A cross sectional study of the parent's willingness to vaccinate children of age group between 5-12 years against COVID-19

Introduction: The emerging respiratory illness caused by SARS-CoV-2 has posed the threat to human life across the globe. Various physical measures applied to curb the spread of the virus in initial phase of pandemic but high level of immunity by vaccination is an effective strategy to reduce the morbidity and mortality. To achieve this parent's willingness is important for vaccination of children. Objectives: To study the parent's willingness and associated factors to vaccinate the children with Covid-19 vaccine. Material & Methods: The cross sectional study conducted in the month of July 2022. A confidential interview of 300 parents visited to OPD was taken. Information obtained about socio-demography, routine immunization and comorbidity in children, parents COVID-19 vaccination, COVID-19 infection and hospitalization in family members and willingness for children's covid-19 vaccination. Results: Out of 300 parents around 253(84.3%) parentswere willing, 10(3.3%) not willing and 37(12.3%) not sure about children's vaccination. hospitalization of family members, parental vaccination against Covid-19, vaccination of siblings > 12 years, parents having 1- 2 children were significantly associated with willingness. Conclusion: Counselling of parents to relieve the anxiety is needed, communicating clear information about vaccination and expected side effects of the vaccine, provision of reliable source of information like family physician, health care workers.

The impact of pandemic of COVID-19 on routine immunization: A cross-sectional study in tertiary care centre at Pune

Background: Due to COVID-19 pandemic there was implementation of preventive measures like lockdown, mobility restriction and fear had an impact on routine immunization of children. There are significantly increases the susceptibility window for vaccine preventable diseases due to delayed vaccination in under five children. The objective of study is to know the trend of routine immunization of previous five year and to assess the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on routine immunization of children of age group up to 7 years at tertiary care hospital at Pune. Method(s): A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital of Pune city from the month of January 2017 to December 2021. All the data of immunization from age group 0 to 7 years present at tertiary care center Pune, was compared and analysed. Data is expressed as numbers and percentages and means. Chi-square test was used to compare observed results with expected results. Result(s): In year 2020, there was a declining trend of all vaccines among children compared to previous 3 years. In year 2019, 2020, 2021, number of children vaccinated are 6547, 4052, and 5062 respectively. Out of this 1078(16%), 1089(26.9%), 1165(23%) children had delayed vaccination in year 2019, 2020, 2021 respectively. There was highly significant increase in delayed vaccination of children in COVID-19 period. Conclusion(s): The routine immunization of children was decreased and delayed due to COVID-19 pandemic. This is an alarming finding to prevent reappearance of new epidemics of vaccine preventable diseases.Actions should be taken to avoid delayed routine immunization in future. Copyright © 2022 Ubiquity Press. All rights reserved.

ROLE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY DURING COVID-PANDEMIC

The impact of digital technology on the COVID pandemic, The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted an unavoidable flood in the utilization of advanced innovations because of the social removing standards and cross country lockdowns. Individuals and associations all around the world have needed to acclimate to better approaches for work and life. We investigate potential situations of the advanced flood and the exploration gives that emerge. An increment in digitalization is driving firms and instructive organizations to move to telecommute (WFH). Block chain innovation will become significant and will involve research on plan and guidelines. Gig laborers and the gig economy is probably going to increment in scale, bringing up issues of work portion, joint effort, inspiration, and parts of work over-burden and presenters. Working environment checking and techno-stress issues will become unmistakable with an increment in computerized presence. Online extortion is probably going to develop, alongside research on overseeing security. The guideline of the web, a distinct advantage, will be pivotal post-pandemic. Exploration might address the results and reasons for the advanced separation. Further, the issues of unhindered internet and zero-rating plans will justify investigation. A key examination issue will likewise be the effect and outcomes of web closures, as often as possible turned to by nations. Advanced cash, as well, accepts significance in emergency circumstances and examination will address their reception, outcomes, and mode. Parts of observation and protection gain significance with expanded computerized utilization.

Association between Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Severity of COVID-19 in a Tertiary Care Centre of Pune City, Maharashtra

Background: COVID-19 is a global pandemic caused by SARS-CoV2, spreading across every continent in world. The risk of developing severe COVID-19 with underlying disorder like COPD might be higher as compared to patients with no comorbidity. This study was undertaken to assess the association between COPD and severity of COVID-19. Material & Methods: This was a hospital-based cohort study conducted between July to December, 2020. Study subjects were confirmed COVID-19 patients admitted to this tertiary care centre and all patients were followed up to final outcome as discharge or death. Depending upon the history of COPD total 113 COVID-19 patients with COPD (exposed) and 339 COVID-19 patients without history of COPD (unexposed) were included in analysis. Statistical analysis was done using logistic regression analysis, and adjusted odd’s ratio with 95% CI were calculated. Results: Age >60 years (OR = 1.38, 95% CI 1.12–3.30) and breathlessness (OR = 2.42, 95% CI 1.21–4.85) were independent risk factors for mortality in COVID-19 patients. In addition to this, other co-morbidities were associated with mechanical ventilation. On multivariable analyses, COPD was not significantly associated with mortality in COVID-19 (OR 0.93;95% CI 0.15–1.58). Conclusion: Underlying COPD was not an independent risk factor for poor outcome in COVID-19 patients. Copyright (c) 2022: Author(s).

Secondary attack rate among the contacts of COVID-19 patients at the beginning of the pandemic in Pune city of Western Maharashtra, India

Introduction: The COVID-19 was the emerging disease caused by SARS-COV 2. Efficient transmission of this disease occurs through droplets and fomites. As COVID-19 has high transmission and hence susceptible household & non-household close contacts are at high risk of developing disease. Study Objectives: 1) To estimate secondary attack rate of COVID-19 among the contacts during the pandemic in Pune city;2) To identify factors associated with transmission and development of COVID-19 disease. Material & Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study conducted in the month of June 2020. The sample includes 741 contacts of 119 Laboratory confirmed cases for COVID-19, resides in 15 ward offices areas of Pune Municipal Corporation after written informed consent. A confidential telephonic interview was taken by using a prestructured questionnaire which includes socio demographic data, duration of stay, family background, outcome, type of house, development of symptoms etc. Results: The overall Secondary Attack Rate estimated to be 32.5%, 33.7% among the high risk contacts while 13.3% among the low risk contacts. In this city, 6 wards (40%) out of 15 wards showed SAR of more than 40%. The characteristics of primary cases associated with spread of disease were presence of symptoms and duration between onset of disease and isolation of primary case. The factors significantly affecting SAR were age, comorbidity, no. of family members, type of family, type of house, overcrowding, no. of rooms, bedroom attached with toilet, type of contact & containment zone. Conclusion: Higher SAR was seen in the household contacts. It is necessary to adopt rigorous measures to cut the transmission chain in this area of close contact. Copyright (c) 2021: Author(s).

Tracking Disease Outbreaks from Sparse Data with Bayesian Inference

The COVID-19 pandemic provides new motivation for a classic problem in epidemiology: estimating the empirical rate of transmission during an outbreak (formally, the time-varying reproduction number) from case counts. While standard methods exist, they work best at coarse-grained national or state scales with abundant data, and struggle to accommodate the partial observability and sparse data common at finer scales (e.g., individual schools or towns). For example, case counts may be sparse when only a small fraction of infections are caught by a testing program. Or, whether an infected individual tests positive may depend on the kind of test and the point in time when they are tested. We propose a Bayesian framework which accommodates partial observability in a principled manner. Our model places a Gaussian process prior over the unknown reproduction number at each time step and models observations sampled from the distribution of a specific testing program. For example, our framework can accommodate a variety of kinds of tests (viral RNA, antibody, antigen, etc.) and sampling schemes (e.g., longitudinal or cross-sectional screening). Inference in this framework is complicated by the presence of tens or hundreds of thousands of discrete latent variables. To address this challenge, we propose an efficient stochastic variational inference method which relies on a novel gradient estimator for the variational objective. Experimental results for an example motivated by COVID-19 show that our method produces an accurate and well-calibrated posterior, while standard methods for estimating the reproduction number can fail badly.

Cohorting to Isolate asymptomatic spreaders: An agent-based simulation study on the Mumbai Suburban Railway

This paper studies cohorting in public transit systems and its usefulness in mitigating disease transmission. The Mumbai suburban railway system is used as a case study. © 2021 International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (www.ifaamas.org). All rights reserved.

Robust lock-down optimization for COVID-19 policy guidance

As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to pose a serious worldwide threat, numerous governments choose to establish lock-downs in order to reduce disease transmission. However, imposing the strictest possible lock-down at all times has dire economic consequences, especially in areas with widespread poverty. In fact, many countries and regions have started charting paths to ease lock-down measures. Thus, planning efficient ways to tighten and relax lock-downs is a crucial and urgent problem. We develop a reinforcement learning based approach that is (1) robust to a range of parameter settings, and (2) optimizes multiple objectives related to different aspects of public health and economy, such as hospital capacity and delay of the disease. The absence of a vaccine or a cure for COVID to date implies that the infected population cannot be reduced through pharmaceutical interventions. However, non-pharmaceutical interventions (lock-downs) can slow disease spread and keep it manageable. This work focuses on how to manage the disease spread without severe economic consequences. Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors.

Knowledge, attitude, and practices among police force toward covid-19 pandemic during Lockdown in Pune, India - An Online cross-sectional survey

Background: COVID-19 has affected millions of people and more than thirty thousand deaths. Social distancing and lockdown are important measures for prevention. Police personnel are losing their lives due to COVID-19 while doing their duty in this lockdown time. Aim: The study aims to assess knowledge, attitude, and practices (KAP) of police force toward COVID-19. To assess correlation of knowledge with their practices and attitude. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional, self-administered, anonymous survey questionnaire was administered to 8706 police personnel and data collected over a time period from April 11 to 16, 2020. We used t-test and multivariable binary logistic regression analysis to identify the association between KAP and demographic variables. Results: In all 8706 police personnel participated in the study. The median age of participants was 35 years (interquartile range: 19-59), 6787 (77.9%) were male, 6675 (76.6%) were of constable grade. Seven thousand three hundred thirty-two (83.7%) of participants recorded accurate (high) knowledge, and 6790 (78%) reported following preventive practices. Female participants were more likely to follow preventive measures despite low knowledge as compared to their male counterparts (P < 0.0001). Female gender, age more than 35 years, and lower rank were associated with low knowledge and fear of contracting the disease. Multivariable binary logistic regression analysis showed that low knowledge is significantly associated with fear of getting disease odds ratio 1.29;95% confidence interval (1.15-1.46). Conclusion: In a cohort of police personnel, overall knowledge about COVID-19 is high. Female participants are found to be practicing appropriate preventive measures and they have faced stigmatizing behavior from society. The study provides important information on the need for developing health awareness programs to improve COVID-19 KAP. © 2021 Medical Journal of Dr. D.Y. Patil Vidyapeeth.