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Introduction: The prevalence of various infectious diseases has been changing since the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. Hepatitis A (HA) is transmitted from food and drink contaminated with the hepatitis A virus, while hepatitis E (HE) is a known zoonotic disease. The trends of HA and HE infection during the COVID-19 pandemic are unknown in Japan. Objective(s): In this study, we investigated the incidence of HA and HE before and after the COVID-19 epidemic, and compared the differences in trends between our hospital and Japanese statistics. Method(s): We investigated the number of IgA-HEV and IgM-HAV antibodies tested and positive at our hospital between January 2015 and December 2021. We verified the patient background, blood test findings and outcome of each antibody-positive. Result(s): The number of HE diagnoses /tests (rate) was 2 /187 (1.1%) in 2015, 2 /155 (1.3%) in 2016, 7 /236 (3.0%) in 2017, 11 /234 (4.7%) in 2018 and 15/ 307 (4.9%) in 2019, which was an increasing trend, but the number of tests remained the same but the number of diagnoses decreased 6 /314 (1.9%) in 2020, 2 /296 (1.0%) in 2021. According to Japanese statistics, the number of HE diagnoses showed a gradual increase from 213 in 2015 to 490 in 2019, but a slight decrease was reported in 441 in 2020 and 447 cases in 2021, respectively. On the other hand, there was no marked change in the number of HA diagnoses/tests between 2015 and 2019. 7 cases of HIV co-infection and an epidemic among Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) were observed in 2018. The number of cases decreased markedly to 0 /362 (0%) in 2020 and 0 /339 (0%) in 2021. In Japan, the number of HA diagnoses was in the 200 s from 2015 to 2017, while 925 cases were diagnosed in 2018 and 425 cases in 2019, indicating an epidemic, but the number of HA diagnoses has decreased significantly to 118 in 2020 and 69 in 2021. Conclusion(s): The number of cases of HE, a zoonosis, was reported to have decreased slightly nationwide, even with the coronary disaster, but the number of cases decreased markedly at our facility in Tokyo, suggesting the influence of changes in the lifestyle and activity patterns of the patient population. On the other hand, the number of cases of HA, which had been prevalent in recent years as a result of sexual contact among MSM, has decreased, probably due to a decrease in the influx of cases from overseas as a result of travel restrictions.
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Myocarditis has been recognized as a rare complication of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccinations. The frequency of the event was reported 2-3 cases per million vaccinations. Clinical courses remain variable, ranging from asymptomatic to severe heart failure requires mechanical circulatory supports (MCS). Here we report a case of fulminant myocarditis requiring MCS following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination. A 22-year-old male presented to the hospital with chest pain and fever 2 days after receiving the third dose of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccination. Electrocardiography showed tachycardia with ST-segment elevation. Inflammatory and myocardial injury markers were elevated, and echocardiography demonstrated slight left ventricular (LV) dysfunction. He was hospitalized for suspecting acute myocarditis. On the second day of hospitalization, he developed recurrent ventricular fibrillation with cardiogenic shock leading to need for venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and intra-aortic balloon pumping. Echocardiography revealed severe LV systolic dysfunction. Catheter examinations showed normal coronary with elevated right and left sided filling pressures and decreased cardiac output. Endomyocardial biopsy (EMB) revealed moderate endomyocardial thickening, mild inflammation, increased interstitial fibrosis and cell infiltration with more macrophages (CD68+) (Figure) (awaiting the results of tenascin-C, angiotensin converting enzyme 2 and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 [SARS-CoV-2] spike S protein). No viral genomes including SARS-CoV-2 were detected in the EMB specimens by polymerase chain reaction test. With advanced therapy, he was discharged on the 26th day without any cardiac dysfunction. Histological evaluation is important for diagnosing myocarditis following COVID-19 vaccination to confirm type of inflammation and the absence of viral genomes. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Heart & Lung Transplantation is the property of Elsevier B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
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Objectives: Gastrointestinal endoscopy (GIE) is useful for the early detection and treatment of many diseases;however, GIE is considered a high-risk procedure in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic era. This study aimed to explore the rate of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) positivity in saliva and gastrointestinal fluids to which endoscopy medical staff are exposed. Method(s): The study was a single-center cross-sectional study. From June 1 to July 31, 2020, all patients who underwent GIE at Yokohama City University Hospital were registered. All patients provided 3 mL of saliva. For upper GIE, 10 mL of gastric fluid was collected through the endoscope. For lower GIE, 10 mL of intestinal fluid was collected through the endoscope. The primary outcome was the positive rate of SARS-CoV-2 in saliva and gastrointestinal fluids. We also analyzed serum-specific antibodies for SARS-CoV-2 and patients' background information. Result(s): A total of 783 samples (560 upper GIE and 223 lower GIE samples) were analyzed. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on saliva samples did not show any positive results in either upper or lower GIE samples. However, 2.0% (16/783) of gastrointestinal fluid samples tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. No significant differences in age, sex, purpose of endoscopy, medication, or rate of antibody test positivity were found between PCR positive and PCR negative cases. Conclusion(s): Asymptomatic patients, even those with no detectable virus in their saliva, had SARS-CoV-2 in their gastrointestinal tract. Endoscopy medical staff should be aware of infection when performing procedures. The study was registered as UMIN000040587. Text S1 Detection of SARS-Co-V-2 genomic RNA and serological tests for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Detection of SARS-CoV-2 genomic RNA was performed according to the Manual for the Detection of Pathogen 2019-nCoV Ver.2.61) provided by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Japan. RNA extraction was performed from a 140-microl sample using a QIAamp Viral RNA Mini Kit (Qiagen, Valencia, CA, USA) according to the manufacturer's protocol. The final elution was performed with 60 microl of elution buffer, and 5 microl of extracted RNA was subject to evaluation by real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). The RT-qPCR reaction mix was prepared using TaqMan Fast Virus 1-Step Master Mix (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Foster City, CA, USA) and primer/probe N2 (2019-nCoV) (TakaRa, Tokyo, Japan) according to the manufacturer's protocol. Primer sequences are shown in Supplementary Table 1. RT-PCR was conducted by StepOnePlusTM Real-Time PCR System (Applied Biosystems, Thermo Fisher Scientific, MA. USA) The denaturation and annealing/extension steps were repeated for 45 cycles. A well containing absolutely quantified artificial synthetic template RNA was evaluated as a positive control, and a well without template RNA was evaluated as a negative control. According to the Manual for the Detection of Pathogen 2019-nCoV Ver.2.6, the assay was considered valid when the following criteria were met: (a) 50 copies/well of template RNA successfully detected before 40 cycles and (b) nonspecific amplification not detected in the well lacking template RNA up to 45 cycles. Samples showing amplification of SARS-CoV-2 genomic RNA before 40 cycles were defined as positive for COVID-19. We previously reported a method for serological testing2),3). Briefly, an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was performed to detect and quantify anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in plasma. We used an N-terminally-truncated nucleocapsid protein (NP) and the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein (SP) as antigens (100 ng/well). Following blocking with phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) containing 3 % skimmed milk for 2 h, 100 microl of diluted plasma (1:100) were added and incubated for 1 h. After three washes with PBS-T, wells were incubated with 100 microl of diluted horseradish peroxidase-conjugated goat anti-human immunoglobulin G antibody (1:20000) for 1 h. Afte five additional washes with PBS-T, 100 microl of Tetramethylbenzidine Substrate (Kirkegaard & Perry Laboratories, Maryland, USA) was added and incubated for 10 mins. The reaction was terminated by adding 50 microl of 2-M H2SO4, and optical density was measured at 450 nm using a plate reader. In the serological test, COVID-19 antibody positivity was defined as a value greater than 1.139 in the NP test and greater than 0.277 in the SP test. In this study, a positive result in either the NP test or the SP test was defined as a positive antibody test. Copyright © 2022 Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society. All rights reserved.
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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.
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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.
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Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, children were out of school due to Stay-at-Home orders, and were potentially unsupervised, increasing their risk for unintentional injury. The objective of this study was to investigate how these events impacted the incidence of burn injuries in children. Methods: A total of 9 Level I pediatric trauma centers participated in a retrospective study evaluating children <18 years of age with traumatic injuries as defined by the National Trauma Data Bank were included. Patients with burn injuries were defined by ICD10 Diagnosis and/or External Cause of Injury Codes. Historical controls from March-September 2019 (“Control” cohort) were compared to patients injured after the implementation of the Stay-at-Home Orders from March through September 2020 (“COVID” cohort). Results: A total of 13,177 pediatric trauma patients were included, of which 987 patients had burn injuries. The total number of children with burn injury increased by 48.6% in 2020, compared to 2019 (COVID cohort 590 patients vs. Control cohort 397 patients;p-value < 0.001), of which 94% was explained by unintentional injury. School aged children accounted for the largest difference in burn injuries between the two cohorts [Table 1]. The average number of burn-injured patients admitted per month increased over time and the difference between 2019 and 2020 peaked in July [Figure 1]. Compared to 2019, the proportion of children sustaining flame burns increased significantly in 2020 (Control 19.1% vs. COVID 26.1%, p=0.0014). Conclusion: During the COVID-19 pandemic, families experienced unprecedented increased social and financial pressure, and children were out of school for extended periods of time. This time period coincided with a considerable increase in burn injuries. The disproportionate increase in burn injuries in July may reflect the cancellation of professional firework shows across the nation and an increase in amateur pyrotechnicians experimenting with their own fireworks. The onset of the COVID pandemic introduced an extraordinary set of events with unclear consequences. (Table Presented).
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Background: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, local and regional Stay-at-Home orders (SHO) were implemented. Families experienced job loss, financial strain, and children were unable to attend school. It is unclear how this combination of events and social stress affected the welfare of children and rates of pediatric injury nationwide. We hypothesized that the rate of non-accidental trauma (NAT) would increase during the SHO as children did not have access to mandatory reporters, such as schoolteachers and primary care physicians. Methods: A multi-center, retrospective study was conducted evaluating patients <18 years old with traumatic injuries as defined by National Trauma Data Bank. Patients with ICD-10 Diagnosis and/or External Cause of Injury codes meeting criteria for NAT were included. “Historical” controls from an averaged period of March-September 2016-2019 were compared to patients injured after the implementation of SHO through September 2020 (“COVID” cohort). SHO were defined at the state level for each site. An interrupted time series analysis was utilized to evaluate the effect of the implementation of SHO. Results: A total of 9 Level I pediatric trauma centers were included, contributing 39,331 pediatric trauma patients, of which 2,064 met criteria for NAT. During the initial SHO, the rate of NAT dropped below what was expected based on the historical trends, however, thereafter the rate increased above the expected rates of NAT [Figure 1]. The COVID cohort experienced a significant increase in the proportion of NAT patients age >5 years (Historical 36 patients [13.5%] vs. COVID 103 patients [30.8%], p<0.001). Ultimately, 2020 experienced an increased cumulative burden of NAT cases as reported to institutional trauma registries when compared to the Historical cohort [Figure 2]. Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic affected the presentation of children with NAT to the hospital. For school-aged children sequestered at home by the pandemic, increased NAT may reflect the absence of normal safeguards provided by the educational system, potentially leaving a vulnerable population at risk. Particularly in times of public health crisis, maintaining systems of protection for children remains essential.
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Due to the pandemic of the COVID-19 infection, almost Japanese university were to move the classes online. Heretofore, there were canceled as a face-to-face gave the guidance for entrance ceremony, registering for the course and lectures except for special skill trainings. Almost university student had to join the classes from their room of the residence. Under in ordinary circumstances, it was free utilization of campus equipment as open space PC and library for their own learning. For the experienced student, it was prepared high performance computer in each laboratory. However there were expected up to about 90 minutes in a day by 5 frames, approximately totally 8 hours at the longest, and additional assignments of these lessons will be handled by telework in their room. Originally, it was hard to say that all university students were able to get telework in an appropriate environment, because of conditions precedent using campus equipment as schooling. Moreover, prolonged VDT work in improper posture cause to increase the frequency of ergonomic injuries and illnesses. The purpose of this study was to investigate the individual student environment of working for ICT in the rooms. The individual data from photo was classification desk, chair, chair with armrest or not, desk light, cushion for ergonomic evaluation as a guideline of Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The Data were collected over 300 students via cloud e-Learning system from May to December in 2020.There were 30% student who has no chair, using low table and sitting the floor. There were 23% student has used Japanese style low table called Chabudai for the attend their classes. The major findings out of this study, it was not enough the equipment for the long hours study in a day about 23% student from their room. There was significant difference population proportion teszt between male and female, using desk or low table. It was conducted an online questionnaire to over 300 university students in their 20s to investigate whether an appropriate working environment was established. Compare and evaluate with the ideal working environment and report the current situation. © MCCSIS 2021.All right reserved.
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We present a large-scale case study using an agent platform that gathered cross-class public opinions about the COVID-19 situation. Our system extracts valuable insights from users from the perspective of offering suggestions to public health policy makers about what pandemic action is required in Afghanistan. The research goal of this study is to contribute insights about the scale of the issues and their solutions for COVID-19 by facilitating crowd engagement and discussing potential factors to address future policy-making issues. We methodically used social platforms to encourage participation from private citizens and invited health experts and patients into our discussion system in collaboration with Afghanistans Ministry of Public Health. ZOOM webinars were used to host discussions on Facebook and YouTube as a way to promote COVID-related collective social awareness. Our system mediates discussions with an unlimited number of participants and extracts the insights of their opinions in real time. It can also classify discussion insights into four elements and find the relationships among them: issues, ideas, merits, and demerits. We present various kinds of statistical information from 2,046 collected opinions of 1,101 participants by both identification of Al insights and human-conducted studies. Our discourse analysis categorized the discussion elements and peoples word-usage frequency in each group. We analyzed the word frequencies of each groups discussion data based on four types of extracted IBIS elements and extracted the most frequently used keywords. In a discourses IBIS analysis, we found that a solution proposed by one class was considered an issue by another class. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time in Afghanistan that a cross-class dialogue on COVID-19 has been organized using conversational Al as a representative application for public mediation and deliberation.
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This paper describes an OmniProcam system, which enables 360 degree horizontal projection by a fisheye lens with a coaxial procam in which the optical axes of the camera and projector are exactly matched. Combined with 2D marker recognition, the OmniProcam can display images onto screens at arbitrary positions in 3D space. As an example application, we developed a system which projects lip animation onto the user's face masks for better communication at the physical meeting in current COVID-19 situation. The system recognizes the user's speech, generates the lip animation using Lipsync, and projects the animation onto the user's face masks. © 2021 Owner/Author.
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The pandemic of the COVID-19 [1] has reawakened people that viruses are still the greatest threat to human society. Quarantining the patients and tracking close contacts has been used for hundreds of years in the battle between humans and the plague, which are still useful today. In the information society, we can employ information communications technology (ICT) to suppress the spread of epidemics and lower the epidemic curve. By using spatiotemporal information, we can trace the trajectories of patients and their close contacts. However, spatiotemporal information also involves personal privacy, and it has become a topic of concern about whether people's privacy should be sacrificed for epidemic control. In this paper, we propose a close contact tracing solution based on crypto-spatiotemporal information (CSI). First, the solution encrypts spatiotemporal information to protect personal privacy. Then, it uses a blockchain platform to realize the proof of CSI and uses Intel SGX [2] based trusted execution environment [3] to perform close contact judgment. Finally, it can trace close contacts while protecting personal privacy. The evaluation results indicate that the advantages and efficiency of the proposed scheme are significant. © 2021 IEEE.