Risk Area Alert Through Heterogeneous Mobile Networks: A New Approach to Fight COVID-19 and Beyond

COVID-19 has now been sweeping the whole world, and fundamentally affecting our daily life. An effective mechanism to further fight against COVID-19 and prevent the spread of this pandemic is to alert people when they are in the vicinity of areas with a high infection risk, yielding them to adjust their routes and consequently, leave these areas. Inspired by the fact that mobile communication networks are capable of precise positioning, data processing and information broadcasting, as well as are available for almost every person, in this paper, we propose a mobile network assisted Risk arEa ALerting scheme, named REAL, which exploits heterogeneous mobile networks to alert users who are in/near to the areas with high risks of COVID- 19 infection. Specifically, in REAL scheme, all base stations (BSs) periodically estimate their serving users' locations, which are then analyzed by macro BSs (MBSs) to identify risk areas. Next, each MBS transmits the information about risk areas to small BSs (SBSs), which in their turn adjust the beamforming direction to cover these areas and send alerts to users located therein. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed REAL scheme. In addition, some key challenges associated with implementing REAL are discussed at the end. IEEE

Does bitcoin hedge against the economic policy uncertainty: based on the continuous wavelet analysis

This article aims to test a causal nexus between bitcoin market and economic policy uncertainty. We use the continuous wavelet analysis to investigate lead-lag relationship between bitcoin market and economic policy uncertainty in different time-frequency domains. Our findings show the negative relationship between bitcoin returns and economic policy uncertainty around the period of bitcoin’s currency recognition and COVIC-19 pandemic crisis both daily and monthly time series test. Furthermore, we find that the causality relationship between bitcoin and economic policy uncertainty is relatively indistinct around the period of bitcoin’s currency recognition, while bitcoin returns are leading economic policy uncertainty changes during COVID-19 pandemic crisis, indicating the economic policy uncertainty fluctuation trend can refer to the fluctuation of bitcoin, bitcoin can be viewed as a leading indicator, but it could not be employed as a safe-haven asset hedge against uncertainty during the period of COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Reduced Counts of Various Subsets of Peripheral Blood T Lymphocytes in Patients with Severe Course of COVID-19.

This study was intended to define T lymphocyte subsets in different clinical groups of COVID-19-infected patients to explore the interaction between T cell-mediated immune response and the severity of COVID-19 course. Lymphopenia in patients with severe COVID-19 was found. In patients with severe COVID-19 course, the absolute counts of CD3+, CD4+, and CD8+ T lymphocytes at admission were lower than on day 14 after discharge. Further analysis showed that the older were the patients with COVID-19, the more likely they developed severe infection. The results confirmed the significance of T lymphocytes in the clearance of the COVID-19.

Mental distress and its associations with behavioral outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic: a national survey of Chinese adults.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to evaluate associations between mental distress and COVID-19-related changes in behavioral outcomes and potential modifiers (age, gender, educational attainment) of such associations. STUDY DESIGN: This was a cross-sectional study. METHODS: An online survey using anonymous network sampling was conducted in China from April to May 2020 using a 74-item questionnaire. A national sample of 10,545 adults in 31 provinces provided data on sociodemographic characteristics, COVID-19-related mental distress, and changes in behavioral outcomes. Structural equation models were used for data analyses. RESULTS: After adjusting for covariates, greater mental distress was associated with increased smoking (odds ratio [OR] = 1.42, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.20-1.68 and OR = 1.54, 95% CI: 1.31-1.82 per one standard deviation [SD] increase in mental distress) and alcohol consumption (OR = 1.67, 95% CI: 1.45-1.92 and OR = 1.47, 95% CI: 1.24-1.75 per one SD increase in mental distress) among current smokers and drinkers and with both increased and decreased physical activity (ORs ranged from 1.32 to 1.56). Underweight adults were more likely to lose body weight (≥1 kg; OR = 1.63, 95% CI: 1.30-2.04), whereas overweight adults were more likely to gain weight (OR = 1.61, 95% CI: 1.46-1.78) by the same amount. Association between mental distress and change in physical activity was stronger in adults aged ≥40 years (ORs ranged from 1.43 to 2.05) and those with high education (ORs ranged from 1.43 to 1.77). Mental distress was associated with increased smoking in males (OR = 1.60, 95% CI: 1.37-1.87) but not females (OR = 1.11, 95% CI: 0.82-1.51). CONCLUSIONS: Greater mental distress was associated with some positive and negative changes in behavioral outcomes during the pandemic. These findings inform the design of tailored public health interventions aimed to mitigate long-term negative consequences of mental distress on outcomes.

Advances in point-of-care testing for new corona virus nucleic acid

The corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has spread rapidly around the world, posing a serious threat to the public's health. As of September 30, 2020, the number of infected people in the world has reached 33 million, causing more than 1 million deaths. Normalized nucleic acid detection methods based on lab have long turnaround time and high cost. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a convenient method to detect SARS-CoV-2, so as to achieve rapid testing and timely control of the epidemic when resources are limited. This review summarizes the point-of-care testing (POCT) methods developed for SARS-CoV-2 in terms of extraction, amplification and detection, and briefly introduces commercial POCT instruments that integrate these three steps, in order to provide references for emergency response and rapid deployment of COVID-19 and other emerging infectious diseases. © 2020 China Pharmaceutical University. All rights reserved.

Construction of a double-scale epidemic prevention system with consideration of city and community

In the process of fighting against COVID-19, China has taken a series of measures in time, including closing down commercial and entertainment places in the city, conducting closed management of residential communities, restricting citizens' public social gatherings, etc. During the process that these measures have successfully controlled the spread of the epidemic, new issues are also exposed in the current urban planning and construction, such as dislocation between administrative control unit and planning control unit, and the uneven distribution of urban medical facilities system, which to a large extent affect the development of urban economy and society. Therefore, under the situation that no vaccine has been developed and isolation is still needed for epidemic prevention to deal with possible repeated epidemics, it is necessary to construct an urban layout structure from the perspective of urban planning, which takes into account the needs of epidemic prevention and urban development. Specifically, the overall planning should be carried out from the two scales of city and community, so as to maintain the normal operation of urban economy, society and people's life as much as possible on the basis of ensuring epidemic prevention. During the non-epidemic period, cities are interconnected. There is no control between the communities, and various elements interact with each other in urban space. At this time, the city can be understood as a multi system interactive "network". After the outbreak of the epidemic, if we can only control the communities where the epidemic has occurred, it can not only effectively limit the spread of the virus, but also protect the basic living needs of citizens through the improvement of community supporting facilities. At the same time, it can also minimize the impact of space control on the city. In this way, the network characteristics of the whole city can be preserved. We can embed isolated and managed communities into the urban system through important systems and corridors, forming a "network" + "beaded" pattern. In this urban pattern, the double-scale epidemic prevention system needs to improve the ability of different urban systems to resist the impact of epidemic situation at the overall level of the city, and provide basic guarantee for the prevention and control management of communities. According to the characteristics of COVID-19, the transportation system, medical system, garbage and sewage treatment system should be adjusted, so as to realize the isolation, effective supply and timely treatment of personnel, materials and wastes. On this basis, community, as the basic unit of urban administration, is also the focal place for the outbreak, transmission and prevention and control of the epidemic. Different from the open management in the daily period, closed management must be carried out in the communities where infected persons or close contacts are found. This requires the community to be equipped with basic medical service facilities and emergency sites, and focus on the implementation of inspection and control of personnel and materials in and out, and centralized disinfection of waste. The double-scale epidemic prevention system proposed in this paper is not only a means to deal with the new epidemic situation, but also an effective way to face the unknown virus in the future. Among the two epidemic prevention levels of city and community, the city level mainly plays the role of framework support, which is an important support for the organic combination of urban systematic epidemic prevention control and community self-organization epidemic prevention management. As the core management and control unit, the community needs to have perfect social service facilities, and connect with the basic administrative unit of the city, so as to realize the organic combination and effective connection of epidemic prevention and control and daily management. © 2021, Science Press. All right reserved.