Effect of COVID-19 on recreational trips to tourist destination - An Indian context

The present work reports an investigation on perception of tourists towards recreational trips to tourist destinations due to the effect of COVID-19 in India. Responses of tourists were captured from several popular tourist destinations in India for different travel modes, different activities within a destination and various interventions in the context of COVID-19 by a survey questionnaire and the responses were analyzed using RIDIT to rank as per their perceived risk and importance. Public transport like air, train and bus were found to be the high-risk travel modes over personal vehicles along with visiting attraction points/shopping areas within a destination. Interventions like sanitization, social distancing, use of musk and self-vaccination got higher importance by the tourists. An SP survey was conducted and depending on various interventions and their levels, a model was developed based on binary logit, which gives the probability of making a recreational trip to a tourist destination.

Dutch-beta thalassemia: A rare mutation from India

Introduction COVID-19 pandemic imposed challenges towards management of transfusion-dependent thalassemia patients (TDT). The need for regular blood transfusions and iron chelation therapy in these patients added further uncertainty about managing COVID-19 in this subset of patients. Aims To describe the clinical manifestations of SARS-CoV2 infection in patients with TDT and to evaluate feasibility of home management for patients with mild disease. Materials and methods The study involved TDT patients registered with thalassemia day care center, DMCH, who tested positive for COVID-19 by RTPCR. The demographics, clinical characteristics and baseline investigations were recorded. Patients with mild disease were managed at home and others were hospitalized. The daily home monitoring and the hospital course were noted and analyzed. Results The study involved 14 TDT patients who were infected with SARS-CoV2 with a mean age of 18.9 ± 6.7 years and a male to female ratio of 6:1. Five patients each were in low and high-risk groups and 4 patients were in highest risk group. The symptoms reported by these patients were fever, fatigue, sore throat etc. Two patients were hospitalized with one patient requiring oxygen therapy. He was discharged after 48 hours. The other patient had severe cardiac iron overload and diabetes mellitus. His iron chelation therapy was with held during hospitalization. He presented with a cardiac arrhythmia later and was cardioverted. Thus, all other patients were continued on iron chelation with deferasirox. Twelve patients were successfully managed at home with regular telephonic monitoring. Conclusion Patients with thalassemia do not necessarily need hospitalization for management of COVID-19. Home management can be offered to patients with mild disease in a resource limited setting. Iron chelation with deferasirox can be continued safely.

Examination of Hotel Management Aspirants' Perspectives Towards A Career in the Technologically Inclined Hospitality Sector-Special Reference to the Housekeeping Industry

The Indian travel & hospitality industry has exponentially developed and has the substantial potential of the amazing social and chronicled legacy, landscapes, and places of natural characteristic excellence spread over the nation. The Indian hospitality and travel industry helps the nation in generating revenue and plays a highly significant role in creating sources of foreign exchange. 39 million opportunities for new jobs were created in 2020. Moreover, the no. of jobs will be increased to 52.3 million in the travel industry of India by 2028. Covid19 has a severely deleterious influence on the educational system of the entire world. Thus, the entire educational platforms i.e. from kindergarten to the universities have been shut down due to the high density of population to avoid the spread of the deadly coronavirus. Propitiously, having gained the experience from the epidemic 2003 SARS, educationalists of the hospitality world are ceaselessly changing reaction activities to the obscure pandemic situation and applying their best to keep up the activity of the training framework. The study investigates 443 students of hospitality management which are in the final year of their graduation. Thus, this paper is an attempt to understand the perception of hotel management aspirants', with special focus given to the housekeeping department.

A survey of image encryption for healthcare applications

Recently, medical image encryption has attracted many researchers because of security issues in the communication process. The recent COVID-19 has highlighted the fact that medical images are consistently created and disseminated online, leading to a need for protection from unauthorised utilisation. This paper intends to review the various medical image encryption approaches along with their merits and limitations. It includes a survey, a brief introduction, and the most utilised interesting applications of image encryption. Then, the contributions of reviewed approaches are summarised and compared regarding different technical perspectives. Lastly, we highlight the recent challenges along with several directions of potential research that could fill the gaps in these domains for researchers and developers.

Pandemic and its impact on the rural youth: teaching resilience through literature

Writers have responded to contemporary epidemics and diseases in their own unique ways depending on which disease or illness is represented. They have found expression in varied forms of literature. It has been a medium of projecting sympathetic, empathetic, and realistic points of views. On scrutiny, one can find references of the social responses to pandemics available in literature, like interaction among human beings and interface between people and state, and what strategies were followed/adopted to maintain health systems. Further, illness does not necessarily mean only the physical. It can be psychological as well, which the writers often identify and represent in their works. It would, therefore, be fruitful to consider psychoanalytic theory in the context of the effects and consequences of a pandemic. A poem or prose not only mirrors the world around or imparts wisdom or acts as a matter-of-fact project possibility, but is also a reliable source that soothes the mind, body, and soul. It has a therapeutic impact, especially when preserving life is the primary objective and concern. Research has also shown that bibliotherapy is a treatment for various ailments, like depression and mood upliftment, preventing dementia, and cognitive ageing. Considering all these, the paper seeks to identify, while developing an understanding of pandemics, how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the youth, particularly girls aged 17-21 in select rural areas of Haryana, its social, economic, and psychological consequences, and draw certain signposts that can work as a steering to an inclusive and resilient society.

Diphenylurea derivatives broadly inhibit SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A virus infections by perturbing endocytic trafficking (preprint)

Rapid evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A virus (IAV) poses enormous challenge in the development of broad-spectrum antivirals, effective against the existing and emerging viral strains. Virus entry through endocytosis represents an attractive target for drug development, as inhibition of this early infection step should block downstream infection processes and potentially inhibit viruses sharing the same entry route. Through high-content screening, we have identified diphenylurea derivatives (DPUDs) as a new class of endocytosis inhibitors, which broadly restricted entry and replication of several SARS-CoV-2 and IAV strains in tissue culture cells, without affecting cell viability. We found, DPUDs transported chloride ions into the cell, and interfered with the endocytic machinery by perturbing intracellular chloride homeostasis. Finally, we tested DPUDs in mice challenged with SARS-CoV-2 and IAV. Treatment with DPUDs led to remarkable body weight recovery, improved survival, and significant reduction in lung viral load, indicating their potential as broad-acting antivirals.

Consumers Buying Behaviour and Challenges Faced by Consumers During COVID-19 Pandemic Regarding FMCG Products ( During Indian Lockdown)

: Pandemics are the imminent health challenges for consumers whereby fear and panic are integral human responses historically. Panic behavior during pandemic is an expected response that threatens the ability to cope and destroy the existing balance in life. Consumers develop much-unexplained behavior which differs from region to region, culture to culture. Panic buying / increased buying behavior has been observed during public health emergencies since the ancient period. However, the exact psychological explanation responsible for it has not been sought systematically. Therefore, the study is to intend a thrust to identify the possible psychological explanations behind the consumer buying behavior during pandemics. A perception of scarcity is strongly linked with the consumer buying behavior during pandemics, and collecting & saving behaviors increases if the scarcity develops for the immediate necessaries. It also creates a feeling of insecurity which in turn activates another mechanism to collect things. Panic buying also has been linked with perceived feelings of insecurity and instability of certain situations. Furthermore, supply disruption, a condition where normal product supply in the supply chain is interrupted, has been frequently observed during a disaster or other unwanted calamities. This also led to a feeling of insecurity. The obiective of study is to analyze how pandemic affects consumer buying patterns and sentiments.

Human genetic factors associated with pneumonia susceptibility, a cue for COVID-19 mortality (preprint)

The risk for community acquired pneumonia (CAP) is partially driven by genetics. To identify the CAP-associated genetic risk loci, we performed a meta-analysis of clinically diagnosed CAP (3310 individuals) with 2655 healthy controls. The findings revealed CYP1A1 variants (rs2606345, rs4646903, rs1048943) associated with pneumonia. We observed rs2606345 [G vs T; OR=1.49(1.29-1.69); p=0.0001; I2= 15.5%], and rs1048943 [T vs G; OR= 1.31(0.90-1.71); p=0.002; I2=19.3%] as risk markers and rs4646903 [T vs C; OR= 0.79(0.62-0.96); p=0.03; I2=0%] as a protective marker for susceptibility to CAP, when compared with healthy controls. Our meta-analysis showed the presence of CYP1A1 SNP alleles contributing significant risk toward pneumonia susceptibility. Interestingly, we observed a striking difference of allele frequency for rs2606345 (CYP1A1) among Europeans, Africans and Asians which may provide a possible link for observed variations in death due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a viral pneumonia. We report, for the first time, a significant positive correlation for the risk allele (T or A) of rs2606345, with a higher COVID-19 mortality rate worldwide and within a genetically heterogeneous nation like India. Mechanistically, the risk allele 'A' (rs2606345) is associated with lower expression of CYP1A1 and presumably leads to reduced capacity for xenobiotic detoxification. We note that ambient air pollution, a powerful inducer of CYP1A1 gene expression, is globally associated with lower, not higher mortality, as would normally be predicted. In conclusion, we find that CYP1A1 alleles are associated with CAP mortality, presumably via altered xenobiotic metabolism. We speculate that gene-environment interactions governing CYP1A1 expression may influence COVID-19 mortality.

Genomic characterization and Epidemiology of an emerging SARS-CoV-2 variant in Delhi, India (preprint)

In April 2021, after successfully enduring three waves of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic in 2020, and having reached population seropositivity of about 50%, Delhi, the national capital of India was overwhelmed by the fourth wave. Here, we trace viral, host, and social factors contributing to the scale and exponent of the fourth wave, when compared to preceding waves, in an epidemiological context. Genomic surveillance data from Delhi and surrounding states shows an early phase of the upsurge driven by the entry of the more transmissible B.1.1.7 variant of concern (VOC) into the region in January, with at least one B.1.1.7 super spreader event in February 2021, relatable to known mass gatherings over this period. This was followed by seeding of the B.1.617 VOC, which too is highly transmissible, with rapid expansion of B.1.617.2 sub-lineage outpacing all other lineages. This unprecedented growth of cases occurred in the background of high seropositivity, but with low median neutralizing antibody levels, in a serially sampled cohort. Vaccination breakthrough cases over this period were noted, disproportionately related to VOC in sequenced cases, but usually mild. We find that this surge of SARS-CoV2 infections in Delhi is best explained by the introduction of a new highly transmissible VOC, B.1.617.2, with likely immune-evasion properties; insufficient neutralizing immunity, despite high seropositivity; and social behavior that promoted transmission.

PPContactTracing: A Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing Protocol for COVID-19 Pandemic (preprint)

Several contact tracing solutions have been proposed and implemented all around the globe to combat the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. But, most of these solutions endanger the privacy rights of the individuals and hinder their widespread adoption. We propose a privacy-preserving contact tracing protocol for the efficient tracing of the spread of the global pandemic. It is based on the private set intersection (PSI) protocol and utilizes the homomorphic properties to preserve the privacy at the individual level. A hierarchical model for the representation of landscapes and rate-limiting factor on the number of queries have been adopted to maintain the efficiency of the protocol.

A rapid and sensitive method to detect SARS-CoV-2 virus using targeted-mass spectrometry (preprint)

In the last few months, there has been a global catastrophic outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome disease caused by the novel corona virus SARS-CoV-2 affecting millions of people worldwide. Early diagnosis and isolation is key to contain the rapid spread of the virus. Towards this goal, we report a simple, sensitive and rapid method to detect the virus using a targeted mass spectrometric approach, which can directly detect the presence of virus from naso-oropharyngeal swabs. Using a multiple reaction monitoring we can detect the presence of two peptides specific to SARS-CoV-2 in a 2.3 minute gradient run with 100% specificity and 90.4 % sensitivity when compared to RT-PCR. Importantly, we further show that these peptides could be detected even in the patients who have recovered from the symptoms and have tested negative for the virus by RT-PCR highlighting the sensitivity of the technique. This method has the translational potential of in terms of the rapid diagnostics of symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID-19 and can augment current methods available for diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2.

Integrated genomic view of SARS-CoV-2 in India (preprint)

India first detected SARS-CoV-2, causal agent of COVID-19 in late January-2020, imported from Wuhan, China. March-2020 onwards; importation of cases from rest of the countries followed by seeding of local transmission triggered further outbreaks in India. We used ARTIC protocol based tiling amplicon sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 (n=104) from different states of India using a combination of MinION and MinIT from Oxford Nanopore Technology to understand introduction and local transmission. The analyses revealed multiple introductions of SARS-CoV-2 from Europe and Asia following local transmission. The most prevalent genomes with patterns of variance (confined in a cluster) remain unclassified, here, proposed as A4-clade based on its divergence within A-cluster. The viral haplotypes may link their persistence to geo-climatic conditions and host response. Despite the effectiveness of non-therapeutic interventions in India, multipronged strategies including molecular surveillance based on real-time viral genomic data is of paramount importance for a timely management of the pandemic.