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Coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19) poses a challenge to hospitals for the prevention and control of public health emergencies. As the main battlefield of preventing and controlling COVID-19, large public hospitals should develop service protocols of diagnosis and treatment for outpatient, emergency, hospitalization, surgery, and discharge. The construction of medical protocols should be based on the risk factors of key points and focused on pre-inspection triage and screening, to establish a rapid response mechanism to deal with exogenous and endogenous risk factors. Implementation of all-staff training and assessment, strengthening the information system, and use of medical internet service are important. This study explores the construction of medical protocols in large public hospitals during the pandemic, and provides a reference for the orderly diagnosis and treatment in hospitals during the pandemic.Copyright © 2021, Peking Union Medical College Hospital. All rights reserved.
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In order to comprehensively understand the epidemiological situation of bovine coronavirus (BCoV) in beef cattle herds in Jilin Province, blood, nasal swabs, fecal swabs and tissue organs of clinically diseased and dead cattle were collected in different seasons from 12 counties and cities in the east, central and western regions of Jilin Province, using serological and molecular diagnostic testing techniques to conduct an epidemiological investigation of BCoV in the The epidemiological situation of BCoV in some areas of Jilin Province. A total of 1 298 clinical serum samples, 462 clinical samples (including fecal samples, liver, lung, spleen, trachea and other tissue samples) were collected, and PCR detection of clinical samples was performed by applying commercial BCoV antibody detection kits to detect serum antibodies and a novel detection technique of nano-PCR, and sequencing and analysis of positive results detected by nucleic acid. The results showed that the serum positive rate of BCoV antibodies was 1.08%, and the positive rate of clinical samples such as feces and liver was 21.10%. The BCoV prevalent strain in the investigated area was more than 99% homologous to the prevalent strain in Sichuan, China, after sequencing analysis. This study provides a comprehensive survey of BCoV prevalence in central Jilin Province, which enriches the epidemiological survey data of bovine coronavirus and lays the foundation for guiding the prevention and control of bovine coronavirus.Copyright © 2023 Acta Veterinaria et Zootechnica Sinica. All rights reserved.
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In the current situation of coronavirus disease 2019, "to prevent import from abroad and to defend internal rebound" is the general principle. Facing the changes in the epidemic situation, especially the winter and spring epidemics, it is a huge challenge to carry out a scientific, precise and flexible program for the prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections so that to ensure the safety of healthcare workers and patients. After more than one year of anti-epidemic work, Peking Union Medical College Hospital has summarized and formulated a four-level retractable and releasable hierarchical program of prevention and control. It is dynamically adjusted according to the responsive level of public health emergencies in Beijing and the relevant regulations of epidemic prevention and control. All departments can also respond quickly to ensure the resumption of work. This program provides reference for the prevention and control of coronavirus disease 2019 and other sudden infectious diseases.Copyright © 2021, Peking Union Medical College Hospital. All rights reserved.
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The dried fruit of Amomum tsao-ko Crevost & Lemarie, a perennial herb of Cardamom in Zingiberaceae, has been widely used in food and as a folk medicine. It is used not only as an important food additive and spice for removing peculiar smell and improving taste, but also as a traditional Chinese medicine with significant efficacy in treating many kinds of disorders. Based on the high edible and medicinal value, large amounts of investigation have been reported for A. tsaoko in the past several years. This review specifically summarises its quality control, toxicology and clinical application, about which no literature had systematically reviewed, based on our best acknowledge. The current quality control of A. tsaoko is based on the content of volatile oil, which should be no less than 1.4% according to the Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China (2020 edition), while a more possible Q-Markers should be developed to focus on either a specific bioactive ingredient or a component correlated with a certain clinical efficacy. Toxicity research suggests that A. tsaoko actually belongs to the non-toxic substance, although citral and 1,8-cineole, two main components of A. tsaoko, is hepatotoxic for the former and displays low acute toxicity and sub-chronic oral toxicity for the latter, but no obviously accumulative toxicity has so far been discovered for A. tsaoko. In clinical practice, A. tsaoko is often used in treatment of dampness/cold resistance, malaria, vomiting, fullness and epigastric distension across additional disorders, such as SARS, COVID-19 and hepatitis.Copyright © 2022 The Author(s)
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Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, there is a strong demand for pharyngeal swab sampling and nucleic acid testing. Research has shown that the positive rate of nasopharyngeal swabs is higher than that of oropharyngeal swabs. However, because of the high complexity and visual obscuring of the interior nasal cavity, it is impossible to obtain the sampling path information directly from the conventional imaging principle. Through the combination of anatomical geometry and spatial visual features, in this paper, we present a new approach to generate nasopharyngeal swabs sampling path. Firstly, this paper adopts an RGB-D camera to identify and locate the subject's facial landmarks. Secondly, the mid-sagittal plane of the subject's head is fitted according to these landmarks. At last, the path of the nasopharyngeal swab movement in the nasal cavity is determined by anatomical geometry features of the nose. In order to verify the validity of the method, the location accuracy of the facial landmarks and the fitting accuracy of mid-sagittal plane of the head are verified. Experiments demonstrate that this method provides a feasible solution with high efficiency, safety and accuracy. Besides, it can solve the problem that the nasopharyngeal robot cannot generate path based on traditional imaging principles. It also provides a key method for automatic and intelligent sampling of nasopharyngeal swabs, and it is of great clinical value to reduce the risk of cross-infection. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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To assist the Department of Emergency Management in understanding the overall risk characteristics and situation of an urban agglomeration for a reasonable risk prevention and control strategy, this study developed a comprehensive multi-hazard risk assessment model for an urban agglomeration with multiple factors. The proposed model includes disaster probability and disaster loss sub-models. The model evaluated four types of disaster risk in urban agglomerations: natural disasters, accidental disasters, public health incidents, and social security incidents. In addition, a variety of factors were integrated into the model, including the socioeconomic foundation of urban agglomerations, the oligopoly effect of core cities, historical disaster losses, the effect of disaster chains, the ability of disaster prevention and mitigation, and intercity coordinated rescue capabilities. Finally, the risk assessment model was applied to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration. The assessment results were compared to the distribution of the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic in the target urban agglomeration. The results showed that after analyzing the risk characteristics and evaluating the risk levels, the model not only showed the comprehensive risk levels and distribution of urban agglomerations but also revealed the high-risk areas and the key points of risk prevention and control. More importantly, the results obtained through the model can facilitate the strategic planning of disaster prevention and mitigation for urban agglomerations. © 2022
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Older immigrants in affordable housing have unique sets of challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic posed by limited English proficiency and resources. The aggregated living condition could increase their risk of being exposed to the contagious disease. This symposium reports empirical findings of the social Network of Immigrant Chinese older adults in affordable Housing Environment (NICHE) project, which focused on the influence of COVID-19 on underprivileged Chinese older immigrants. We conducted 27 semi-structured interviews with foreign-born older Chinese immigrants (mean age 78.1, 69.23% female) in an affordable housing in Los Angeles to learn about their lived experiences and coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first presentation focused on the changes in older Chinese immigrants' social life after the onset of the pandemic and aimed to understand the pandemic's impact on their depressive symptoms and loneliness. The second presentation describes older Chinese immigrants' perceived pandemic-related stressors and resilience across phases of the pandemic, including at the beginning, after they got vaccinated, and the rising of delta variant. The participants explained what supportive services had been helpful and what support they wished they could have over the past two years in the pandemic. The third presentation reports the experience of being discriminated against during the pandemic, the Chinese older adults' attitudes towards these discriminatory events, and coping strategies. Together, these three presentations will depict the lived experience of Chinese immigrants over two years during the pandemic and discuss intervention strategies and policy considerations for preparing for future crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.
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This study examines the challenges faced by Dementia Friendly Communities (DFC) during COVID-19 pandemic and the strategies used to address these challenges from the perspectives of DFC stakeholders in the U.S. Data were collected in 2020 through an online survey of 183 stakeholders (Mage =35.3, SD=8.8, 43.6% being female) involved who were in DFC design, implementation, or evaluation. Three challenges rated most critical by participants included limited funding (40.4%), difficulties to provide services due to policies to contain COVID-19 (35.7%), and lack of staffing (29.3%). Three rated most important strategies included seeking funding and government support (31.1%), developing partnerships and relationships with multiple sectors (29.1%), and recruiting persons with dementia and family caregivers as advocates (27.5%). Communities demonstrated resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic to implement DFC- related activities. To sustain DFC, enhancing national awareness, acquiring additional funding, and firm cogency from staff members, local/state government, and local communities are needed.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented and far-reaching impacts on the tourism industry worldwide. To fight against COVID-19 while maintaining economic development, China has adopted its unique policymaking system and made certain achievements in preventing the pandemic and promoting the recovery of domestic tourism, which may have reference values to other countries. By collecting the national-level tourism policies on COVID-19 in China and analyzing the connections between the keywords of these policies, this study conceptually proposes a new PASS (P: Pause-promote;A: Avoid-alternate;S: Supervise-stabilize;S: Support-sustain) approach for comprehensive and seamless policymaking for the public health crisis management in the tourism context. Even though the new PASS is derived based on China’s pandemic policymaking experiences, its general values are well supported by the practices in other countries. Policy recommendations from perspectives of key stakeholders are summarized. Policymaking challenges are finally discussed. © 2022 Asia Pacific Tourism Association.
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This paper aims to discuss whether there is heterogeneity in the elderly's satisfaction with bus travel before and after COVID-19. Based on the survey data of the elderly in Taiyuan, this paper subdivides 10 dependent variables of bus travel satisfaction considering the general environment of the pandemic. And the Multi-Categorical and Ordered Logit(MCOL) model and Structural Equation Model(SEM) are adopted to study the impact of personal attributes, travel attributes as well as psychological attributes on the elderly's satisfaction with bus travel before and after COVID-19. The results show that regarding personal attributes, household registration, gender, occupation, disability, and degree of disability all have significant effects on different satisfaction indicators. Among the travel attributes, if the travel purpose was to work before the pandemic, it would have a negative impact on waiting time and arrival time;while the non-work trip would have a negative impact on indicators regarding the inner-bus condition;after the pandemic, only non-work trip has a significant positive impact on the pandemic-related safety warning information. The influence of travel distance and travel time on the elderly's satisfaction with bus travel before and after the pandemic is consistent. In the psychological attributes, before the pandemic, the degree of attention has a strong positive effect on psychological anxiety with an effect value of 0.758;while after the pandemic, the degree of attention produces a significant negative effect of psychological anxiety on bus travel satisfaction, with an effect value of -0.119. This study can serve as a reference for improving the bus transportation environment for the elderly when similar major public health emergencies happen in the future. © 2022, Editorial Department of Journal of Beijing Jiaotong University. All right reserved.
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In order to guarantee travel service quality of low-mobility individuals under the public health emergency, this paper was set in the COVID-19, compared travel behavior characteristics of low-mobility individuals and general public between before and during the epidemic, defined evaluation indexes of travel security system for low-mobility individuals, built the performance evaluation model of travel security system for low-mobility individuals based on the matter element analysis. The results of travel behavior analysis find that the travel service quality of low-mobility individuals is necessary to get guarantee, because they have many travel difficulties during the epidemic. The results of performance evaluation verify that evaluation indexes and evaluation model are reasonable and effective. Research findings can be used as a reference for government departments to formulate travel security strategies under the public health emergency, and can provide practical guidance for the construction and performance evaluation of travel service security system for low-mobility individuals during the epidemic. © 2021, Editorial Department of Wuhan University of Technology. All right reserved.
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Objective To systematically review the efficacy of treatments for β-coronaviruses. Methods PubMed, EMbase, Web of Science, The Cochrane Library, SinoMed, CNKI and WanFang Data databases were electronically searched to collect randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and non-randomized controlled trials (non-RCTs) of treatments for β-coronaviruses from inception to June 17th, 2020. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies. Meta-analysis was then performed using Stata 14.0 software. Results A total of 109 studies invoving 23 210 patients were included. The results of the systematic review showed that compared with standard of care, corticosteroids could reduce mortality and increase cure rate for COVID-19. However, chloroquine could decrease cure rate. In severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) patients, corticosteroids could decrease the cure rate. In Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) patients, ribavirin/interferon/both drugs showed higher mortality. Conclusions The currently limited evidence shows that corticosteroids may be effective to COVID-19 patients while having limited effects on SARS patients. Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine may have negative effects on COVID-19 patients. Ribavirin/interferon may be harmful to MERS patients. Due to limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high quality studies are needed to verify the above conclusions.
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Coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19) poses a challenge to hospitals for the prevention and control of public health emergencies. As the main battlefield of preventing and controlling COVID-19, large public hospitals should develop service protocols of diagnosis and treatment for outpatient, emergency, hospitalization, surgery, and discharge. The construction of medical protocols should be based on the risk factors of key points and focused on pre-inspection triage and screening, to establish a rapid response mechanism to deal with exogenous and endogenous risk factors. Implementation of all-staff training and assessment, strengthening the information system, and use of medical internet service are important. This study explores the construction of medical protocols in large public hospitals during the pandemic, and provides a reference for the orderly diagnosis and treatment in hospitals during the pandemic. © 2021, Peking Union Medical College Hospital. All rights reserved.
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Objectives: In the ACC2 - -1 study in hospitalized adults with laboratory confirmed COVID-19, remdesivir was found to be superior to placebo in shortening time to recovery from COVID-19. However, the economic value and health system impact of remdesivir treatment is still unclear. This study evaluated remdesivir’s long-term cost-effectiveness and impact on health system capacities versus standard of care (SoC) for hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the United States (US). Methods: A hybrid decision-tree and Markov model simulated health and economic outcomes for hospitalized adult COVID-19 patients (average age of 58.9 years) from a US health system perspective over a lifetime horizon. Clinical inputs (e.g., hospitalization duration, mortality) were extracted from the ACC2 - -1 trial and real-world data. Cost inputs were sourced from an internal analysis or from the literature. Remdesivir acquisition cost was $390/vial, and patients were assumed to receive 6.25 vials per treatment course. One-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were performed. A separate treatment capacity analysis was performed on a national scale, assuming a population of 328,200,000 and one monthly incident cohort of 201,000 patients eligible for treatment. Results: Relative to SoC, remdesivir was associated with a decrease in total costs (savings of $8,844.49 per patient), increased life years (+0.62), and quality-adjusted life years (+0.47). Remdesivir was therefore dominant versus SoC (less costly and more effective). Results were robust in one-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses. In the treatment capacity analysis, remdesivir increased the available hospital capacity by 1.4%, available ICU capacity by 32.1%, and total ventilator capacity by 2.3%. Conclusions: Remdesivir is a cost-effective option for the treatment of patients hospitalized with mild, moderate, and severe COVID-19 versus SoC. In addition, due to its demonstrated ability to shorten time to recovery, remdesivir is projected to increase treatment capacity by increasing the percentage of available hospital bed-, ICU bed-, and total ventilator capacity.
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Mobile Robot can realize non-contact operation of medical and rehabilitation services in the outbreak of CoVID-19, and Mobile Robot Platform (MRP) is the key component in Mobile Robots. By using Mecanum wheels, the omnidirectional MRP (OMRP) of four-wheel layout is realized. Combined with raspberry PI and STM32 micro-controller, the OMRP is driven by motion control algorithm to moves and rotates in all directions. The remote visual control link is built through 4G data transmission and 4G diagram transmission to realize the 4G visual control mode. Also, combined with the digital control mode of RS-485 data transmission and the Bluetooth controller, the multi-mode control of OMRP is realized. Finally, a prototype of OMRP is made. Experiments of the prototype verify the feasibility of OMRP, and the effectiveness of the 4G remote visual control. Overall, this paper provides a new way of robot remote control in wireless communication for the upcoming 5G era. © 2021, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Objective: To analyzes epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19 and provide evidence for adjustment for COVID-19 prevention and control strategies. Methods: The data of COVID-19 cases in Wuchang district reported as of 19 March, 2020 were obtained from National Notifiable Disease Report System of Chinese Disease Prevention and Control Information System. The software's of Excel 2010, SPSSS 22.0, Arc GIS10.2 and Joinpoint regression program 4.8.0.0 were used for statistical analysis. Results: A total of 7547 COVID-19 cases had been reported as of 19 March, 2020 in Wuchang district, including 5 448 confirmed cases (72.19%), 2009 clinical diagnosed cases (26.62%) and 90 asymptomatic cases case (1.19%). The age of the cases was (56.65±16.25) years and age ranged from 2 days to 105 years among confirmed cases, 2634 were males (48.35%) and 2814 were females (51.65%), 2 492 were retirees (45.74%). A total of 545 health workers were infected with SARS-CoV-2 (7.22% of all cases) including 365 confirmed cases and 5 cases have died. A total of 430 cases of death were reported with case fatality rate of 7.89% (430/5 448), case fatality rate of males (10.9%, 266/2 634) was higher than that of females (5.82%, 164/2 814). The first phase of epidemic peak was from January 24 to January 26, the second phase of epidemic peak was from February 1 to February 5 and there was no one of new confirmed case in one day for the first time on March 18. The first four Streets with the highest incidence rates of confirmed cases were Huanghelou Street (1 043.77/100 000), Ziyang Street (627.97/100 000), Yangyuan Street (503.67/100 000) and Shuiguohu Street (486.02/100 000). Compared with females, aged ≤50 years and mild cases of clinical classification respectively, males (RR=0.690, 95%CI: 0.322-1.478), aged >50 years (RR=11.745, 95%CI: 6.878-20.058), severe cases (RR=2.317, 95%CI: 1.789-3.000) and critical cases of clinical classification (RR=10.794, 95%CI: 7.997-14.569), and gender time-dependent covariate (RR=1.392, 95%CI: 1.053-1.840) were major influencing factors of prognosis of COVID-19 confirmed cases. Conclusions: The gender, ages and occupation of distribution were wide among COVID-19 cases in Wuchang district. Males, aged >50 years, severe cases and critical cases of clinical classification were influencing factors of prognosis of COVID-19 confirmed cases. The standardized management of discharged cases, asymptomatic infected cases and close contact persons were main measures to reduce incidence rates of COVID-19 cases.