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Vaccine hesitancy was found to be one of the top ten global health threats in 2019 by World Health Organization. Worldwide, more than 90% of countries have encountered vaccine hesitancy, which has notably jeopardized the implementation of vaccination campaigns. Some of the factors associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy can be lack of confidence in information or lack of adequate information about the vaccine, misinformation from social media, and a fear of side effects. Widespread acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines is extremely crucial in order to achieve sufficient immunization coverage to end this global pandemic. It is evident that the number of studies that have investigated COVID-19 vaccination attitudes in lower-income countries like India is quite low. We analyze COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy in Indian Scenario using the Twitter social media platform to ensure that these vaccines reach even the remotest of places, whether rural or urban, in India, while observing the results and outcomes of our research. We aim for accurate results and hope to help the Indian government in the process of making informed decisions for the vaccine-hesitant groups of India. © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Dr. R. Dhaya and Dr. R. Kanthavel;individual chapters, the contributors.
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COVID-19 continues to disrupt the life of people worldwide. One of the most vulnerable sections affected by the pandemic are very old and seriously ill people. The present study provides a detailed analysis of the trends in the global scientific production on COVID-19 and palliative care. An analysis of the documents searched from the Scopus database was interpreted by Biblioshiny, an R-based software for bibliometric analysis. A descriptive examination of sources, authors, and records was done, and network analysis of conceptual, intellectual, and social structures. The research revealed ongoing research on this topic in the recent two years. The United States, the UK, India, and Spain have all done extensive research on the subject. The study's findings may aid medical practitioners and policymakers in focusing on critical sections in palliative care in the context of COVID-19. The study also identifies crucial areas in the chosen issue and guides future researchers on developing themes, contexts, and possible collaborations.
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This study gives a comprehensive picture of various trends of worldwide scientific research on the impact of COVID-19 on social media marketing from 2019 to early 2022. Relevant articles were retrieved from the Scopus database using specific keywords, and a bibliometric analysis was performed in Biblioshiny, an R-based software package. An examination of a total of 603 papers on the themes 'COVID-19' and 'social media marketing' indicated reasonably good collaboration among authors and a whooping scientific production worldwide in the last two years. Bina Nusantara University was the highest contributor to the chosen theme used in the study. Indonesia topped the list in single country publications. The UK had the highest multiple country publication. The UK, China, Spain, and India were the most cited countries. The output of the study may help the researchers and marketers understand the trending areas in social media marketing during COVID-19. © 2023 IGI Global. All rights reserved.
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Wellness tourism is emerging as one of the most preferred tourism segments for both travel enthusiasts and ordinary vacation seekers due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant stress and anxiety. It is a niche tourism segment with enormous ability to emerge as the most in demand for coming years. This study carries out a bibliometric analysis to identify the prominent journals, their characteristics and total citations, trending keywords, emerging topics etc, in wellness tourism. With 159 articles extracted from the Web of Science database, it was observed that the word ‘health' was often used, and that ‘medical tourism' was the most popular topic. China takes the lead among world nations for having conducted most research in this field. The findings of the study could be beneficial to the research community, academia, the tourism industry and policymakers. The publication acknowledges its limitations but gives the implications for further research. © by the author, licensee University of Lodz – Lodz University Press, Lodz, Poland.
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Introduction: Blood tests play an important role in the early detection of disease given that they provide doctors with information about inflammatory processes. A complete blood count (CBC) is easy and inexpensive to perform. These parameters can be used alone as markers of inflammation. Their mutual ratio is also an indicator of early inflammation.4 In light of previous studies, the use of circulating biomarkers instead of inflammation and immune system has been considered a prognostic indicator for COVID-19 positive patients. Aims/ objective: To examines the role of biomarkers from peripheral blood samples in the diagnosis of hospitalized COVID-19 patients with a history of fever. Materials and Method: Haematological biomarkers and coagulation profile was compared between RT-PCR positive and negative patients. Systemic inflammatory index (SII) was calculated by multiplying thrombocyte count with neutrophil count and dividing the value by lymphocyte count. Neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR) was calculated by dividing absolute neutrophil count by absolute lymphocyte count. Platelet lymphocyte ratio (PLR) was calculated by dividing absolute platelet by absolute lymphocyte count. Fisher exact test and unpaired t-test were used to compare categorical and continuous data respectively. Results: Analysis was done on 57 retrospective cases of RT-PCR positive patients and 61 RT-PCR negative patients with history of fever. COVID-19 positive patients showed leukopenia, neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, and lymphocytosis. SII and NLR decreased and PLR increased. PT and APTT were generally within normal limits in most of the patients. There was significant difference between two groups with respect to lymphocyte counts and PLR. Conclusion: The most standardized non-invasive and inexpensive tests such as CBC, coagulation and biochemical tests are available to assess disease severity for wise allocation of medical resources in developing countries such as India where resources and care are limited.
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Social marketing is a set of activities aimed at changing people's behavior for good. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is a significant concern in rural India. This article introduces a comprehensive social marketing plan to address this social issue among senior citizens of rural India. The model described in the study uses social marketing principles and practices such as environmental analysis, STP strategies, strategies for formulating behavioral objectives and goals, examining the barriers, benefits, competitions, and influential others, strategies for integrated marketing mix, evaluation and monitoring strategies, strategies for establishing budgets, raising funds and implementation plan. The plan's objective may help the professionals to develop an action plan to counter vaccine hesitancy.
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This study tried to understand the changes in three air pollution parameters, namely absorbing aerosol index (AAI)—broadly referred to as dust and smoke, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) column number density in the Western Indian Himalayas during the COVID-19 lockdown. The study used Sentinel 5P data over a 50 km radius of 11 non-attainment cities (NACs) of Northwestern Indian Himalayan states (7 of Himachal Pradesh, 2 of Uttarakhand and 2 of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir) during the lockdown phase-1 (March 24–April 14, 2020) with respect to the pre-lockdown period (March 24–April 14, 2019). Ground-measured data on particulate matter (PM10) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) has also been used for only 7 NACs of Himachal Pradesh for the lockdown phase-1 and pre-lockdown period. The average values of AAI, NO2 and CO around 11 towns have been reduced by 55%, 19% and 7%, respectively, during lockdown phase-1, compared to the pre-lockdown period. The satellite observation is further complemented through ground-monitored data on air pollution. In the seven NACs of Himachal Pradesh, NOx and PM10 mass concentrations have been substantially reduced during the March and April months of 2020 compared to the same months of 2019. This study would give an idea to environmentalists and policymakers to plan a sustainable emission policy to reduce the adverse impacts of air pollution on the physical aspects (e.g. snow and glaciers) of the Northwestern Himalayan region under the climate change conditions. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a viral disease that has primarily been known to cause respiratory symptoms;however, there has also been an association of COVID-19 with neurological symptoms, including acute ischemic stroke (AIS). There is a lack of data on the characteristics of AIS patients with COVID-19 from the stroke belt. We aim to describe the characteristics of patients with COVID-19 and AIS and compare the characteristics of those who required intensive care unit (ICU) admission versus ward-only. Methods: Single center, retrospective cohort study of adult patients admitted in a tertiary academic center from March 1-December 31, 2020. The institutional COVID database was utilized for data collection. Demographic, clinical and laboratory data were collected. Primary outcome measure was mortality. Secondary outcomes included hospital length of stay (LOS) and discharge disposition. Results: Both COVID-19 and AIS were found in 2.4% (n=75) of patients out of 3,031 patients with COVID-19, during the study period. These patients were male (45, 60%), African American (43, 57%), 65±12 years old, with hypertension (69, 92%) and Diabetes Mellitus type 2 (50, 67%). We noted a 20% (n=15) overall in-patient mortality rate among patients with both COVID-19 and AIS. Among these patients, 23% (n=17) required ICU admission. Demographic, clinical and laboratory characteristics were comparable among ICU versus ward-only patients except for higher LDH (476.12±189.70 vs 276.17±88.35 U/L, p==0.0003);and lower relative lymphocytic count (3.57±3.56 vs 8.93±7.83 10 cells/μL, p=0.0160) among those admitted into the ICU. Mortality (13, 68% vs 6, 32%, p<0.001) was significantly higher among the ICU cohort while majority of the ward-only cohort were discharged home (21, 95%). Conclusion: We present the first description of characteristics and outcomes of patients with AIS and COVID-19 from Mississippi. Novel to this cohort is the comparison of those who were admitted into the ICU versus ward-only. Prospective studies analyzing larger datasets of COVID-19 and stroke in the stroke-belt are warranted to further study disparities of care and outcomes.
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Purpose: This study focuses on accessing the impact of lockdown implemented to curb the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on prices of potato and onion crops using the time series analysis techniques. Design/methodology/approach: The present study uses secondary price series data for both crops. Along with the study of percent increase or decrease, the time series analysis techniques of autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH), as well as machine learning;neural network autoregressive (NNAR) models were used to model the prices. For the purpose of comparison, the data from past years were taken as the period of normalcy. The behaviour of the forecasts for the normal periods and during the pandemic based on respective datasets was compared. Findings: The results show that there was an unprecedented rise in prices during the months of lockdown. It could be attributed to the decline in arrivals due to several reasons like issues with transportation and labour availability. Also, towards the end of lockdown (May 2020), the prices seemed to decrease. Such a drop could be attributed to the relaxations in lockdown and reduced demand. The study also discusses that how some unique approaches like e-marketing, localized resource development for attaining self-sufficiency and developing transport chain, especially, for agriculture could help in such a situation of emergency. Research limitations/implications: A more extensive study could be conducted to mark the factors specifically that caused the increase in price. Originality/value: The study clearly marks that the prices of the crops increased more than expectations using time series methods. Also, it surveys the prevailing situation through available resources to link up the reasons behind it. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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With the advancement of GPS and remote sensing technologies and the pervasiveness of smartphones and mobile devices, large amounts of spatiotemporal data are being collected from various domains. Knowledge discovery from spatiotemporal data is crucial in broad societal applications. Examples range from mapping flooded areas on satellite imagery for disaster response to monitoring crop health for food security, from estimating travel time between locations on Google Maps to forecasting hotspots of diseases like Covid-19 in public health. The recent success in deep learning technologies in computer vision and natural language processing provides unique opportunities for spatiotemporal data mining (e.g., automatically extracting spatial contextual features without manual feature engineering) but also faces unique challenges (e.g., spatial autocorrelation, heterogeneity, multiple scales, and resolutions, the existence of domain knowledge and constraints). This workshop provides a premium platform for researchers from both academia and industry to exchange ideas on opportunities, challenges, and cutting-edge techniques of deep learning for spatiotemporal data. We hope to inspire novel ideas and visions through the workshop and facilitate the development of this emerging research area. © 2021 Owner/Author.
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BACKGROUND: COVID-19 is associated with higher mortality among patients who have comorbidities. However, evidences related to COVID-19 among post liver transplant recipients are scarce and evolving. METHODS: Adult Indian patients who had undergone liver transplantation at our centre since 2006 and were under regular follow-up, were contacted either telephonically or on email. Data were recorded related to symptoms and diagnosis of COVID-19, need for hospitalization, and need for ICU stay and mortality. RESULTS: Eighty one (3.71%) of the 2182 adult Liver transplant (LT) recipients on regular follow-up reported SARS-CoV-2 infection between 1st April 2020 and 31st May 2021. Mean age was 51.3(±9.8) years, and 74(91.4%) were males. Thirty five (43.2%) patients had one or more comorbidities. Twenty one (25.9%) patients were transplanted less than 1 year ago. Forty four (54.3% ) patients had mild disease only while 23(28.4%) patients had severe COVID-19 disease. Of the 81 patients 14 patients died and overall mortality was 17.3. CONCLUSION: Uncomplicated liver transplant recipients without comorbidities who acquire SARS-CoV-2 do not have poor outcome.