ABSTRACT
This study sought to identify and analyze hospitality industry employees' rationale for leaving the industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study further explored possible remedies hospitality industry organizations can adopt to rehire employees who decided to leave the industry. A qualitative survey was conducted online using Qualtrics to anonymously collect data from hospitality industry employees who had voluntarily left the industry during the COVID-19 pandemic–a sample that is difficult to recruit for research purposes. The thematic analysis revealed several explanations behind the great exodus from the hospitality industry. Unfortunately, not many incentives for employees' return to the industry were revealed. Practical implications and future research suggestions are discussed. © 2023 Taylor & Francis.
ABSTRACT
As biomedical waste is one of the general problems in Indonesia which are especially concerned in this pandemic situation. Incinerator, as one of the tool strategies to the Renewable energy issue will be one of the solutions to the medical waste management system nowadays which uses an energy conversion from the thermal heat. Therefore, before the further establishment of the biomedical waste incinerator, a preliminary Feasibility Study to the region and condition should be done as the first step to strengthen the objective of the implementation. The aspect to the market, technology, regulation, infrastructure, and financial aspect will be discussed and will be executively summarized. As Indonesia nowadays has a total of 2900 Hospital, 9900 Health centre, 7700 clinic with a total of 294.66 tons of medical waste produced within a day. During the pandemic it is estimated that the amount of medical waste will increase by at least 30% which is a big challenge for Indonesia. © 2023 Institute of Physics Publishing. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The vast impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have consequences for populous service cities, like Jakarta, in maintaining economic and social development. Despite several countermeasures to limit the impacts that have been rolled out, understanding of the overall effects remains limited as some of the strategies taken are counterproductively affecting economic growth and resulting in loss of jobs. This paper aims to explore a dynamic interrelationship between the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Jakarta's city structure using the qualitative causal-loop approach of systems dynamics modeling. The conceptual model takes productivity, capital, and consumption rate as input variables towards endogenous process structures that represent the scope of the city system under study. The model uses two macroeconomic indicators as model output, namely gross regional domestic product (GRDP) and unemployment rate. Travel restrictions, social distancing, and direct cash transfer are policies under evaluation that is expected to leverage endogenous developed structure and improve the output indicators. The model result presents a causal-loop diagram that consists of five modules: Gross Regional Domestic Product, Government Expenditure, Producer Transaction, Labor Force, and Household Consumption. The interactions obtained from these interrelationship highlights key leverage points for decision-maker for further policy development in offsetting productivity loss due to pandemic and short-term efforts needed to ensure Jakarta is still on the path of achieving mid-term development plan goals in 2022. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Cancer is a global challenge and the second leading cause of death worldwide as reported by the World Health Organization. With the current global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus, cancer patients are identified as having increased risk of mortality. With the growing number of cancer patients every year, the need for a continuous and round the clock observation system has become quite imperative. An Internet of Things (IoT) based system for monitoring cancer patients has the potential to timely detect cancer related symptoms in its early stages, to continuously monitor cancer diagnosed patients and to monitor those that got cured for post-treatment measures. This paper proposes a multi-layered architecture of an IoT-based cancer observation system that can be utilized as a platform to remotely diagnose and monitor cancer patients. An implementation framework of the proposed system is also presented is this work, along with a prototype design of a Patient Side Unit (PSU) represented by a wearable wrist band. The proposed system has the potential to be applied as a solution for reducing expensive and exhausting hospital visits, while gaining similar quality of medical services when residing at home. © 2020 ACM.
ABSTRACT
Rationale: The recent pandemic of COVID-19 is characterized by pulmonary symptoms leading to acute lung injury and lung remodeling in the airway and alveolar regions of the lungs, which eventually culminates to lung pneumonia. Tobacco smoking has been known to cause lung oxidative stress and inflammatory responses, rendering smokers susceptible to infections. However, the progression of lung injury based on COVID19 susceptibility and severity amongst smokers is not known. Considering this, we intended to study the expression and activity of COVID19 receptor, ACE2, cytokine/chemokine production, and lipid mediators (lipidomics) amongst COVID19 patients with and without a smoking history. Methods: We collected serum from COVID19 positive, COVID19 negative and COVID19 recovered patients with and without a smoking history and studied the cytokine production and ACE2 activity by Luminex multiplex and enzymatic assays, respectively. We further performed LC/MS (eicosanoids or oxylipid panel) on the serum samples to study the changes in the serum lipids from COVID-19 positive and recovered patients. Results: Our results showed a significant upregulation in the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines like MCP-1(10-fold, p<0.01), IL-17 (∼10-fold, p=0.059), IL-7 (2-fold, p<0.05), IL-13 (2-fold, p<0.05), and MIP-1β (∼1.2 fold, p<0.05) in COVID19 positive patients as compared to healthy controls. Interestingly, smoking history resulted in further augmentation of the release of MCP-1 (3-4-fold, p<0.05), IFN-γ (2-3 fold, p=0.086) and Eotaxin (2-3-fold, p<0.05). The enzymatic activity for ACE2 was also found to be increased in the blood serum from COVID-19 positive patients as compared to COVID-19 recovered individuals. ACE2 is a transmembrane protein that is known to be over-expressed on the airway epithelium of smokers. In fact, on comparing the ACE2 activity amongst COVID19 patients based on their smoking history, we observed a 7-10% increase in the ACE2 activity amongst smokers. Lipid mediators profile revealed distinct signature among the positive versus recovered subjects in 12-HETE, 8(9)-EET and 11(12)-EET levels. However, we did not find any changes in the levels of any lipid mediators based on the smoking history of the patients. Conclusion: Overall, our results point towards an augmentation of cytokine/chemokine production and ACE2 activity along with differential profile of lipid mediators amongst COVID19 patients with a smoking history, thus pointing towards the possibility of a more severe and rapid worsening of the disease symptoms amongst these individuals.
ABSTRACT
The recent pandemic of COVID-19 has brought infected millions worldwide. Over 6 million individuals in the US have been infected by the SARS-CoV2 making it the worst-hit country across the globe. While there is an urgent need to find a potential therapy/vaccine it is important to understand the disease progression and susceptibilities to enable better the disease management. In this respect, smokers or vapers could be considered as the worst affected population as they are highly prone to respiratory infections. However, the clinical data relating COVID-19 occurrence and severity amongst smokers/vapers is quite limited. We thus hypothesized that dysregulated ACE2 expression and weakened immunity could result in severe disease outcomes amongst smokers. To test this hypothesis, we collected the blood serum samples from COVID19 positive and COVID-19 recovered patients with and without a smoking history. We assayed the expression and activity of ACE2. ACE2 is the membrane-bound receptor on pneumocytes and lung epithelium that binds to the SARS-CoV2 spike protein and is responsible for the viral entry into the host cell. This viral entry and fusion occur due to the activity of membrane proteases like furin and TMPRSS2. Results: Our initial investigations show increased Furin activity amongst the COVID19 positive patients with a smoking history as compared to the non-smoking controls. We further observed a significant dysregulation in the ACE2 activity of COVID-19 patients as compared to COVID-19 recovered patient group. Smoking habit was found to dramatically affect the ACE2 activity amongst COVID-19 positive group. We are presently comparing the expression levels of systemic inflammatory mediators (IL8 and IL6) amongst our various experimental groups to compare the severity of inflammatory responses amongst smokers and non-smokers. Overall, our findings show that the onset and progression of COVID-19 varies amongst smokers doi: xxxxx
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Introduction: This paper fulfills an identified need to study the mental health status of the population under situations like lockdown, thereby helping fill a persistent gap in Indian research on this issue, and present research on the impact of lockdown on mental health during epidemics is limited, especially in India. This study aims to scale the association between anxiety and sociodemographic factors during the coronavirus disease 2019 lockdown among the general Indian population. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional nationwide study designed to enroll the general population. The inclusion criteria for this study were Indian citizens aged 18 years and above. The study was conducted from March 29, 2020, to April 12, 2020, using an online google questionnaire. The anxiety among respondents was detected and measured using a Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) Scale, which consists of seven questions (in English), that is, GAD-7. Results: Responders were 392, and from these participants, the prevalence of anxiety was 25.3%. The predictors of anxiety were gender, religion, occupation as business/self-employed, marital status, family size, health status, and sleep deprivation based on the bivariate logistic regression analysis. Conclusion: This study reports the early prevalence of anxiety among the Indian population who were grounded at their homes during lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic in the country. © 2020, University of Sarajevo - Faculty of Health Studies.