19, multi factorial research is conducted to reduce its transmission. Climatic factors play a key role in regulating the transmission of the infectious diseases like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory syndrome, and influenza. So, the rate of prevalence of the infectious disease is likely to be inclined by the variation in climatic indicators. We conclude from the past and present experiences that coronavirus transmission is elevated under low temperature and high humidity and vice versa. It further infers that after three hours of incubation of SARS-CoV-2, no infectious virus could be recovered from tissue paper and printing. Smooth surfaces are found to be more favorable for SARS-CoV-2. We may infer that climatic variations greatly affects infectious disease transmission pattern. We need more to study about under laying multifaceted casual affiliation between climate and communicable diseases and employ this information to the forecast of their upcoming impact. © 2020 The author (s).

A Global Survey of Impact of Violence against Healthcare Workers in Critical Care Settings: Vishwas

INTRODUCTION: A rise in the incidents of violence against Health Care Workers (HCWs) in recent years calls for improvement in modes of spreading awareness and educating the public. We aimed to conduct a large global cross-sectional survey called ViSHWaS- Violence Study of Healthcare Workers and Systems in the departments of Anesthesiology, Critical Care Medicine, and Emergency medicine. METHOD(S): A global survey after tool validation, was created using REDCap forms and distributed from June 5th to July 24th, 2022. Communication tools including emails, phone calls, SMS, and social media applications like WhatsApp, Twitter, and LinkedIn were used in securing responses. This study was deemed eligible for category-2 Institutional Review Board exempt status. RESULT(S): Total of 598 responses from 69 countries, out of these 445 (74%) were complete. The maximum responses were from India (N=49), followed by the USA (N=44) and while those from the other 67 countries ranged from N=1-30. Out of these, 221 (50%) were female, the majority (56%) were in the 26-35 years category, followed by (19%) in 36-45 years. The participants encompassed 156 (35%) consultants, 97 (22%) nurses and the rest were residents/fellows in training, auxiliary/ staff, advanced registered nurse practitioners (ARNP), physician assistants (PA), researcher and others. The vast majority (73%) reported facing violence within the past year;Verbal (63%) and physical (39%) were the most commonly reported. Total 126 (28.3%) reported that patient and/or family member as the type of aggressor they/ their colleague encountered most frequently. A majority (75%) reported that the incidence of violence has either stayed the same (39%) or increased (36%) during COVID-19 pandemic. Because of violent episodes, 48% felt less motivated/ had decreased job satisfaction;an additional 25% were willing to quit. While half of respondents were familiar with Occupational Safety and Health standards, only 20% felt prepared to handle aggressive situation. CONCLUSION(S): In this global cross-sectional survey, a majority of HCWs reported to have faced violence. They felt that it either increased or stayed the same during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has led to decreased job satisfaction. Majority of those, who responded, felt unprepared to handle the violence.

Building Occupancy Simulation and Analysis under Virus Scenarios

During the COVID-19 pandemic, regulations on building usage and occupancy density were brought to the forefront, as research indicated that transmission was most likely to occur in indoor environments. Public health officials and building managers had to decide how to best use their buildings while curtailing the infection risk for their occupants. In this article, we present a systematic simulation-based methodology for estimating the infection risk for a building's occupants under different scenarios of building usage. We have evaluated our simulations against some real-world building usage data from a university campus building;our experiments demonstrate the realism of our simulations. Based on this finding, we have developed a virus transmission model that estimates the potential infection transmission risk given the behaviors of a building's occupants. Our methodology enables building managers to simulate alternative building usage scenarios and estimate their relative infection transmission risk. We argue that such risk estimate comparisons can be useful in making decision about alternative building usage options.

A Transfer Learning Based Approach for COVID-19 Detection Using Inception-v4 Model

Coronavirus (COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2) is a novel viral infection that started in December 2019 and has erupted rapidly in more than 150 countries. The rapid spread of COVID-19 has caused a global health emergency and resulted in governments imposing lock-downs to stop its transmission. There is a significant increase in the number of patients infected, resulting in a lack of test resources and kits in most countries. To overcome this panicked state of affairs, researchers are looking forward to some effective solutions to overcome this situa-tion: one of the most common and effective methods is to examine the X-radiation (X-rays) and computed tomography (CT) images for detection of Covid-19. How-ever, this method burdens the radiologist to examine each report. Therefore, to reduce the burden on the radiologist, an effective, robust and reliable detection system has been developed, which may assist the radiologist and medical specia-list in effective detecting of COVID. We proposed a deep learning approach that uses readily available chest radio-graphs (chest X-rays) to diagnose COVID-19 cases. The proposed approach applied transfer learning to the Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) model, Inception-v4, for the automatic detection of COVID-19 infection from chest X-rays images. The dataset used in this study contains 1504 chest X-ray images, 504 images of COVID-19 infection, and 1000 normal images obtained from publicly available medical repositories. The results showed that the proposed approach detected COVID-19 infection with an overall accuracy of 99.63%. © 2023, Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.

Different Radiological Patterns on Plain Chest X-Ray in COVID-19 Patients

Objective: The purpose of this study was to describe the radiological findings on radiograph chest in patients with 2019 Novel Corona virus disease (COVID-19). Methods: This is a retrospective study which was conducted at Radiology Department, Mayo Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan. Study was done on only those patients who were tested positive by RT-PCR method for Covid-19 infection. 350 patients were selected for the study and out of them 266 tested positive for Covid19 by RT-PCR therefore radiographs of those 266 patients were included in the study. The radiographs were reported by two consultant radiologists. Results: Total 350 patients were selected for retrospective study. Out of these 350 patients, 266 tested positive for COVID-19 by RT-PCR method. The radiological findings were assessed in radiograph chest of these 266 patients. Out of 266 patients, 202(75.9%) were males and 64(24%) females. 62% (n=165) had bilateral lung involvement, 19.5% unilateral lung involvement and 18.4% (n=49) had normal radiographs. Majority of the patients had involvement of all zones of the lungs i.e. upper middle and lower zones at the time of study comprising of 69.12% (n=150). Middle and lower zones were simultaneously affected 22% (n=48). Interestingly only 2 patients (0.9%) had involvement of upper and middle zones. Surprisingly 7% (n=15) patients had involvement of only lower zone with normal upper and middle zones. Conclusion: Chest radiograph is an effective tool in early detection and characterization of the lesions in suspected or diagnosed cases of COVID-19 infection. It is also useful in follow up and prognosis of the patients suffering or recovered from COVID-19.

Mass gathering at islamic festival of eid-ul adha may spike up covid-19 in pakistan

The main purpose of this letter is to raise concerns about the imminent spike in Covid-19 infection cases in Pakistan during the upcoming event of Eid Ul Adha, 2020, due to mass gathering of people in the cattle markets, especially from asymptomatic coronavirus carriers. As Pakistan is already facing insurmountable difficulties in managing Covid-19 due to its limited healthcare infrastructure, a more severe coronavirus-19 outbreak is expected in the post-Eid Ul Adha days, especially in big cities like Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, posing a new challenge for the authorities. © 2020, Bulgarian Society for Microbiology (Union of Scientists in Bulgaria). All rights reserved.