Monitoring the Construction Sector in Valle del Cauca

The objective of this research is to develop a monthly indicator that synthesizes the economic acti-vity of the construction sector in Valle del Cauca, as a tool for analyzing the production cycle and as a single, public measure that contributes to decision-making. Dynamic factorial models, the Kalman filter and the Litterman method are used, also employed in the Monthly Index of Economic Activity (IMAE), in order to capture signals, changes in the productive cycle of construction and compile the sectoral economic facts that affect production. In the results, the dynamics of the sectoral and economic variables are observed that explain the behavior of the sector in Valle del Cauca during 2009-2020. A change of slope is observed in 2020, as a direct consequence of the crisis generated by COVID-19 and the restrictive measures taken by the government to contain its advance.

A Benchmark on Masked Face Recognition

With the COVID-19 pandemic's emergency, using facial masks and contactless biometric systems became even more relevant to reduce the risk of contamination. Several direct and indirect problems gained relevance with the pandemic. Among them, masked face recognition (MFR) aims to recognize a person even when the person is wearing a face mask. Some state-of-the-art algorithms that work well for unmasked faces have suffered a severe performance drop when receiving masked faces as input. In this sense, the scientific community proposed approaches and competitions related to this topic. In this paper, we introduce a comparative study of four prominent solutions pipelines that use different techniques to tackle the masked face recognition problem, proposed by Huber et al. [1], Neto et al. [2], Boutros et al. [3], and Hsu et al. [4]. The performance evaluation was conducted on a real masked face database (MFR2 [5]), and using synthetic masks in three mainstream databases (LFW, AgeDB-30, and CFP-FP). We report results regarding unmasked-masked (U-M) and masked-masked (M-M) face verification performance. The unmasked-unmasked (U-U) scenario was also reported as a baseline to evaluate the drop of the selected models on non-occluded face verification. We further analyze the obtained results, generating a comprehensive comparative study of the selected approaches.

A Benchmark on Masked Face Recognition

With the COVID-19 pandemic's emergency, using facial masks and contactless biometric systems became even more relevant to reduce the risk of contamination. Several direct and indirect problems gained relevance with the pandemic. Among them, masked face recognition (MFR) aims to recognize a person even when the person is wearing a face mask. Some state-of-the-art algorithms that work well for unmasked faces have suffered a severe performance drop when receiving masked faces as input. In this sense, the scientific community proposed approaches and competitions related to this topic. In this paper, we introduce a comparative study of four prominent solutions pipelines that use different techniques to tackle the masked face recognition problem, proposed by Huber et al. [1], Neto et al. [2], Boutros et al. [3], and Hsu et al. [4]. The performance evaluation was conducted on a real masked face database (MFR2 [5]), and using synthetic masks in three mainstream databases (LFW, AgeDB30, and CFP-FP). We report results regarding unmasked-masked (U-M) and masked-masked (M-M) face verification performance. The unmasked-unmasked (U-U) scenario was also reported as a baseline to evaluate the drop of the selected models on non-occluded face verification. We further analyze the obtained results, generating a comprehensive comparative study of the selected approaches. © 2022 IEEE.

Pulmonary-Restricted COVID-19 Informative Visual Screening Using Chest X-ray Images from Portable Devices

In the recent COVID-19 outbreak, chest X-rays were the main tool for diagnosing and monitoring the pathology. To prevent further spread of this disease, special circuits had to be implemented in the healthcare services. For this reason, these chest X-rays were captured with portable X-ray devices that compensate its lower quality and limitations with more deployment flexibility. However, most of the proposed computer-aided diagnosis methodologies were designed to work with traditional fixed X-ray machines and their performance is diminished when faced with these portable images. Additionally, given that the equipment needed to properly treat the disease (such as for life support and monitoring of vital signs) most of these systems learnt to identify these artifacts in the images instead of real clinically-significant variables. In this work, we present the first methodology forced to extract features exclusively from the pulmonary region of interest that is specially designed to work with these difficult portable images. Additionally, we generate a class activation map so the methodology also provides explainability to the results returned to the clinician. To ensure the robustness of our proposal, we tested the methodology with chest radiographs from patients diagnosed with COVID-19, pathologies similar to COVID-19 (such as other types of viral pneumonias) and healthy patients in different combinations with three convolutional networks from the state of the art (for a total of 9 studied scenarios). The experimentation confirms that our proposal is able to separate COVID-19 cases, reaching a 94.7% ± 1.34% of accuracy. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Organizational Impacts and Clinical Challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic on a Swiss Tertiary Internal Medicine Department

The rapid progression of COVID-19 is an organizational challenge for all hospitals. To secure the patient overflow, the Department internal medicine of the University Hospital of Lausanne increased nurse and medical workforces as well as bed capacity by 65%, with extraordinary help from other departments. The implemented crisis management stood upon three pillars: a crisis management team, steering documents and internal communication. In this new form, the Department had already taken care of 442 COVID-19 admissions by April 16, 2020. Alongside organizational challenges, clinical issues such as rapid respiratory distress, clinical suspicions with negative PCR and treatment uncertainties in the absence of sufficient evidence were overcome. Despite the peak of the pandemic appearing to have passed, the next phase could be just as complicated.

Health and COVID: The work of endemic workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Introduction The Brazilian vectorial 'control' is characterized by the intensive use of pesticides (agrotoxics), such as organo-chlorines, organophosphates, carbamates, pyrethroids, benzoy-lureas;some of them banned worldwide or restricted by international agreements. Continuous exposure to these neuro-toxic and/or carcinogenic products has resulted in damage to the health of Endemic Workers, leading to a process of illness and deaths. Thus, because they have chronic diseases and are immunocompromised, due to exposure to agrotoxics, this population is more susceptible to COVID-19, a situation that is aggravated by workplaces and working conditions, which place them at risk, due to frequent circulation and the need for entry into residences. Method This descriptive study was part of a multicenter research with Endemic Workers from the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. To investigate the work during the pandemic we used an online questionnaire, structured with open and closed questions. Results Preliminary results from the 140 responses to the questionnaire demonstrate that: 78% of the Endemic Workers reported diagnosed disease and from these, 70% had comor-bidities. The most frequent are hypertension (49%), diabetes (22%), respiratory problems (22%) and malfunction of the liver and kidneys (17%). Although 88% did not have a diagnosis of COVID-19, 64% reported having co-workers and/or family members with COVID-19. Regarding remote work: 2% reported working at home, 29% were working in scale and/or alternate time and 53% were working full time. Workers who stayed the longest time in remote work (five months) represented only 8%, with 31% remaining in full time presential work during the period in which isolation and detachment measures began in Brazil. Conclusion Protective measures of the health of these workers and assisting this population to prevent the transmission of SARS-Cov-2, are necessary to implement health protection policies, including other exposures at work, such as agrotoxics.

Risk of contamination of semen, vaginal secretions, follicular fluid and ovarian medulla with SARS-CoV-2 in patients undergoing ART.

STUDY QUESTION: Can severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) mRNA be detected in the reproductive tract of asymptomatic patients undergoing ART? SUMMARY ANSWER: SARS-CoV-2 mRNA is not detectable in semen, follicular fluid, vaginal secretions or residual medulla from ovarian tissue cryopreservation procedures in asymptomatic patients who undergo ART, irrespective of the results of a triage questionnaire and a nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection test. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic had a huge impact on the activities of fertility clinics. Although some studies reported the presence of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA in the reproductive system during or after acute COVID-19 symptomatic infections, uncertainties remain regarding the presence of viral mRNA in the reproductive material and follicular fluid of asymptomatic patients undergoing ART. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION: An observational cohort trial of residual material samples including semen, follicular fluid, vaginal secretions and ovarian medulla was conducted during the second pandemic wave in Brussels from September 2020 to April 2021. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS: All patients who underwent ART (IUI, IVF/ICSI, oocyte and ovarian tissue cryopreservation) responded to a triage questionnaire at the beginning and end of the cycle and underwent nasopharyngeal swab collection for SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection by RT-PCR before the procedure according to standard recommendations. For semen analysis, only the questionnaire was requested the day before the sample collection. The ART cycles of patients with positive nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection tests and/or questionnaires were cancelled except for those that could not be postponed. After providing informed consent, swabs on residual materials were collected the day of the oocyte, ovarian tissue or semen collection and were processed for RT-qPCR. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE: A total of 394 samples from 291 patients were analysed. Amongst them, 20 samples were obtained from patients with a positive questionnaire but negative nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 test and 20 others were from patients with a positive nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 test. The remaining samples were collected from patients with a negative or unknown nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 test and/or a negative or unknown triage questionnaire. Viral RNA for SARS-CoV-2 was undetectable in all of the samples. LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION: Considering the cancellation policy, only a limited number of samples from patients with positive triage questionnaires or nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 tests were included in the analysis. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS: The study suggested that there was no risk of reproductive tract contamination by SARS-CoV-2 in asymptomatic patients, irrespective of the results from a triage questionnaire or nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 test. The results suggested that no additional measures to prevent staff or cross-patient contamination need to be implemented in the IVF and andrology laboratories. STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S): This study was funded by the Université Libre de Bruxelles and by a grant from Ferring. A.D. and I.D. received a grant from Ferring for the study. The authors have no other conflict of interest to declare related to this study. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: N/A.

Modeling of Vaccination and Contact Tracing as Tools to Control the COVID-19 Outbreak in Spain

We developed an agent-based stochastic model, based on P Systems methodology, to decipher the effects of vaccination and contact tracing on the control of COVID-19 outbreak at population level under different control measures (social distancing, mask wearing and hand hygiene) and epidemiological scenarios. Our findings suggest that without the application of protection social measures, 56.1% of the Spanish population would contract the disease with a mortality of 0.4%. Assuming that 20% of the population was protected by vaccination by the end of the summer of 2021, it would be expected that 45% of the population would contract the disease and 0.3% of the population would die. However, both of these percentages are significantly lower when social measures were adopted, being the best results when social measures are in place and 40% of contacts traced. Our model shows that if 40% of the population can be vaccinated, even without social control measures, the percentage of people who die or recover from infection would fall from 0.41% and 56.1% to 0.16% and 33.5%, respectively compared with an unvaccinated population. When social control measures were applied in concert with vaccination the percentage of people who die or recover from infection diminishes until 0.10% and 14.5%, after vaccinating 40% of the population. Vaccination alone can be crucial in controlling this disease, but it is necessary to vaccinate a significant part of the population and to back this up with social control measures.

Ventilator-associated pneumonia in patients with SARS-COV-2-associated acute respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation: A retrospective cohort study

Background: Data on incidence, clinical presentation and outcomes of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) in patients with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia requiring mechanical ventilation (MV) are limited. Methods: Case series of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia admitted to a single ICU in France. All consecutive patients requiring MV with RT-PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection between March 12th and April 24th, 2020 were included. Frequency, clinical characteristics, responsible pathogens and outcomes of VAP were assessed, and compared to an historical cohort of patients with severe influenza-associated pneumonia requiring MV admitted to the same ICU during the preceding three winter seasons. Results: Fifty-four consecutive patients with COVID-19-associated respiratory failure requiring MV were included (median (IQR) age 48 (42-58) years;74% male;93% requiring veno-venous ECMO). VAP occurred in 46 (85%) of them (median (IQR) prior MV duration before the first episode, 11 (8-16) days) (Table 1). Pathogens responsible for VAP were predominantly Enterobacteriaceae (72%), and particularly inducible AmpC-cephalosporinase producers (41%), followed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa (35%) (Table 2). Pulmonary infection recurrence and death were observed in 46 (85%) and 17 (31%) patients, respectively. Details on recurrent episodes and pathogens responsible for recurrences are given in Table 3. Most recurrences were relapse (i.e. infection with the same pathogen), with a high proportion occurring during antimicrobial treatment despite its adequacy. Despite a high rate of P. aeruginosa VAP in patients with influenza-associated ARDS, pulmonary infection recurrence rate was significantly lower than in patients with COVID-19. Overall mortality was similar in the two groups. Baseline characteristics of patientsConclusion: Patients with severe COVID-19-associated respiratory failure requiring MV had a very high late-onset VAP rate. Inducible AmpC cephalosporinase- producing Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa appeared to be frequently responsible for VAP, with multiple subsequent episodes and difficulties to eradicate the pathogen from the lung.

Effect of confinement during COVID-19 outbreak on sleep quality in Galicia

Background: Stressful situations may have a negative effect on population's mental health, including impaired sleep quality. Thus, we analysed the effect on sleep during the confinement due to the COVID-19 outbreak, in a Galicia population sample, measuring subjective sleep satisfaction, and insomnia intensity and incidence. Methods: Through an adapted questionnaire from the Cuestionario Oviedo de Sueno, distributed telematically and printed, using a convenience sampling in Galicia, we compared sleep situation, before and during the first two weeks of confinement for COVID-19. We compared the results of the questionnaire before and during confinement with the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and McNemar's test. Results: In 451 analysed subjects, there was about half point decrease in sleep satisfaction (in a 1 to 7 scale), three points increase in insomnia score (9 to 45 scale) and an increase from 23.1 to 36.3% in the insomnia incidence (p<0.001 for all the comparisons). There existed less affectation in the insomnia incidence in elderly above 65 years (from 21.7 to 26.1%, p=1) and in subjects that telecommuted (unchanged 28.1% incidence, p=1). In a posthoc analysis of a health workers subgroup, sleep affectation was similar to that of others workers. Conclusions: Confinement situation in COVID-19 outbreak context in our environment has caused important alterations in the population's sleep quality, increasing the symptoms and incidence of insomnia.

[Effect of confinement during COVID-19 outbreak on sleep quality in Galicia.]

OBJECTIVE: Stressful situations may have a negative effect on population's mental health, including impaired sleep quality. Thus, we analysed the effect on sleep during the confinement due to the COVID-19 outbreak, in a Galicia population sample, measuring subjective sleep satisfaction, and insomnia intensity and incidence. METHODS: Through an adapted questionnaire from the Cuestionario Oviedo de Sueño, distributed telematically and printed, using a convenience sampling in Galicia, we compared sleep situation, before and during the first two weeks of confinement for COVID-19. We compared the results of the questionnaire before and during confinement with the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and McNemar's test. RESULTS: In 451 analysed subjects, there was about half point decrease in sleep satisfaction (in a 1 to 7 scale), three points increase in insomnia score (9 to 45 scale) and an increase from 23.1 to 36.3% in the insomnia incidence (p<0.001 for all the comparisons). There existed less affectation in the insomnia incidence in elderly above 65 years (from 21.7 to 26.1%, p=1) and in subjects that telecommuted (unchanged 28.1% incidence, p=1). In a post-hoc analysis of a health workers subgroup, sleep affectation was similar to that of others workers. CONCLUSIONS: Confinement situation in COVID-19 outbreak context in our environment has caused important alterations in the population's sleep quality, increasing the symptoms and incidence of insomnia.