From the Global Risk Society to the Vulnerable Society Towards a Sociological Analysis of the Covid-19 Pandemic?

The article sought to interpret the COVID-19 pandemic through the generalization of social vulnerability, converted into a sociological concept, as it was considered as a social fact caused by the crisis of the labor society, whose basis was the management of risks and dangers, through state welfare institutions, which later, in the neoliberal economic model, it was individualized, diluting the state responsibility to attend to the dangers derived from the pandemic, exercising only its function of surveillance and control over individuals on the part of a neoliberal State, which ceased to consider them as citizens, defined by rights, which were protected with the existence of the welfare state.

Interrupted trajectories: university students' reasons for temporarily suspending their studies during the pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the continuity of the educational trajectories of many students who have had to suspend their studies temporarily or permanently. In the case of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (unam), the General Secretary's office stated in 2020 that 20% of students were at risk of dropping out of school due to the pandemic, while by 2021 the number of students requesting temporary suspension of their studies increased by 228%. In order to identify the reasons put forward by the student body for submitting to the Technical Council of their entity a temporary suspension of studies, a mixed convergent study was conducted in which the causes given by 268 students of the Psychology degree of the Faculty of Psychology of the unam, both open and attendance systems, for temporarily suspending their studies are analyzed. The purpose is to understand, based on the voice of the students, the problems they have been experiencing during the pandemic without being able to achieve continuity with the theoretical trajectory typified by the school administration. The results indicate the interrelation of factors associated with socioeconomic or labor conditions of the students and their families, responsibilities and problems at home, lack of appropriate technological infrastructure, health and emotional problems, educational conditions and prior academic lag, as well as dissatisfaction and demotivation regarding the online education received and the reduction of the school semester. Proposals for attention and prevention of college dropout during the pandemic are discussed. © 2022 Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. All rights reserved.

National Health Strategy for immunizations during quarantine in a rural district of the Peruvian Andean trapeze

Immunization processes are an effective public health strategy that has been affected by the implementation of a quarantine due to the SARs COV-2 pandemic;The objective of the study was to establish the health implications in immunizations during the quarantine period from March 16 to June 30, 2020 in children under 1 year of age in the Peruvian District of Paucara. An analytical observational study was carried out;the sample consisted of 145 newborns, 21 under 2-4 months and 4 under 6 months. A data collection form was used, which was applied daily according to the cases of vaccination carried out by healthcare personnel. Results show that the application of the BCG vaccine and that against viral hepatitis B by the Microred of Paucara was carried out in a normal way in newborns during quarantine, while vaccines corresponding to the application in children under 2, 4 and 6 months suffered variation in its coverage during the quarantine established by the government of Peru. Immunization processes in children under one year of age were affected by the quarantine process established due to Covid-19, generating non-immunization of newborns from home births, loss of immune response due to failure to comply with the vaccination interval in vaccines such as polio, rotavirus and pneumococcus, reduction in vaccination coverage. The findings of this study show that the rural districts of the Peruvian Andean trapeze are at a high risk of reactivation of immunopreventable diseases, because vaccination indicators are below 80% of protected, which is the minimum standard for avoiding the circulation of such diseases in a vaccinated target population. Copyright © 2021, Revista Salus. All rights reserved.

Teaching Control during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper aims to analyze some different solutions that were adopted in control education activities during the pandemic. The authors of this paper are educators in the control education field from different countries on all the continents, who have developed a questionnaire with the idea of collecting data about the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the control education activities. The main objective is to study the diverse alternatives that were used worldwide to perform the online educational activities during that period, such as methodologies, tools, learning management systems (LMS), theoretical exercises, laboratory experiments, types of exams, simulators, software for online lecturing, etc. As a result, comparisons between preand during-pandemic educational resources and methods are performed, where useful ideas and discussions are given for the control education community. Copyright (C) 2022 The Authors.

Teaching Control during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper aims to analyze some different solutions that were adopted in control education activities during the pandemic. The authors of this paper are educators in the control education field from different countries on all the continents, who have developed a questionnaire with the idea of collecting data about the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the control education activities. The main objective is to study the diverse alternatives that were used worldwide to perform the online educational activities during that period, such as methodologies, tools, learning management systems (LMS), theoretical exercises, laboratory experiments, types of exams, simulators, software for online lecturing, etc. As a result, comparisons between pre-and during-pandemic educational resources and methods are performed, where useful ideas and discussions are given for the control education community.

Coagulation markers and stroke severity in covid-19 associated acute ischemic stroke

Background: COVID-19 is thought to induce a pro-thrombotic state, which might increase stroke risk. The purpose of this project is to assess stroke severity, type and coagulation markers such as D-dimer, fibrinogen, and CRP in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) and COVID-19, compared to a control group of AIS without COVID-19. Methods: We captured discharge diagnosis of all patients at our medical center with AIS and COVID based on their discharge ICD-10 coding between June 2020 and May 2021;and identified AIS without COVID matched for age, sex, race, and ethnicity. Group 1 was AIS with COVID-19, Group 2 matched (3:1) AIS without COVID-19. We compared baseline demographics, NIHSS, Ddimer, fibrinogen, CRP, presence of large vessel occlusion (LVO) in COVID-19 AIS vs non-COVID19 AIS. We used a T test to compare parametric and Mann Whitney U for non-parametric values. Results: In total 23 (of 397 total AIS) patients were in Group 1;69 in Group 2. D-dimer levels (mean) were 3237.3 in Group 1, and 2706.8 in Group 2 (NS), Fibrinogen 464.4 and 379.8 (NS), CRP 7.9 and 9.4 (NS). Median NIHSS was 21 versus 5 (p=0.003). LVO was present in 17 patients in Group 1 (73%) and 23 (33%) in Group 2 (NS). In total, only 5.8% (23 of 397) of all AIS in our data had Covid-19 infection. Conclusion: COVID in stroke was an infrequent finding in our sample (5.8%). Patients with COVID and stroke had higher initial stroke severity, but did not differ in coagulation values. Weather coagulation markers can help distinguish patients with COVID related stroke will require subsequent studies. We need additional data before treatment recommendations specific to stroke in COVID can be made.

[Information services facing the COVID-19 pandemic]

The COVID-19 pandemic caused various effects in the world, among them the saturation of information in the traditional media, as well as in those of scientific dissemination, due to the accelerated production of informative material. At the Mexican Institute for Social Security (Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social), librarians have contributed to the careful selection of documents as they are in charge of providing specialized information services to health personnel in order to support them in academic, educational, teaching and research activities. In the context of physical distancing, the need for up-to-date and accurate information on the new coronavirus became a priority. In this sense, librarians have focused their efforts to carry out strategies that would allow to provide specialized information services remotely, reinforcing reference services such as bibliographic alert and Selective Information Dissemination, to reach users in a timely manner, simple and agile, updated, reliable and quality information on COVID-19. These services have been well received by users, but it is still necessary to systematize the provision of information services to identify which documents are of greatest interest and usefulness.

'All you need is... entrepreneurial attitudes': a deeper look into the propensity to start a business during the COVID-19 through a gender comparison (GEM data)

The COVID-19 captured entrepreneurs by surprise, and shocked in the first months of the pandemic, especially women entrepreneurs;yet, the initial stages of the 'shock' that crises induce, are still underexplored in the entrepreneurial research, though critical for the further venture creation act. The genders' perceptions of opportunity, fear of failure and motivations before and during the pandemic, are employed to predict propensity to start a business during this crisis. Results comparing the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) datasets between 2019 and 2020 suggest that while pandemic has been found to affect women more severely than men, women's perceived availability of opportunities during COVID-19 emerged more tightly related to financial motivations, as their main impetus to start a business. These findings reinforce the relevance of the theory of planned behaviour and bricolage to the contexts of gender and crises. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

A Sequential Quadratic Programming Approach for the Predictive Control of the COVID-19 Spread

The COVID-19 pandemic is the defying crisis of our time. Since mass vaccination has not yet been established, countries still have been facing many issues due to the viral spread. Even in cities with high seroprevalence, intense resurgent waves of COVID-19 have been registered, possibly due to viral variants with greater transmission rates. Accordingly, we develop a new Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework that is able to determine social distancing guidelines and altogether provide estimates for the future epidemiological characteristic of the contagion. For such, the viral dynamics are represented through a Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) version of the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered-Deceased (SIRD) model. The solution of the LPV MPC problem is based on a Sequential Quadratic Program (SQP). This SQP provides convergent estimates of the future LPV scheduling parameters. We use real data to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method to mitigate this contagion while vaccination is ongoing. Copyright (C) 2021 The Authors.

Monoclonal antibodies for COVID-19 in patients with solid organ transplant recipients

Purpose: The FDA has issued Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 in patients at risk for progressing to severe disease. The authorized use includes treatment for patients with suppressed immune system (1,2). To our knowledge, there are no reports in the literature of Solid Organ Transplant Recipients receiving outpatient monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19. We predict that SARSCoV2 neutralizing antibodies infusion would help reduce hospital admissions and complications from SARS-CoV2 infection in this population. Methods: In this retrospective descriptive study, we identified patients with kidney and/or liver transplant who were diagnosed with SARS-CoV2 infection in the outpatient setting with mild symptoms at the time of diagnosis and agreed to receive one of the two products available. 17 total patients were identified and followed by clinic visits or phone calls. Follow-up assessment included complications from Bamlanivimab infusion, resolution or progression of symptoms, hospitalizations, and outcome. The assessment was conducted at time of presentation and at least three weeks later. Results: Out of the 17 patients, 14 had kidney transplant, 2 had liver and only one had both. Eleven patients received monoclonal antibodies within 10 days of symptom onset, 3 received it beyond 10 days of symptom onset and 3 patients had an unknown duration of symptoms before infusion. Three out of 17 patients (17%) experienced side effects after infusion including fever, myalgia, generalized weakness and pruritus. There were no serious adverse events. Four patients were hospitalized with a mean length of stay of 3.75 days (1-7 days). There were no ICU admissions. All 17 patients were alive at 3-week follow up. Conclusions: Infusion of monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of mild to moderate Covid-19 was a safe strategy for Solid Organ Transplant Recipients, reducing hospitalizations and mortality from SARS-CoV2 infections in such high-risk population.

NLP&IR@UNED at CheckThat! 2021: Check-worthiness estimation and fake news detection using transformer models

This article describes the different approaches used by the NLPIR@UNED team in the CLEF2021 CheckThat! Lab to tackle the tasks 1A-English, 1A-Spanish and 3A-English. The goal of Task 1A in English is to determine which tweets within a set of COVID-19 related tweets are worth checking. Task 1A in Spanish is similar but in this case the tweets are related to political issues in Spain. In both tasks, transformer models have been used to identify check-worthy tweets, obtaining the first place in the task in English and the fourth place in the task in Spanish. Task 3A is focused on determining the veracity of a news article. It is a multi-class classification problem with four possible values: true, partially false, false, and other. For this task we have used two different approaches: a gradient-boosting classifier with TF-IDF and LIWC features, and a transformer model fed with the first tokens of each news article. We got the fourth place out of 25 participants in this task. © 2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

WHO's role in SARS-CoV-2 laboratory diagnostics: an end-to-end approach

One of the main challenges in an emerging pathogen outbreak is the availability of and access to reliable laboratory diagnostic tests for timely and accurate confirmation of the disease or infection to rapidly inform public health actions. Additional challenges include ensuring that laboratory staff are sufficiently trained and equipped to perform the tests safely, linking public health and clinical data, developing and implementing comprehensive testing strategies and ensuring widely available, affordable in vitro diagnostic tests and supplies. WHO through its regional and country offices serves 194 Member States and, as the leading global health organization, plays a major role in coordinating and assisting countries in their responses to emerging pathogens. WHO's mandate includes establishing and implementing surveillance for emerging and re-emerging pathogens and noncommunicable diseases, develop ment of normative guidance and regulatory frameworks, providing technical assistance to countries, supporting country capacity through training and simulation exercises, establishing research agendas and leading implementation research to inform guid ance development and public health action. Platforms, systems and partnerships have been established to ensure early detection of novel viruses, including syndromic surveillance, rapid molecular testing and genetic sequencing, and facilitating the development of vaccines and benefit-sharing. We describe the work of WHO and partners on SARS-CoV-2 in vitro diagnostics and highlight considerations for moving forward. Within days of learning of the cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology in Wuhan, China,7 WHO brought together coronavirus laboratory experts who were already members of WHO's informal MERS-CoV laboratory network and the Global Laboratories Alliance for the Diagnosis of High Threat Pathogens to develop and publish interim guidance for laboratories within 2 weeks of first suspected cases being reported. As more diagnostic tests were developed and manufactured by suppliers, WHO worked with experts in the SARS-CoV-2 reference laboratory network and partners, including the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, to review their performance and diagnostic accuracy. Target product profiles for diagnostic tests were developed to notify suppliers, manufacturers and countries of the necessary characteristics for diagnostics on the market. The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on IVD added NAAT and antigen-detection RDTs for SARS-CoV-2 to the 3rd edition of the WHO Model list of Essential In Vitro Diagnostics, which is used by countries as a reference to develop or update their lists of IVD tests for universal health coverage and outbreak response.

Perception and Technological Accessibility of University Students in Southwest of the Dominican Republic during Covid-19

The pandemic led to suspension of face-to-face dasses and the implementation of virtual education. The objective of this study was to diagnose and analyze the perception of university students and their technological accessibility during the educational emergency in the southwest of the Dominican Republic (January-April 2020). A mixed research method was used, a survey was applied, and responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and statistical inference, descriptive analysis, and semantic network construction. Regarding technological accessibility, the results show that the use of phones predominates rather than computers and lack of Internet access. According to students there are more negative aspects than positives in virtual education, as technological equipment and internet accessibility are lacking, resulting in frustration and discomfort, as well as learning difficulties. Also, the overload of subjects and activities, since more than 60 tasks were assigned to develop in a month, which for them shows insensitivity of teachers in the face of the situation. Social distancing generated anxiety due to isolation and lack of concentration for learning. Among the positive aspects is the use of technology, which facilitates learning and allows the continuity of studies.

Large scale use of SARS-CoV-2 antigen-based detection tests: A three-month experience in Guatemala, June-August 2020

Objectives. To measure protocol adherence and antigen-based detection tests (AgDT) negative predictive value after 3 months of massive use as a diagnostic tool for COVID-19 in Guatemala. Methods. The study period included nasopharyngeal swabs taken between March 12 and August 31, 2020, which results were entered in the national COVID-19 information system. Proportional increase in testing between one month before and one month after the introduction of AgDT (May 9–June 8 vs. June 9–July 8) was measured. Results. After AgDT introduction, there was a 139% increase in SARS-CoV-2 testing. Between June 9 and August 31, 7.8% of 110 657 AgDT-negative patients had follow-up RT-PCR testing. Of them, 30% were RT-PCR positive. Conclusions. While introducing AgDT improved access to diagnostics, ensuring the availability of timely RT-PCR capacities to confirm diagnosis is also key. © 2020 Pan American Health Organization. All rights reserved.