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Ever since late December 2019, corona virus disease 2019 (COVID -19) has been reported in China. It presents a general trend of a global pandemic. By consulting the relevant Chinese government regulations and the latest publications of COVID -19, more than 20 pediatric surgical specialists from China formulated the Expert Consensus of COVID -19 Prevention and Control Protocol. Suitable for clinical practices, it provides recommendations for children's hospitals and pediatric surgical institutions at domestic and abroad.Copyright © 2020 by the Chinese Medical Association.
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Social media is one of the most significant sources of information in modern people’s life. Due to the large quantity of user base and public opinions, when people read a blog post, the different tendencies of comments may affect their views on the event to a certain extent. This paper, taking the COVID-19 epidemic as an example, investigated the impact of Weibo (a popular social software in China) comments on readers’ sentiments. In this paper, text mining technology was adopted to collect data including the blogs and the comments under each blog, and the NLPIR-Parser platform was used to analyze the sentiment of the comments. Finally, the conclusion that the sentiments of other comments tend to follow the sentiments of the first comments was drawn. Based on the research results, this paper also gave some enlightenment on social media management and suggestions of public opinions oversight. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is still ongoing in the world, the risk of COVID-19 spread from other countries or in the country will exist for a long term in China. In the routine prevention and control phase, a number of local COVID-19 epidemics have occurred in China, most COVID-19 cases were sporadic ones, but a few case clusters or outbreaks were reported. Winter and spring were the seasons with high incidences of the epidemics; border and port cities had higher risk for outbreaks. Active surveillance in key populations was an effective way for the early detection of the epidemics. Through a series of comprehensive prevention and control measures, including mass nucleic acid screening, close contact tracing and isolation, classified management of areas and groups at risk, wider social distancing and strict travel management, the local COVID-19 epidemics have been quickly and effectively controlled. The experiences obtained in the control of the local epidemics would benefit the routine prevention and control of COVID-19 in China. The occurrence of a series of COVID-19 case clusters or outbreaks has revealed the weakness or deficiencies in the COVID-19 prevention and control in China, so this paper suggests some measures for the improvement of the future prevention and control of COVID-19.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Epidemics , COVID-19/epidemiology , COVID-19/prevention & control , China/epidemiology , Contact Tracing , Epidemics/prevention & control , Humans , Pandemics/prevention & control , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The follow-up data of discharged patients with coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) have not yet been fully analyzed and reported. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical features, test results, and outcomes of COVID-19 patients after discharge. METHODS: 149 COVID-19 patients with follow-up data after discharge were included. Post-hospitalization data related to clinical features and outcomes were obtained by following the patients up to 6 weeks. RESULTS: The COVID-19 patients were followed for a median of 28.0 days (range of 22 days to 42 days) after discharge from hospital. At the end of follow-up, four patients (2.7%) still had cough. The proportions of leukopenia and lymphopenia were 7.4% and 4.7%, respectively. The proportions of ALT, AST, and Cr abnormalities were 26.2%, 6.0%, and 0%, respectively. Abnormal chest CT was detected in 94 (63.1%) patients, including 14 (9.4%) unilateral pneumonia and 80 (53.7%) bilateral pneumonia. However, the proportion of chest CT abnormality significantly decreased compared to that at the time of admission. CONCLUSIONS: One month after discharge, few patients with COVID-19 had clinical symptoms;however, a substantial proportion of COVID-19 patients harbored abnormal laboratory and radiological examinations. Moderately long-term medical follow-up would justifiably benefit COVID-19 patients after discharge.
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Introduction: Cardiovascular comorbidities are a major risk factor in patients infected with SARSCoV-2. SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein binds to host cell surface ACE2 to gain entry. ACE2 is subsequently downregulated by internalisation. We hypothesise that an ACE2 knockdown system in beating human embryonic stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hESC-CMs) will recapitulate the downregulation of ACE2, and reduce the ability of a SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein pseudotyped virus to infect these clinically relevant cells. Method: ACE2 was knocked down (KD) with CRISPR/Cas9 in hESCs, before differentiating to hESC-CMs and sub-culturing in 96 well plates. Sanger sequencing confirmed amino acid changes. Catalytic ACE2 activity was measured by mass spectrometry in wild-type versus KD by conversion of apelin-13 to apelin-12 in hESC-CMs supernatant. ACE2 activity was also measured by fluorescent substrate assay. Pseudotyped virus infection was visualised by high content screening in ACE2 KD versus wild-type (n=4). All data are mean±SEM. Results: Sequencing revealed two substitutions at ACE2 , and three deletions at ACE2 . This reduced ACE2 catalytic activity by ∼60-70% by apelin-12 accumulation using mass spectrometry (Fig 1a), and fluorescent assay. Furthermore, KD reduced infection of hESC-CMs by pseudotyped virus to 27.3±9.6% of the cell population versus 74.8±4.7% for wild-type (Fig 1b,c). This is consistent with our previous data, showing DX600 (peptidic inhibitor of ACE2 catalytic site) significantly reduced infection of wild-type hESC-CMs to 20.5±6.5%. Conclusions: In conclusion, we generated a functional ACE2 knockdown in a beating cardiomyocyte cell model. Both the catalytic activity and the ability to bind SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein of ACE2 reduced, importantly indicating ACE2 is rate limiting for infection. We aim to use this system to further explore the cardiovascular consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection and subsequent downregulation of ACE2.
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Master protocol is a novel and more efficient design for clinical trial research than the traditional clinical trials. Usually a master protocol includes several sub-protocols which could investigate treatment effects of a single drug on several diseases or multiple drugs targeting a single disorder. This review compared master protocol with traditional trials in terms of the research design principle, application, and procedure flow as well as advantages and limitations. We also presented some examples of ongoing applications of master protocol designs including treatment of COVID-19 related illness. Finally, we discussed about potential implementation of master protocol in China especially under the COVID-19 pandemic with an evaluation on the relevant opportunities and challenges. © 2021, Chinese Journal of New Drugs Co. Ltd. All right reserved.
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Herein is described the development of a large-scale manufacturing process for molnupiravir, an orally dosed antiviral that was recently demonstrated to be efficacious for the treatment of patients with COVID-19. The yield, robustness, and efficiency of each of the five steps were improved, ultimately culminating in a 1.6-fold improvement in overall yield and a dramatic increase in the overall throughput compared to the baseline process.
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OBJECTIVE: The investigate the inhibitory effects of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) monomer salvianolic acid B (Sal-B) and its magnesium salt Salvia Miltiorrhiza Polyphenolate Injection (ZDDY) against SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro and explore the molecular mechanism. OBJECTIVE: The anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity of Sal-B and ZDDY was assessed using the authentic and pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 infection assay. The antiviral targets of Sal-B were identified by molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation. Circular dichroism spectroscopy was used to examine the structural characteristics of HR1 and HR2 regions of SARS-CoV-2 S protein, and the S protein-mediated cell-cell fusion assay was used to evaluate the effect of Sal-B on virus-cell membrane fusion. Flow cytometry was carried out to analyze the effect of Sal-B on the binding of SARS-CoV-2 RBD to hACE2 receptor. OBJECTIVE: The median effective concentrations (EC50) of Sal-B and ZDDY against SARSCoV-2 infection in Vero-E6 cells were 55.47 µmol/L and 36.07 µg/mL, respectively. Both Sal-B and ZDDY successfully inhibited the entry of SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus into the cells that stably expressed human ACE2 (ACE2/293T), with half maximal inhibitory concentrations (IC50) of 1.69 µmol/L and 24.81 µg/mL, respectively. Sal-B showed a binding affinity of -8.2 kcal/mol to the 6-helix bundle (6-HB) of SARS-CoV-2 S protein. Molecular dynamics simulation showed stable binding between Sal-B and the 6-HB of SARS-CoV-2 S protein at the predicted binding site. Sal-B disturbed the formation of the secondary structure of 6-HB in HR1P/HR2P mixture, resulting in a significantly lowered α-helicity (P < 0.05). Sal-B dose-dependently inhibited SARS-CoV-2 S protein-mediated cell-cell fusion, with an IC50 of 3.33 µmol/L. Sal-B showed no effect on RBD-Fc protein binding to the ACE2 receptor. OBJECTIVE: Sal-B and its magnesium salt ZDDY can inhibit the entry of SARS-CoV-2 in Vero-E6 cells in vitro by blocking SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-mediated virus-cell membrane fusion.