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Background The transmission dynamics of influenza were affected by public health and social measures (PHSMs) implemented globally since early 2020 to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to assess the effect of COVID-19 PHSMs on the transmissibility of influenza viruses and to predict upcoming influenza epidemics. Methods For this modelling study, we used surveillance data on influenza virus activity for 11 different locations and countries in 2017-22. We implemented a data-driven mechanistic predictive modelling framework to predict future influenza seasons on the basis of pre-COVID-19 dynamics and the effect of PHSMs during the COVID-19 pandemic. We simulated the potential excess burden of upcoming influenza epidemics in terms of fold rise in peak magnitude and epidemic size compared with pre-COVID-19 levels. We also examined how a proactive influenza vaccination programme could mitigate this effect. Findings We estimated that COVID-19 PHSMs reduced influenza transmissibility by a maximum of 17.3% (95% CI 13.3-21.4) to 40.6% (35.2-45.9) and attack rate by 5.1% (1.5-7.2) to 24.8% (20.8-27.5) in the 2019-20 influenza season. We estimated a 10-60% increase in the population susceptibility for influenza, which might lead to a maximum of 1-5-fold rise in peak magnitude and 1-4-fold rise in epidemic size for the upcoming 2022-23 influenza season across locations, with a significantly higher fold rise in Singapore and Taiwan. The infection burden could be mitigated by additional proactive one-off influenza vaccination programmes. Interpretation Our results suggest the potential for substantial increases in infection burden in upcoming influenza seasons across the globe. Strengthening influenza vaccination programmes is the best preventive measure to reduce the effect of influenza virus infections in the community. Copyright (C) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.
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During the pandemic, many hotels convert into isolation centres for the purpose of quarantine. However, the memorable experience in the context of quarantine hotel (quarantel) remains unexplored. Thus, the purpose of this research was to explore the memorable quarantel experiences of Chinese student returnees during the COVID-19 outbreak. The research was qualitative in nature, involving 26 in-depth interviews conducted through snowballing. The data was then analysed using thematic analysis. The findings revealed six themes – (1) staff, (2) room, (3) hygiene and disinfection, (4) food, (5) healthcare and (6) location – with 20 underlying attributes pertaining their experiences. Some themes (e.g. hygiene and disinfection and healthcare) and attributes (e.g. ventilation and Chinese food therapy) were found to be unique experiences with significant functions that newly added in the context of quarantine hotels. Besides, differences existed between operational guidelines of quarantine hotels and actual guests' quarantine experience. The research allows hotel operators to better understand guests' concerns during the quarantine period and offers managerial implications to improve hotels' performance during and after the pandemic. © The Author(s) 2022.
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Antibacterial fabric with high thermal stability and mechanical strength is important for personalized protection, especially under the background of coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). This paper presents a facile approach toward high-efficient antibacterial polypropylene spunbonded nonwoven fabrics (SNFs), which are decorated by a composite of graphene oxide embedded with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs/GO) through dip-coating and in situ reduction effect of pre-introduced amino-terminated hyperbranched polymer (HBP-NH2). Typically, HBP-NH2 was grafted onto the GO nanosheets, then silver ions were trapped and self-reduced by the HBP-NH2 to generate silver nanoparticles decorated GO. The produced AgNPs are uniformly dispersed on the GO with a size of 13 nm. As an antibacterial coating, the Ag/GO composite could tightly wrap the SNFs fibers through the dip-padding method, capable of enhancing the thermal stability and mechanical property of SNFs. The treated SNFs exhibited excellent antibacterial activities (~99.9%) against both Echerisia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, promising important potential for biomedical and personal protection applications. © 2022 Wiley Periodicals LLC.
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Significance In 2009, influenza A (H1N1) broke out in Mexico and the United States, influencing 214 countries and killing at least 14000 people. The novel coronavirus epidemic which broke out in 2020 has still been raging all over the world for two years as the results of the huge difficulty in the rapid and real-time epidemic prevention detection and the other reasons. In addition, the spread of other viruses including dengue virus (DENV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is also threatening human health significantly. Virus detection is the key to curb the spread of the viruses. At present, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR), as the gold standard in the field of virus detection, can be used to detect and trace virus samples with a high sensitivity. But these samples need to be collected to the laboratory, and the viruses must be isolated and determined using the sophisticated lab equipment operated by professionals in order to get accurate results. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR)and local surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) biosensors may be an effective alternative, as their structures are simple and easy to be miniaturized. Especially, the LSPR-based device only needs a light source and some sensing elements. Once the sensing elements successfully capture the virus, the detection process will be quickly, sensitively, and selectively finished. These characteristics of the SPR and LSPR techniques show their great application potential in the field of virus detection, especially for the point-of-care testing with limited conditions. With the rapid development of SPR and LSPR-based virus detection researches, researchers have reviewed the progress of materials and structures of sensors, methods for plasmonic virus detection, and their characteristics of signal amplification, and so on. According to the four general virus detection methods and starting from the four kinds of target analytes captured by the sensor, this paper systematically outlines the latest researches of the SPR and LSPR techniques for detecting viruses, which are of great significance for their clinical application (Fig. 1). Progress First, according to the four methods for virus detection, the application progress of SPR and LSPR in the fields of antibody, antigen, nucleic acid, and virus particle detection is reviewed successively. For the SPR or LSPR sensors based on the binding principle of specific antigen-antibodies, the detection limit is further optimized by modifying the appropriate antigens or antibodies. More stable and inexpensive aptamers and molecularly imprinted polymers are expected to replace antibodies as sensor recognition elements to detect virus antigens or particles. Because the number of virus genomes in clinical samples is usually very small, the detection of nucleic acid by SPR or LSPR alone is limited. However, the detection of virus samples with the concentration at the femto scale can be realized by combining SPR or LSPR with DNA amplification and fluorescent substances. Second, the problems of biological medium contamination and repeatability encountered by biosensors as well as their solutions are introduced (Fig. 13). As for the contamination of biological media, self-assembled monolayers (SAM) can be synthesized on the surface of sensor elements to alleviate this problem. Riedel et al. further reduced or even completely inhibited the biological contamination of plasma and serum by synthesizing polymer brushes. In order to ensure the repeatability of sensing elements, Yoo et al. used magnetic beads replaced under the control of magnetic field as the sensing element, allowing that the sensor chip could still work stably after many repeated measurements. Third, the configurations and parameters of the SPR and LSPR sensors for virus detection in the past 15 years are listed (Table 1), and the advantages of the SPR and LSPR techniques are described. Finally, the optimization strategies of the SPR and LSPR techniques and the present existing problems are summarized. Moreover, e application prospect is also forecasted. Conclusion and Prospect According to the current research progress, the optimization strategy of the SPR sensor mainly focuses on film material sensitization and metal particle coupling sensitization. The former includes the application of 2D materials and molecular imprinting through the construction of surface films to enhance practicality and applicability. In contrast, the latter uses nanoparticles to form sandwich structures. The LSPR sensing strategies are concentrated on the design and optimization of nanoparticles or nanostructures, which are often combined with fluorescent substances such as quantum dots (QDs) to form sensing probes for virus detection by the light absorption peak shift or the fluorescence intensity change. The LSPR biosensors are normally easier to be miniaturized than the SPR counterparts. In a word, the SPR and LSPR sensors show great application prospects in the field of virus detection. Predictably, owing to the diversity of the SPR and LSPR virus sensor modifiers, it may be possible to detect specific viruses for multiple target analytes at the same time through the integration of sensor recognition elements, which enables the multi-dimensional evaluation of virus infection in a short time to avoid false negative and false positive cases. © 2022 Science Press. All rights reserved.
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Since its beginning, various countries have gone through multiple waves of surging COVID-19 infections. With the emergence of variants like Delta and Omicron, the disease is highly contagious and has the ability to spread at an alarming rate. In such scenarios, a quick and effective detection system is highly desirable. In this study, we present the concept of a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) based sensing system that can be utilized efficiently and reliably for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 antigens. The SPR system offers multiple advantages like real-time and label-free sensing of analytes and commercial systems have been in the market for more than two decades. Antireflective coatings (ARCs) have a number of application areas because of their unique properties. But they have seldom been used in the area of SPR sensing Hence, with the help of simulation, we make use of these coatings as intermediate layers and propose an enhanced sensing scheme by making use of ARCs of TiO2and SiO2and perovskite materials-BaTiO3, PbTiO3, and SrTiO3. We found that, using TiO2, SiO2, and PbTiO3, a maximum sensitivity of 392 degRIU-1can be obtained which is 5.29-fold enhancement as compared to the standard SPR arrangement using gold. © 2022 ACS Applied Electronic Materials. All right reserved.
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Respiration rate is an essential vital indicator for health monitoring. While traditional sensor-based methods support acceptable sensing performance, the recent advance in wireless sensing could enable sensor-free and contact-free respiration sensing, which is particularly important during the practice of social distancing against a pandemic like COVID-19. Among a variety of wireless technologies employed for respiration sensing, Wi-Fi-based solutions are most popular due to the pervasive development of infrastructure. However, the existing Wi-Fi-based approaches need to retrieve Wi-Fi readings from access points, which are not often accessible for the end users. In this article, we propose a novel system, MoBreath, in which we utilize the Wi-Fi channel state information (CSI) readings extracted from the end-user device, a smartphone, to monitor the respiration rate for the first time. We introduce and address unique technical challenges, such as selecting the optimum CSI subcarriers from many noisy candidates and providing smartphone placement strategies for both single and multiple human target scenarios based on the Fresnel zone model to support highly accurate respiration sensing. Our evaluation of MoBreath using commodity smartphones in different environments shows that it can accurately estimate the respiration rate at a low error rate of 0.34 breaths per minute and support the sensing range of up to 3-4 m. Even for challenging scenarios such as the target is covered by a quilt and multiple targets are in the sensing area, MoBreath can still support highly accurate results.
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Purpose: To describe a case of suprachoroidal haemorrhage and persistent hypotony successfully treated with intravitreal perfluoropropane (C3F8) and choroidal drainage. Methods: Case report and review of literature. Results: An 88 year-old male was referred with end-stage open angle glaucoma, recently complicated by idiopathic anterior uveitis and intraocular pressures of 39 mmHg and 41 mmHg in the right and left eyes respectively on maximal medical therapy. Visual acuity was count fingers in the right eye and 6/60 in the left. He underwent Baerveldt tube insertion in the left eye under local anaesthetic as COVID-19 precautions restricted general anaesthetic use. Unfortunately, he required increased sedation and post-operatively developed Type-1 respiratory failure and aspiration pneumonia with severe coughing. He was managed in intensive care. On discharge from hospital, he restarted antiglaucoma therapy against medical advice and developed a suprachoroidal haemorrhage with kissing choroidals. This failed to respond to medical therapy and anterior chamber reformation with viscoelastic substance. A choroidal drainage was performed, but the effusions recurred. Finally, a repeat choroidal drainage and injection of intravitreal 100% C3F8 stabilised the eye. After eleven months the right visual acuity was light perception, while the left visual acuity was 6/12 with an intraocular pressures of 11 mmHg on no medications. Conclusion: Intravitreal non-expansile gas injections have previously been described as a prophylactic measure for cases at high risk for suprachoroidal haemorrhage. To our knowledge, this is the first case of expansile C3F8 in the vitreous chamber used as rescue therapy for recalcitrant hypotony and suprachoroidal haemorrhage.
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This study analyzed the effect of Arbidol, a broad-spectrum antiviral compound, on the outcomes of COVID-19 patients. Records of 252 COVID-19 patients were retrospectively analyzed from February 13 to February 29, 2020 in 4 inpatient wards in the Cancer Center, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. The rate of clinical improvement was significantly greater among patients treated with Arbidol than among those who did not receive Arbidol (86.8% vs. 54.2%). In moderately and severely ill patients, the clinical improvement rates in the Arbidol group were 95.6% and 81.7%, respectively, which was significantly higher than in the no-Arbidol group (66.6% and 53.8%). Among critically ill patients, however, there was no significant difference. The levels of hypersensitive C-reactive protein, lactate dehydrogenase, D-dimer, IL-6, and IL-10 were increased in non-improved patients but declined during treatment in the improved patients. This suggests these mediators are associated with the disease severity and could potentially serve as prognostic markers. Moreover, our data demonstrate that Arbidol is effective in the treatment of COVID-19 patients and may serve as a cost-effective antiviral treatment strategy for patients with moderate to severe COVID-19 symptoms.
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CONTEXT: About 19% of COVID-19-patients undergo hypoxic breathing problems, approximately 14% require intensive oxygen therapy, and 5% require mechanical ventilation and ICU admission. These patients can deteriorate rapidly, so nurses must closely watch them. OBJECTIVE: The study intended to examine the role of emergency nurses as care providers in intensive care units (ICUs). DESIGN: The research team performed a narrative review by searching the Mendeley, Medline, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, Springer, and PubMed databases. The search used the keywords COVID-19 infection, epidemiology of respiratory failure pathology in COVID-19 infection, involvement of viral spike protein S of SARSCoV-2, SARS CoV2 transmission, pathophysiology of SARSCoV-2 attack-mediated ARDS, transmission of viral particles of SARSCoV-2 in lungs, mechanism of cytokines in lungs, immunomodulatory response changes in lung physiology, and involvement of nursing officer in nursing patient care management in ICU respiratory failure. SETTING: This study were conducted at The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, China. RESULTS: Nurses are necessarily not only responsible for adequate oxygen management but also for other critical health services to benefit patients, such as control of oxygen saturation and vital signs, to reduce respiratory failure in the ICU. CONCLUSIONS: The diagnosis of the root cause of respiratory failure and its treatment are complex because a variety of pulmonary and extrapulmonary conditions can cause respiratory failure. Methods of treating acute respiratory failure and other respiratory illness require a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach. Nurses are in the best position to determine patients' risks for respiratory distress, observe them during hospitalizations, and evaluate their treatments.
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OBJECTIVE To establish an agile discovery method of drugs or natural products for epidemics (aCODE) for the development of anti-infectious disease drugs. METHODS Five infectious diseases (HIV infection, human influenza, Paramyxoviridae infections, bacterial infections and whooping cough) involving more than 40 drugs approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were selected. An experimental group and two negative control groups (A and B) for each disease were set up. The experimental group randomly selected (500 times) M FDA-approved indications as seed drugs for the disease, while negative control group A used all FDA-approved infectious drugs for non-current diseases instead of seed drugs, and negative control group B used all non-infectious disease drugs for non-infectious diseases instead of seed drugs. M ranged from 2 to 20, the target gene infor mation of the seed drug was input, and the feature vector of the seed drug set was calculated. Candi date compounds were predicted through similarity search of drug feature vectors. The size of the inter section between the predicted drug and the positive set of drugs approved by the FDA for the disease, and the significance of the intersection were calculated. After the establishment of the aCODE method, four drugs (lopinavir, ribavirin, ritonavir and chloroquine) were selected as seed drugs for COVID-19 to predict the composition of natural products. Using natural products with known anti-coronavirus activi ties as the verification set, the significance of the prediction results was calculated. RESULTS In the case of the five infectious diseases, the proportion of positive drugs in the results of prediction in the experimental group increased with the number of seed drugs, while the positive rate of the two negative control groups remained basically unchanged or somewhat trended down. The aCODE method, when applied to COVID-19 drug screening, could effectively predict drugs with potential anti-SARS-Cov-2 activity (P=0.0046). CONCLUSION With the aCODE method, the more the seed drugs, the more accu rate the characteristics of the disease-related gene modules calculated from this group of seed drugs, and the higher the proportion of positive drugs in the prediction result. This method may contribute to the discovery of drugs for COVID-19. © 2020 Chinese Journal of Pharmacology and Toxicology. All rights reserved.
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According to the principle of being "derived from the logical structure of the knowledge system and promoted through the integration and application of knowledge", advancement in interdisciplinary research is one of the three core tasks of the deepening reform of the National Natural Science Fund in the new era. This article takes an international vision by first investigating the disciplinary layout and application guide for the field of earth sciences offered by leading international science foundations and agencies including the National Science Foundation, United States (NSF);National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF);Japan Society for the Promotion of Science;Agence Nationale De Le Recherche;Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG);European Research Council;Australian Research Council;Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment;and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). These application guides include categories of guidelines, extensive application codes, and subdivided application codes. Compared with the existing hierarchical structure for application codes in the field of earth sciences at NSFC, the feasibility and necessity of promoting the optimization of the disciplinary layout and reform of application codes are discussed. Then, it is proposed that the disciplinary layout should be based on the current conditions as well as the future developmental needs of China and that the optimization of application codes should consider the needs of both application guidance rationality and management applicability. Moreover, the setting of application codes should include self-consistent disciplines;exhibit stable inheritance;and support services, emerging intersections, and national needs. To optimize the disciplinary layout, improve the basic research capabilities, and account for the scale of basic research teams and human management resources, the application codes need to be optimized on the basis of three key factors: Extensive application codes, subdivided application codes, and intelligent assistance. Only in this way can the core mission of science foundation management reforms be fulfilled and the goal of building a science foundation management system with advanced concepts, standardized systems, fairness, and efficiency be achieved. In the future, NSFC should focus on the differences between basic scientific research conducted by large and small countries, pay more attention to balanced development in the discipline layout, develop basic general research, and comprehensively promote the growth of the earth science fund. During the past two years, under the guidance of clear, overall strategic planning and top-level design, NSFC's Department of Earth Sciences has deployed multiple major projects by guidelines, such as those for the major basic science projects of the Sichuan-Tibet railway and frontier projects of basic polar science as well as special projects related to 2019-nCoV research, ecological protection and sustainable development of the Yellow River Basin, and deep-time earth science knowledge graphing and knowledge evolution. These established projects have played key roles in enabling NSFC to meet the major national needs and push forward international scientific frontiers. In the future, NSFC should continue to pay significant attention to strategic research and the top-level design of funding deployment. Moreover, the foundation should strengthen the overall consideration of the top-level strategic results of earth sciences and the layout of the science fund. In practice, the focus should be on the promotion of basic scientific research rather than servicing the other needs of different disciplines. By further improving the condensed mechanism and management methods of the major projects of earth sciences, the important role of guidelines in funding effectiveness will be strengthened. This article can provide the necessary international vision and strategic support for the reform of the application codes of NSFC. © 2021, Science Press. All right reserved.
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Purpose: This paper aims to understand the role of government played in the innovation process during the social crisis, and to investigate the innovation activities of the authoritarian state when dealing with social crisis. Design/methodology/approach: Secondary data pertaining to eight impactful technological innovations in China during the COVID-19 crisis reveal how interactions and joint efforts by commercial firms and government organizations emerged as spontaneous responses. Findings: The analysis of eight innovations – health code adoption, health omnichannel construction, noncontact service provision, distance education provision, public emotion consolation service, cross-boundary project promotion, cloud office adoption and medical material production – reveals a matrix of best practices that details the roles of government (controller or endorser) and the value creation orientation (pro-social or pro-economic value). Originality/value: This study enriches innovation literature by providing a new perspective on the relationship between governmental force and technological innovation during social crises. As these new insights reveal, technological innovation can contribute to social crisis management. China’s example provides helpful implications for other countries suffering from the COVID-19 crisis. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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Vital sign monitoring is a common practice amongst medical professionals, and plays a key role in patient care and clinical diagnosis. Traditionally, dedicated equipment is employed to monitor these vital signs. For example, electrocardiograms (ECG) with 3-12 electrodes are attached to the target chest for heartbeat monitoring. In the last few years, wireless sensing becomes a hot research topic and wireless signal itself is utilized for sensing purposes without requiring the target to wear any sensors the contact-free nature of wireless sensing makes it particularly appealing in current COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, promising progress has been achieved and the sensing granularity has been pushed to millimeter level, fine enough to monitor respiration which causes a chest displacement of 5 mm. While a great success with respiration monitoring, it is still very challenging to monitor heartbeat due to the extremely subtle chest displacement (0.1-0.5 mm)-smaller than 10% of that caused by respiration. What makes it worse is that the tiny heartbeat-caused chest displacement is buried inside the respiration-caused displacement. In this paper, we show the feasibility of employing the popular smart speakers (e.g., Amazon Echo) to monitor an individual's heartbeats in a contact-free manner. To extract the submillimeter heartbeat motion in the presence of other interference movements, a series of novel signal processing schemes are employed. We successfully prototype the first real-Time heartbeat monitoring system using a commodity smart speaker. Experiment results show that the proposed system can monitor a target's heartbeat accurately, achieving a median heart rate estimation error of 0.75 beat per minute (bpm), and a median heartbeat interval estimation error of 13.28 ms (less than 1.8%), outperforming even some popular commodity products available on the market. © 2020 ACM.
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Objective: To investigate the clinical characteristics, treatment and prognosis of novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19). Methods: A total of 89 cases COVID-19 patients in Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University from January 17, 2020 to February 20, 2020 were analyzed retrospectively, and the clinical characteristics, course of treatment and prognosis were summarized. Results: According to the guideline for Diagnosis and Treatment of Novel Coronavirus Infected Pneumonia, 89 cases were divided into mild group (n=18, 20.2%), common group (n=40, 44.9%), severe group (n=21, 23.6%), and critical group (n=10, 11.2%). There were significant differences in the incidence of fever, dry cough and dyspnea among the four groups (P0.05). Compared with those in mild group, white blood cell count (WBC), neutrophil count (NEUT), lymphocyte count (LYM), and monocyte count (MONO) increased significantly in the other three groups, while the serum levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin (PCT), creatinine (Cr), urea nitrogen (Urea) and troponin I (cTnI) increased significantly in severe and critical groups (P0.05). Compared with those in common group, the LYM of the severe and the critical patients were significantly lower, while the CRP, Cr, urea and cTnI levels increased significantly (P0.05). Among the 89 patients, 6 patients (6.7%) had acute myocardial injury, 6 patients (6.7%) had respiratory failure, 3 patients (3.4%) had renal failure, and 3 patients had shock (3.4%). There were significant differences in myocardial injury, respiratory failure, and shock incidences among the four groups (P0.05). Among the 89 patients, 7 patients (7.9%) were died, 82 patients (92.1%) were cured and discharged from hospital. Among them, there was no death in mild group, 1 patient (2.5%) was died in common group, 3 patients (14.3%) were died in severe group, and 3 patients (30.0%) were died in critical group. There was a significant difference in mortality among the four groups (P0.05). Conclusion: COVID-19 patients in severe and critical classification are more serious in inflammatory reaction, and more prone to myocardial injury, respiratory failure and shock. © 2020, Editorial Board of Medical Journal of Wuhan University. All right reserved.