Early antiviral therapy of abidol combined with lopinavir/ritonavir and recombinant interferon alpha-2b for patients with COVID-19 in Zhejiang: A multicenter prospective study.

Objective: To compare the efficacy of the combination of abidol, lopinavir/ritonavir plus recombinant interferon alpha-2b (rIFNalpha-2b) and the combination of lopinavir/ritonavir plus rIFNalpha-2b for patients with COVID-19 in Zhejiang province. Method(s): A multicenter prospective study was carried out to compare the efficacy of triple combination antiviral therapy and dual combination antiviral therapy in 15 medical institutions of Zhejiang province during January 22 to February 16, 2020. All patients were treated with rIFNalpha-2b (5 million U, 2 times/d) aerosol inhalation, in addition 196 patients were treated with abidol (200 mg, 3 times/d) + lopinavir/ritonavir (2 tablets, 1 time/12 h) (triple combination group) and 41 patients were treated with lopinavir/ritonavir (2 tablets, 1 time/12 h) (dual combination group). The patients who received triple combination antiviral therapy were further divided into three subgroups: <48 h, 3-5 d and >5 d according the time from the symptom onset to medication starting. The therapeutic efficacy was compared between triple combination group and dual combination group, and compared among 3 subgroups of patients receiving triple combination antiviral therapy. SPSS 17.0 software was used to analyze the data. Result(s): The virus nucleic acid-negative conversion time in respiratory tract specimens was (12.2+/-4.7) d in the triple combination group, which was shorter than that in the dual combination group [(15.0+/-5.0) d] (t=6.159, P<0.01). The length of hospital stay in the triple combination group [12.0 (9.0, 17.0) d] was also shorter than that in the dual combination group [15.0 (10.0, 18.0) d] (H=2.073, P<0.05). Compared with the antiviral treatment which was started within after the symptom onset of in the triple combination group, the time from the symptom onset to the viral negative conversion was 13.0 (10.0, 17.0), 17.0 (13.0, 22.0) and 21.0 (18.0, 24.0) d in subgroups of 48 h, 3-5 d and >5 d, respectively (Z=32.983, P<0.01), while the time from antiviral therapy to viral negative conversion was (11.8+/-3.9), (13.5+/-5.1) and (11.2+/-4.3) d, respectively(Z=6.722, P<0.05). Conclusion(s): The triple combination antiviral therapy of abidol, lopinavir/litonavir and rIFNalpha-2b shows shorter viral shedding time and shorter hospitalization time, compared with the dual combination antiviral therapy;and the earlier starting triple combination antiviral therapy will result in better antiviral efficacy.Copyright © 2020 by the Chinese Medical Association.

Research on fatigue identification methods based on low-load wearable ECG monitoring devices

The identification of fatigue in personal workers in particular environments can be achieved through early warning techniques. In order to prevent excessive fatigue of medical workers staying in infected areas in the early phase of the coronavirus disease pandemic, a system of low-load wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) devices was used as intelligent acquisition terminals to perform a continuous measurement ECG collection. While machine learning (ML) algorithms and heart rate variability (HRV) offer the promise of fatigue detection for many, there is a demand for ever-increasing reliability in this area, especially in real-life activities. This study proposes a random forest-based classification ML model to identify the four categories of fatigue levels in frontline medical workers using HRV. Based on the wavelet transform in ECG signal processing, stationary wavelet transform was applied to eliminate the main perturbation of ECG in the motion state. Feature selection was performed using ReliefF weighting analysis in combination with redundancy analysis to optimize modeling accuracy. The experimental results of the overall fatigue identification achieved an accuracy of 97.9% with an AUC value of 0.99. With the four-category identification model, the accuracy is 85.6%. These results proved that fatigue analysis based on low-load wearable ECG monitoring at low exertion can accurately determine the level of fatigue of caregivers and provide further ideas for researchers working on fatigue identification in special environments. © 2023 Author(s).

Hot and difficult issues related to prevention and control strategies of COVID-19.

The epidemic of COVID-19 has lasted for nearly a year, the number of confirmed cases worldwide is still rising, and the trend of the epidemic is unclear. How will be the further development of COVID-19 epidemic? What is the current status of research on new drugs for coronary virus disease? Will the vaccine currently used change the epidemic pattern? In the context of the normalization of the epidemic, whether the epidemiology of other respiratory viruses will change? This article will discuss and analyze these hot and difficult issues.Copyright © 2021 Chinese Medical Association

Hot and difficult issues related to prevention and control strategies of COVID-19.

The epidemic of COVID-19 has lasted for nearly a year, the number of confirmed cases worldwide is still rising, and the trend of the epidemic is unclear. How will be the further development of COVID-19 epidemic? What is the current status of research on new drugs for coronary virus disease? Will the vaccine currently used change the epidemic pattern? In the context of the normalization of the epidemic, whether the epidemiology of other respiratory viruses will change? This article will discuss and analyze these hot and difficult issues.Copyright © 2021 Chinese Medical Association

To Mask or Not To Mask? A Machine Learning Approach to Covid News Coverage Attitude Prediction Based on Time Series and Text Content

In the past few decades, with the explosion of information, a large number of computer scientists have devoted themselves to analyzing collected data and applying these findings to many disciplines. Natural language processing (NLP) has been one of the most popular areas for data analysis and pattern recognition. A significantly large amount of data is obtained in text format due to the ease of access nowadays. Most modern techniques focus on exploring large sets of textual data to build forecasting models;they tend to ignore the importance of temporal information which is often the main ingredient to determine the performance of analysis, especially in the public policy view. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, a dataset called COVID-News is collected from three news agencies, which consists of article segments related to wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, we propose a long-short term memory (LSTM)-based learning model to predict the attitude of the articles from the three news agencies towards wearing a mask with both temporal and textural information. Experimental results on COVID-News dataset show the effectiveness of the proposed LSTM-based algorithm. © 2022 IEEE.

Early antiviral therapy of abidol combined with lopinavir/ritonavir and recombinant interferon alpha-2b for patients with COVID-19 in Zhejiang: A multicenter prospective study.

Objective: To compare the efficacy of the combination of abidol, lopinavir/ritonavir plus recombinant interferon alpha-2b (rIFNalpha-2b) and the combination of lopinavir/ritonavir plus rIFNalpha-2b for patients with COVID-19 in Zhejiang province. Method(s): A multicenter prospective study was carried out to compare the efficacy of triple combination antiviral therapy and dual combination antiviral therapy in 15 medical institutions of Zhejiang province during January 22 to February 16, 2020. All patients were treated with rIFNalpha-2b (5 million U, 2 times/d) aerosol inhalation, in addition 196 patients were treated with abidol (200 mg, 3 times/d) + lopinavir/ritonavir (2 tablets, 1 time/12 h) (triple combination group) and 41 patients were treated with lopinavir/ritonavir (2 tablets, 1 time/12 h) (dual combination group). The patients who received triple combination antiviral therapy were further divided into three subgroups: <48 h, 3-5 d and >5 d according the time from the symptom onset to medication starting. The therapeutic efficacy was compared between triple combination group and dual combination group, and compared among 3 subgroups of patients receiving triple combination antiviral therapy. SPSS 17.0 software was used to analyze the data. Result(s): The virus nucleic acid-negative conversion time in respiratory tract specimens was (12.2+/-4.7) d in the triple combination group, which was shorter than that in the dual combination group [(15.0+/-5.0) d] (t=6.159, P<0.01). The length of hospital stay in the triple combination group [12.0 (9.0, 17.0) d] was also shorter than that in the dual combination group [15.0 (10.0, 18.0) d] (H=2.073, P<0.05). Compared with the antiviral treatment which was started within after the symptom onset of in the triple combination group, the time from the symptom onset to the viral negative conversion was 13.0 (10.0, 17.0), 17.0 (13.0, 22.0) and 21.0 (18.0, 24.0) d in subgroups of 48 h, 3-5 d and >5 d, respectively (Z=32.983, P<0.01), while the time from antiviral therapy to viral negative conversion was (11.8+/-3.9), (13.5+/-5.1) and (11.2+/-4.3) d, respectively(Z=6.722, P<0.05). Conclusion(s): The triple combination antiviral therapy of abidol, lopinavir/litonavir and rIFNalpha-2b shows shorter viral shedding time and shorter hospitalization time, compared with the dual combination antiviral therapy;and the earlier starting triple combination antiviral therapy will result in better antiviral efficacy.Copyright © 2020 by the Chinese Medical Association.

VOSviewer Application Status and Its Knowledge Base

[Purpose/Significance]VOSviewer is a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks which may include citation, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, or co-authorship relations. VOSviewer Online creates the possibility to embed interactive visualizations on online platforms. The software's powerful functions in processing literature information, coupled with free and continuous improvement, are increasingly favored by experts and scholars in scientometrics and domain analysis. It provides a reference for users to use this tool for scientific research through quantitative analysis of VOSviewer's papers and the analysis of its knowledge base structure. [Method/Process] First we collected relevant documents from the Web of Science database, and then used the document co-citation network to obtain some documents and analyze the important documents in this field based on bibliometric analysis. [Results/Conclusions] It was found that the number of papers in this field has entered an explosive period of application after a relatively slow growth stage. It has been widely used by scholars in many countries and disciplines. The research topics involved the novel corona virus epidemic, sustainability, social media, sustainable development and supply chain, etc. Bibliometric theory and methods, software principles, database and network analysis have formed relatively solid research foundation in this field. There is also a great deal of misuse in the applied literature. For example, a survey of the highly productive scholars' papers found that the papers are often a direct interpretation of the results generated by the software, lacking the process of data cleaning and disambiguation, and there are a large number of errors such as duplicate authors, unprocessed singular and plural topics. VOSviewer also offers text mining functionality that can be used to construct and visualize co-occurrence networks of important terms extracted from a body of scientific literature. However, there are few applied research results in this area.VOSviewer Online has been integrated in Digital Science's Dimensions platform, making it very easy for Dimensions users to create VOSviewer visualizations of co-authorship networks and citation networks. © 2022 The authors.

A novel biopolymer for mucosal adjuvant against respiratory pathogens (preprint)

Mucosal vaccinations for respiratory pathogens provide superior protection as they stimulate localized cellular and humoral immunity at the site of infection. Currently, the major limitation of the intranasal vaccination is using effective adjuvants capable of withstanding the harsh environment imposed by the mucosa. Herein, we describe the efficacy of using a novel biopolymer, N-dihydrogalactochitosan (GC), as a nasal mucosal vaccine adjuvant against respiratory infections. Specifically, using COVID as an example, we mixed GC with recombinant SARS-CoV-2 trimeric spike (S) and nucleocapsid (NC) proteins to intranasally vaccinate K18-hACE2 transgenic mice, in comparison with Addavax (AV), an MF-59 equivalent. In contrast to AV, intranasal application of GC induces a robust, systemic antigen-specific antibody response and increases the number of T cells in the cervical lymph nodes. Moreover, GC+S+NC vaccinated animals were largely resistant to lethal SARS-CoV-2 challenge and experienced drastically reduced morbidity and mortality, with the animal weights and behavior returning to normal 22 days post infection. In contrast, animals intranasally vaccinated by AV+S+NC experienced severe weight loss, mortality, and respiratory distress, with none surviving beyond 6 days post infection. Our findings demonstrate that GC can serve as a potent mucosal vaccine adjuvant against SARS-CoV-2 and potentially other respiratory viruses.

How Can the Financing Constraints of SMEs Be Eased in China?-Effect Analysis, Heterogeneity Test and Mechanism Identification Based on Digital Inclusive Finance

Due to the impact of COVID-19 and other factors, SMEs are increasingly facing the contradiction of financing constraints. In order to explore feasible ways to ease the financing constraints of SMEs, we further incorporate digital inclusive finance into the analytical framework of financing constraints of SMEs, and test the causal relationship between them by using models such as two-way fixed effects model and moderated intermediary effect model. We find that digital inclusive finance can effectively alleviate financing constraints of SMEs, and this phenomenon is particularly significant in private enterprises and family enterprises. In addition, the mitigation effect of digital financial inclusion is more like icing on the cake, and it cannot provide practical assistance to small and medium-sized enterprises with poor business conditions. Further research also finds that commercial credit seems to be an effective channel for digital financial inclusion to alleviate financing constraints of SMEs, but corporate leverage also plays an important role in this process, playing a negative moderating role. In general, our study strengthens the effectiveness of digital inclusive finance in alleviating financing constraints of SMEs, at the same time, confirming the existence of commercial credit channels and the moderating effect of enterprises’ lever ratio and providing a feasible direction for alleviating financing constraints of enterprises. Copyright © 2022 Li, Wei and Guo.

Environmental Benefits From Carbon Tax in the Chinese Carbon Market: A Roadmap to Energy Efficiency in the Post-COVID-19 Era

Because of China’s global responsibilities to address climate change, the country has made a commitment to limiting the growth of future emissions using policy measures, such as funding mitigation research and regulating energy efficiency requirements directly. Extensions of these policies, such as the measures to improve energy efficiency, use of carbon taxes, and changes to the mix of electricity generation in the country, are also of interest to China. This article applied a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to examine the effects of such energy efficiency and climate change policy options in the post-COVID-19 era in the China economy. The study findings show that even modest measures can have significant effects on emissions with marginal economic impacts, given the current level of development in the China electricity generation and transportation sectors. It is estimated that a 5 RMB per ton carbon tax will reduce emissions by 4.1% and GDP by 0.27%. Emissions drop by 8.2% and GDP drops by 0.54% when energy efficiency increases by 2% across the China economy, respectively. As a final result, a 5% shift away from burning coal would reduce emissions by 9.0%, while GDP would increase by 1.3%. It has been shown that even low carbon taxes can encourage a notable cleaner energy system. Copyright © 2022 Wei, Ayub and Dagar.

Media Exposure and Third-Person Perception: The Mediating Role of Social Realism and Proxy Efficacy

This study examines the influences of media exposure, social realism, and proxy efficacy on the perceived effects of news about the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data collected from a sample of 1,190 college students in China, this study found that exposure to news about the pandemic is positively related to social realism and proxy efficacy. Furthermore, social realism and proxy efficacy were significantly correlated with third-person perception (TPP). Most importantly, the results of the study show that social realism and proxy efficacy also mediated the relationship between exposure to COVID-19 news and TPP.

Reversible superhydrophobicity unyielding magnetic beads of flipping-triggered (SYMBOL) regulate the binding and unbinding of nucleic acids for ultra-sensitive detection

Present molecular biology procedures often include extraction and purification of nucleic acids (NAs) based on centrifuge- and column-based methods, which involve the usage of specialized apparatus and toxic chemicals. These restrict its usage in large scale high-throughput settings. Magnetic beads (MBs) may provide an ideal approach to extracting and purifying DNA or RNA instead of them. However, the low separation rate of NAs (DNA or RNA) on MBs limits its NAs’ detection. Here, we developed a reversible superhydrophobicity unyielding magnetic-beads of flipping-triggered (SYMBOL) system which can regulate the binding and unbinding capacity of NAs via the buffers due to the flipping of –COO- on the surface of SYMBOL. Compared to other MBs examined in this study, SYMBOL exhibited similar binding properties and far enhanced separation properties. In fact, the DNA separation rate rose from about 79% to nearly 96%, whereas, the RNA separation rate increased from roughly 75% to 97%. When it applied to SARS-CoV-2 detection, the SYMBOL, coupled with Simulation Digital RT-LAMP (a previously developed system), could further increase the sensitivity of the detection, thereby achieving a detection threshold of 5 copies/mL. The SYMBOL showed excellent extraction capability in a variety of tissues and can be used in a wide range of nucleic acid related technologies such as PCR, sequencing, etc. © 2021 The Author(s)

Cognitive reasoning, risk targets and behavioral responses to COVID-19 outbreaks among Wuhan residents during lockdown

How did residents in Wuhan, who were at the epicenter of the initial COVID-19 outbreaks in China evaluate the risk to themselves and to society at large, and take action accordingly? This study examines the need for orientation, cognitive reasoning of COVID-19 news, and perceived risk, which all contributed to protective action during the city’s total lockdown. Using data collected in a mobile CATI survey during the peak of the outbreaks in February 2020, findings show that the attention to COVID-19 in digital media predicted the perception of the coronavirus pandemic as a personal risk. In addition, the need for orientation and elaboration of news about the outbreaks were positively associated with perceived risk target–personal and societal. Finally, perceived personal risk proved a stronger predictor than perceived risk to society in general for taking protective behavior. © AMIC/WKWSCI-NTU 2021.

Hot and difficult issues related to prevention and control strategies of COVID-19

The epidemic of COVID-19 has lasted for nearly a year, the number of confirmed cases worldwide is still rising, and the trend of the epidemic is unclear. How will be the further development of COVID-19 epidemic? What is the current status of research on new drugs for coronary virus disease? Will the vaccine currently used change the epidemic pattern? In the context of the normalization of the epidemic, whether the epidemiology of other respiratory viruses will change? This article will discuss and analyze these hot and difficult issues. © 2021 Chinese Medical Association

Early antiviral therapy of abidol combined with lopinavir/ritonavir and recombinant interferon α-2b for patients with COVID-19 in Zhejiang: A multicenter prospective study

Objective: To compare the efficacy of the combination of abidol, lopinavir/ritonavir plus recombinant interferon α-2b (rIFNα-2b) and the combination of lopinavir/ritonavir plus rIFNα-2b for patients with COVID-19 in Zhejiang province. Methods: A multicenter prospective study was carried out to compare the efficacy of triple combination antiviral therapy and dual combination antiviral therapy in 15 medical institutions of Zhejiang province during January 22 to February 16, 2020. All patients were treated with rIFNα-2b (5 million U, 2 times/d) aerosol inhalation, in addition 196 patients were treated with abidol (200 mg, 3 times/d) + lopinavir/ritonavir (2 tablets, 1 time/12 h) (triple combination group) and 41 patients were treated with lopinavir/ritonavir (2 tablets, 1 time/12 h) (dual combination group). The patients who received triple combination antiviral therapy were further divided into three subgroups: <48 h, 3-5 d and >5 d according the time from the symptom onset to medication starting. The therapeutic efficacy was compared between triple combination group and dual combination group, and compared among 3 subgroups of patients receiving triple combination antiviral therapy. SPSS 17.0 software was used to analyze the data. Results: The virus nucleic acid-negative conversion time in respiratory tract specimens was (12.2±4.7) d in the triple combination group, which was shorter than that in the dual combination group [(15.0±5.0) d] (t=6.159, P<0.01). The length of hospital stay in the triple combination group [12.0 (9.0, 17.0) d] was also shorter than that in the dual combination group [15.0 (10.0, 18.0) d] (H=2.073, P<0.05). Compared with the antiviral treatment which was started within after the symptom onset of in the triple combination group, the time from the symptom onset to the viral negative conversion was 13.0 (10.0, 17.0), 17.0 (13.0, 22.0) and 21.0 (18.0, 24.0) d in subgroups of 48 h, 3-5 d and >5 d, respectively (Z=32.983, P<0.01), while the time from antiviral therapy to viral negative conversion was (11.8±3.9), (13.5±5.1) and (11.2±4.3) d, respectively(Z=6.722, P<0.05). Conclusions: The triple combination antiviral therapy of abidol, lopinavir/litonavir and rIFNα-2b shows shorter viral shedding time and shorter hospitalization time, compared with the dual combination antiviral therapy;and the earlier starting triple combination antiviral therapy will result in better antiviral efficacy. Copyright © 2020 by the Chinese Medical Association.

The Association of Inflammatory Cytokines in the Pulmonary Pathophysiology of Respiratory Failure in Critically Ill Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019.

OBJECTIVES: The majority of coronavirus disease 2019 mortality and morbidity is attributable to respiratory failure from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection. The pathogenesis underpinning coronavirus disease 2019-induced respiratory failure may be attributable to a dysregulated host immune response. Our objective was to investigate the pathophysiological relationship between proinflammatory cytokines and respiratory failure in severe coronavirus disease 2019. DESIGN: Multicenter prospective observational study. SETTING: ICU. PATIENTS: Critically ill patients with coronavirus disease 2019 and noncoronavirus disease 2019 critically ill patients with respiratory failure (ICU control group). INTERVENTIONS: Daily measurement of serum inflammatory cytokines. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Demographics, comorbidities, clinical, physiologic, and laboratory data were collected daily. Daily serum samples were drawn for measurements of interleukin-1ß, interleukin-6, interleukin-10, and tumor necrosis factor-α. Pulmonary outcomes were the ratio of Pao2/Fio2 and static lung compliance. Twenty-six patients with coronavirus disease 2019 and 22 ICU controls were enrolled. Of the patients with coronavirus disease 2019, 58% developed acute respiratory distress syndrome, 62% required mechanical ventilation, 12% underwent extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and 23% died. A negative correlation between interleukin-6 and Pao2/Fio2 (rho, -0.531; p = 0.0052) and static lung compliance (rho, -0.579; p = 0.033) was found selectively in the coronavirus disease 2019 group. Diagnosis of acute respiratory distress syndrome was associated with significantly elevated serum interleukin-6 and interleukin-1ß on the day of diagnosis. CONCLUSIONS: The inverse relationship between serum interleukin-6 and Pao2/Fio2 and static lung compliance is specific to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection in critically ill patients with respiratory failure. Similar observations were not found with interleukin-ß or tumor necrosis factor-α.