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Background and objective: Millions of people worldwide have died from COVID-19, which has caused the failure of the lungs and other organs. The research assessed biochemical anomalies in COVID-19 patients to comprehend the illness and its effect better. Study Design: Retrospective longitudinal cohort analysis Place of study: ABWA Medical College Faisalabad Methods: A total of 150 adult patients (n=150) who tested positive for COVID-19 via RT-PCR were included in the study. A Roche Diagnostics Cobas C501 used spectrophotometry to measure calcium, magnesium, phosphate, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), urea, creatinine, ferritin, and chloride in the blood. A NOVA electrolytic analyzer used Ion-selective electrodes to measure sodium, chloride, potassium, and bicarbonate. Result(s): In the study, 33.6% of patients had elevated urea levels, and 22.4% had elevated creatinine levels. Furthermore, 88.8% of patients had elevated ferritin levels, and 93.5% had elevated LDH levels. After 44 weeks, there was a drop in sodium-containing electrolytes, with 9% of patients experiencing a decrease in sodium, 22.4% in potassium, 53.3% in bicarbonate, 48.6% in calcium, and 23.4% in phosphorus. These changes in electrolyte levels suggest a long-term trend in electrolyte depletion among the patient population. There was no significant difference in biochemical anomalies between age groups (p > 0.05). Conclusion(s): These results suggest that COVID-19 patients have lung illness and multi-organ involvement, which should be considered when managing these patients. These biochemical alterations warrant careful monitoring for organ failure by healthcare practitioners. More study is required to comprehend the processes causing these biochemical anomalies in COVID-19 patients.Copyright © 2023 Lahore Medical And Dental College. All rights reserved.
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Enculturation is learning the culture you grow up in and Acculturation is learning a culture different from that in which you grew up. The situation becomes more challenging when you are doing business in a developing country having low literacy rate and high cultural & language barriers. This paper describes the cultural transformation, behavioral systems and improvement initiatives Fatima Fertilizers Limited (FFL) has successfully implemented in past 9 years to improve the safety culture dimensions and to ensure compliance with standards. This resulted in improvement of FFL safety records to world class level. It will also describe the details of implementation process and maturing steps of systems on Behavioral/Cultural aspects and elements such as Process Safety Leadership & Engagement Program, Management Safety Audit Program, Perception Surveys, Operational Discipline & Excellence, Field vigilance & Area audits Program, Line Management Responsibility, Observation Reporting, Analysis & Action Plans and Contractor Safety Management Program etc which resulted in achievement of such remarkable results. The paper also includes the Organizations' vision & future plans on sustaining and further improving process safety culture as per changing & challenging scenarios across the globe especially post COVID-19. © 2022 AIChE Spring Meeting and 18th Global Congress on Process Safety, GCPS 2022. All rights reserved.
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In the field of medical imaging, deep learning techniques have already proven to be quite a success.The global population's health and well being continue to be severely impacted by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, healthcare systems are unable to examine and diagnose patients as soon as they ought to. The various post COVID complications which may have been dealt in a better way if the virus was detected at an earlier stage and given appropriate clinical support. Chest radiography imaging is essential for detecting and tracking COVID-19 because of its effects on pulmonary tissues. Chest X-Ray(CXR) imaging is even more readily available than chest computed tomography(CT) imaging, especially in developing countries where CT scanners are too costly due to high equipment and maintenance costs. In this work we propose a very lightweight convolutional neural network (CNN), in which the chest X-Ray samples comprising of COVID-19, Non-COVID and Normal cases are analyzed without any human intervention. Our model gives comparable accuracy to other COVID-19 detection models proposed earlier while having significantly fewer parameters than them, which makes our model optimal for deployment on machines with low computing power. © 2022 IEEE.
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The ongoing pandemic of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) has created a major challenge for the public health worldwide. The reported cases indicate that the outbreak is more widespread than initially assumed. Around 18 million people have been infected with 689,000 reported deaths (August 2020;the number is increasing daily);with a high mutation rate, this virus poses an even more serious threat worldwide. The actual source of COVID-19 is still un-clear;even if the initial reports link it to the Chinese seafood wet market in Wuhan, other animals such as birds, snakes, and many small mammals including bats are also linked with this novel coro-navirus. The structure of the COVID-19 shows distinctive proteins among which spike proteins have a pivotal role in host cell attachment and virus-cell membrane fusion in order to facilitate virus infection. Currently, no specific antiviral treatment or vaccine is available. Various drug can-didates, including SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV protease inhibitors, neuraminidase inhibitors, RNA synthesis inhibitors, ACE2 inhibitors and lungs supportive therapy, are under trials. Cell-based therapy also appeared with remarkable treatment possibilities. In this article, we endeavored to succinctly cover the current and available treatment options, including pharmaceuticals, cell-based therapy, and traditional medicine. We also focused on the extent of damages by this novel coron-avirus in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh;the strategies adopted and the research activities initiat-ed so far by these densely populated countries (neighboring China) are explained in this review.Copyright © 2021 Bentham Science Publishers.
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In the current epidemic, the whole world is suffering with the infectious disease i.e., Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19). It is important to wear a mask to minimize the transmission of the disease. When everyone is wearing a face mask, it is difficult for recognition systems to recognize the masked face of a specific person. As some of the facial features are covered behind the mask e.g., mouth and nose. Therefore, the face-recognizing systems are inefficient to recognize the masked faces. To solve this issue, a face recognition system is proposed to recognize masked and unmasked faces. Support vector machine (SVM) and Random Forest (RF) based classifiers are trained on the specific dataset and classifiers effectively recognize the masked and unmasked faces. The classifier recognizes the human facial features such as eyes, eyebrows, forehead, ears, and hair. The dataset is collected in the form of images for 28 classes with and without a face mask. The trained system will recognize the person, whether the person is wearing a mask or not. The recognition accuracy is approximately 98.2% for different classes and the proposed recognizer is also compared with the state of art existing techniques © 2022, Mathematical Modelling of Engineering Problems. All Rights Reserved.
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Objective: To assess the C Reactive protein level as early predictor of Covid -19 Patients Methodology: COVID-19 patients were admitted in LG Hospital Lahore. The medical history of established patients of COVID-19 during October 2020 to December 2020 was studied. CRP level of Covid -19 patients were measured. Data was collected and entered using software SPSS version which was later analyzed. Results: A major rise of CRP levels 20 to 50 mg/L in Covid -19 patients was detected. Conclusion: The result of the study shows that rise of CRP level is directly associated with elevation of mortality of Covid -19 ailments. So, therefore, it is essential to observe CRP level .CRP level should be acclaimed for definite sign for sternness guess of Covid-19 patients.
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The biggest challenge of today's world is to adjust to the rapidly changing environment brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, where uncertainty and unpredictability have become the norm. The advanced technological tools used during the pandemic have altered communication, employee motivation, and the employees` desire for personal connectivity. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the effect of professional isolation on the teleworker's job performance, motivation, and turnover intention. This study also considers the moderating role of the access to information and communications technology. In this context, a survey was carried out among the employees from the telecommunications/ IT sector in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, Pakistan and 478 complete/usable responses were received and analysed. In this paper, the MACRO PROCESS computational procedure was employed. A confirmatory factor analysis was carried out, along with an analysis on Pearson correlation, internal consistency reliability, discriminant validity of the variables employed in this study, and hierarchical moderated regression analysis with the purpose of testing six hypotheses. The obtained results show that there is a negative relationship between professional isolation and the employees` job performance and motivation. On the other hand, professional isolation is positively associated with turnover intention. To that, professional isolation and the access to communication-enhancing technology (ACET) significantly affect employee job motivation.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled countries worldwide to enforce stringent measures to maintain social distancing, by locking down populations and restricting all kinds of transport. Besides their impact on the virus, these dramatic changes may also have positively contributed to a sustainable environment. The study aims to measure the effect of COVID-19 on environmental sustainability by employing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The study is based on the daily data of COVID-19 confirmed cases;confirmed deaths;manually generated lockdown data by the indexing method;and NO2, NH3, SO2, and CO levels from March 3, 2020, to July 27, 2021. This research study investigates the long- and short-term relationship between COVID-19 and the aforementioned greenhouse gases. The findings suggest conclusively that NO2, SO2, and CO declined during the COVID-19 period in India because these gases are anthropologically emitted by transport, industries, and fossil fuel burning. On the other hand, the evolving NH3 is not related to COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths but is impacted by lockdown because ammonia emission is directly related to agricultural activities. Therefore, a decline in pollutants such as greenhouse gases during the COVID-19 period until July 2021 was observed. This means the prioritized control of human activities can be helpful to enhance the quality of the environment. © Copyright © 2021 Mohsin, Naseem, Sarfraz, Ivascu and Albasher.
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As of August 9, 2021, there have been around 203 million confirmed cases of coronavirus disease (2019) COVID-19, including 4.3 million deaths. Adverse psychological effects are expected to be long-lasting in vulnerable groups, especially among frontline healthcare workers, given the magnitude of the crisis. Observing strict quarantine and social distancing measures, while being an important strategy to curb the spread, have also led to a significant negative impact on mental health indicators;the long-term consequences are yet to be assessed on a global scale. A medical crisis may become a mental health crisis and the updated findings are reviewed in this paper to provide an updated brief for immunological, occupational, socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, psychological predictors while commenting on care recommendations to prevent psychological trauma from progressing to PTSD.
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Purpose: This study divulges the new concept of employees' withdrawal behavior during the global pandemic (COVID-19). The study's purpose is to draw new insights into workplace stressors and employee withdrawal behavior. The study also considers the mediating role of aggression and the moderating role of COVID-19 worry and cyberloafing. Design/methodology/approach: The study's statistical population consists of 384 frontline hotel employees from Pakistan's hospitality industry. Statistical analysis SPSS and AMOS were utilized to conduct Pearson's correlation and multilevel regression analysis. A Hayes process technique has been used for moderation and mediation analysis. Findings: The results demonstrated that COVID-19 has a psychological effect on the employee's mental health and higher turnover intention during the current pandemic. Workplace stressor is significantly related to aggression and employee withdrawal behavior. Aggression mediates the relationship between workplace stressors and withdrawal behavior. The study results show that COVID-19 worry moderates between workplace stressors and aggression – notably, cyberloafing moderate aggression and withdrawal behavior. Practical implications: The government and hospitality organizations need to implement crisis management strategies in response to COVID-19. This research can help management in coping with employees' mental and psychological challenges. Employees' mental health has been affected during the current global health crises. Firms should encourage their employees psychologically while going for downsizing. Originality/value: This study enhances the existing literature on the COVID-19 crisis in Pakistan's hospitality industry. This study contributes to new understandings of employees' withdrawal behavior in the hospitality industry. The research shows how COVID-19 affects employees' turnover, mental health and job performance in the hospitality industry. Employees are facing mental and physiological challenges during COVID-19. The study fills a considerable gap in the hospitality industry by exploring the role organization's crisis management during a global pandemic. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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Background: An unprecedented global effort in identifying potentially viable and emerging drugs for effective treatment of the novel coronavirus disease (2019) is being made. Of the most promising candidate therapies, convalescent plasma (CP), albeit controversial, is approved for emergency use authorization (EUA) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The concept rests on passive immunity, achieved by administering plasma with high titers of neutralizing antibodies to reduce severity of SARS-CoV-2 infection and mortality. The aim of this paper is to assess the clinical improvement, patients' discharge status and all-cause mortality in convalescent plasma versus standard of care COVID-19 patient groups. Methods: Using PRISMA guidelines, a review was conducted from January, 2020, until October, 2020 employing keywords including "convalescent plasma", "clinical improvement, "mortality", "adverse events", "viral load", "dosing", and survival." Dichotomous data for all-cause mortality, patients' discharge status, and clinical improvement at day 14 of treatment were meta-analyzed applying the Mantel-Haenszel (M-H) random effects model using Review Manager 5.4. Results: A total of 627 (23.9%) patients in the CP group and 1997 (76.1%) patients in the control group were pooled. The studies were conducted in the United States, China, Netherlands, and Iran. The CP group had a lower association to all-cause mortality as compared to the control group [OR: 0.69;CI: 0.50 to 0.96;P=0.03]. Patients who received CP had higher probability of discharge during the study course [OR: 1.87;CI: 1.1 to 3.18;P=0.02]. Bias was expected in the analysis due to the stratified of study designs included. Conclusion: Convalescent plasma therapy may be an effective and vital tool with promising historical, current, and expected clinical trial evidence of metrics such as increased safety and reduction of all-cause mortality.
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Objective: The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 disease (COVID-19) emerged in 2019, and ultimately spread worldwide, being defined as a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. The respiratory disease related to COVID-19 can range from being asymptomatic to presenting as devastating ARDS and death. The elderly and individuals with comorbidities and immunocompromised states are at a higher risk. Asthma is an inflammatory spasm of the airways with ACE2 overexpression at the alveolar level. ACE2 and TMPRSS2 expression mediate SARS-CoV-2 infection of host lung cells and hence might increase disease susceptibility in asthmatics. Materials and Methods: A literature review was done by searching the databases of Pubmed, WHO, clinicaltrials.gov, and Google Scholar, using the keywords of -COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, coronavirus, asthma, and their combinations, following the timeline of December 2019 to August 10, 2020. We included patients with asthma diagnosed with COVID-19 while excluding non-COVID-19 patients, pregnant patients, and patients with other diseases or comorbidities. Primary outcomes included mortality and ICU admissions of both groups. Based on the available data, we conducted a meta-analysis via RevMan 5.4 using a random-effects model and 95% confidence intervals. Results: Patients with and without asthma were compared for risk outcomes of mortality. For the 755 COVID-19 patients with asthma and 4969 non-asthmatic COVID-19 patients, we found that the risk of mortality would increase by 9% in the asthmatic group (RR=1.09, CI= 0.58 to 2.03, I2=72%). There was an increased proportion of ICU admissions among the asthmatic group (RR=1.39, CI = 0.80 to 2.42). There was high heterogeneity among the studies (I-2 = 79%). Medications such as corticosteroids improve the mortality and ICU admission rates. Conclusion: Our results indicate that the number of COVID-19 cases in patients with asthma has been lower than those of the nonasthmatic group. COVID-19 patients with asthma were at increased risk of mortality and ICU admission due to underlying factors or predisposition. Finally, corticosteroids are considered safe and may confer protection against the severity of COVID-19 infection.
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BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an unprecedented strain on healthcare supplies. Currently there is a global shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), especially N95 masks. In order to safeguard healthcare personnel in this critical time and to mitigate shortages of N95 respirators, reuse of N95 respirators has to be considered. METHODS: Using PubMed and Science Direct, a literature search was conducted to find and synthesize relevant literature on decontamination of N95 respirators for their subsequent reuse. Peer-reviewed publications related to methods of decontamination from January 2007 to April 2020 in the English language are included in this narrative review. Bibliographies of articles for relevant literature were also scrutinized. Findings. A total of 19 studies are included in this narrative review. The appraised methods include ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI), moist heat incubation (MHI), ethylene oxide (EtO), hydrogen peroxide vapor (HPV), microwave steam bags (MSB), microwave-generated steam (MGS), dry microwave oven irradiation, hydrogen peroxide gas plasma (HPGP), dry heat, liquid hydrogen peroxide, and bleach and alcohol. CONCLUSION: In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, reuse of N95 respirators, although suboptimal, can be considered. Evidence reveals that UVGI, MHI, and HPV are amongst the safest and efficacious methods for decontamination of N95 masks. More research is needed to establish the safety and effectiveness of MGS, MSB, dry heat, EtO, liquid hydrogen peroxide, and HPGP. Alcohol, microwave irradiation, and bleach are not recommended because they damage N95 respirators.
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BACKGROUND: The recent COVID-19 pandemic has brought Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) to the forefront of governmental and organizational preoccupations. Empirical research has pointed that OHS responsibility is diffused within organizations, and there is no apparent reference on whom it falls upon;even the OHSAS 18001:2007 (OHSAS 18001, 2007) standard framework generates the same confusion among organizational stakeholders. OBJECTIVE: When constituting an internal chain of responsibility, which organizational stakeholder should be responsible for each item of the OHSAS 18001:2007? The article considers how OHS tasks can be addressed from the perspective of stakeholder management. The objective is to consider the internal division of OHS responsibility between the hierarchical strata and to introduce an OHS Responsibility Multilevel Model for an organization's internal responsibility system for the implementation of the OHSAS 18001:2007 standard. METHODS: The paper presents a qualitative assessment of the literature on the concepts of responsibility and accountability regarding OHS. First method applied was the literature review on the concepts of responsibility and accountability regarding OHS, while briefly discussing their impacts on the voluntary implementation of OHSAS 18001:2007 standard. Second, the OHS and the conditions of the COVID-19 period were synthesised to underline the research motivation and importance. Further the conceptual framework for the internal division of OHS responsibility based on a Multilevel Model for OHS stakeholders was developed based on a creative designed approach considering recent conclusions on safety leadership (OHS being situated at the confluence of top-down and bottom-up approaches in organization). RESULTS: The research results underline the relative complexity of the items in the OHSAS 18001:2007 framework;from the 68 items that are comprised under the six themes, the authors have identified 304 distinct actions. The application of the proposed OHS Responsibility Multilevel Model to the OHSAS 18001:2007 supports the interest that research literature has had for the role of top management in OHS. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the research results propose a novel approach for improving stakeholders' involvement (commitment) and responsibility regarding OHS practices in organization. The research findings highlight that the OHSAS 18001:2007 standard proposes the organization as primary repository of OHS responsibility. © 2020 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.