ABSTRACT
As important combat platforms, large warships have the characteristics of compact internal space and dense personnel. Once infectious diseases occur, they are very easy to spread. Therefore, it is very important to select suitable forecasting models for infectious diseases in this environment. This paper introduces 4 classic dynamics models of infectious diseases, summarizes various kinds of compartmental models and their key characteristics, and discusses several common practical simulation requirements, helping relevant health personnel to cope with the challenges in health and epidemic prevention such as the prevention and control of coronavirus disease 2019.Copyright © 2022, Second Military Medical University Press. All rights reserved.
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The outbreak of multiple disaster sites during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has presented challenges due to varying access time intensity, population density, and medical resources at each site. To address these issues, this study focuses on 13 districts and counties in Wuhan, China. The importance of each research area is analyzed using the improved PageRank and TOPSIS algorithms to determine the optimal site selection plan. Additionally, a particle swarm algorithm is used to construct an emergency material dispatching model that targets both distribution and site selection costs to solve the multi-distribution center dispatching problem. The results suggest that constructing 10 distribution centers can satisfy the demand for epidemic prevention and control in Wuhan city while saving costs associated with site selection and material distribution. Compared to the previous optimal solution, the distribution and site selection costs under the optimal solution decreased by 27.9% and 17.82%, respectively. This approach can serve as a basis for dispatching emergency materials during public health emergencies.
ABSTRACT
The outbreak of multiple disaster sites during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has presented challenges due to varying access time intensity, population density, and medical resources at each site. To address these issues, this study focuses on 13 districts and counties in Wuhan, China. The importance of each research area is analyzed using the improved PageRank and TOPSIS algorithms to determine the optimal site selection plan. Additionally, a particle swarm algorithm is used to construct an emergency material dispatching model that targets both distribution and site selection costs to solve the multi-distribution center dispatching problem. The results suggest that constructing 10 distribution centers can satisfy the demand for epidemic prevention and control in Wuhan city while saving costs associated with site selection and material distribution. Compared to the previous optimal solution, the distribution and site selection costs under the optimal solution decreased by 27.9% and 17.82%, respectively. This approach can serve as a basis for dispatching emergency materials during public health emergencies. © 2023 by the authors.
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Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fangcang shelter hospitals have been built and operated in several cities, and have played a huge role in epidemic prevention and control. How to use medical resources effectively in order to maximize epidemic prevention and control is a big challenge that the government should address. In this paper, a two-stage infectious disease model was developed to analyze the role of Fangcang shelter hospitals in epidemic prevention and control, and examine the impact of medical resources allocation on epidemic prevention and control. Our model suggested that the Fangcang shelter hospital could effectively control the rapid spread of the epidemic, and for a very large city with a population of about 10 million and a relative shortage of medical resources, the model predicted that the final number of confirmed cases could be only 3.4% of the total population in the best case scenario. The paper further discusses the optimal solutions regarding medical resource allocation when medical resources are either limited or abundant. The results show that the optimal allocation ratio of resources between designated hospitals and Fangcang shelter hospitals varies with the amount of additional resources. When resources are relatively sufficient, the upper limit of the proportion of makeshift hospitals is about 91%, while the lower limit decreases with the increase in resources. Meanwhile, there is a negative correlation between the intensity of medical work and the proportion of distribution. Our work deepens our understanding of the role of Fangcang shelter hospitals in the pandemic and provides a reference for feasible strategies by which to contain the pandemic.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Humans , COVID-19/epidemiology , SARS-CoV-2 , Pandemics/prevention & control , Hospitals, Special , Mobile Health Units , China/epidemiologyABSTRACT
To investigate the relationship among post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), posttraumatic growth (PTG), social support, and coping style of university student volunteers in the prevention and control of the coronavirus in 2020, a total of 2,990 university student volunteers (students who are enrolled in a university and involved in volunteer activities) from 20 universities in Sichuan Province participated in the prevention and control of the epidemic were investigated when March 20-31, 2020 when the coronavirus first occurred using the post-traumatic stress disorder questionnaire, posttraumatic growth questionnaire, university student social support questionnaire and coping style questionnaire. The results showed that (1) 7.06% of university student volunteers had some degree of PTSD symptoms (the total PCL-C score was 38-49), and 2.88% had obvious PTSD symptoms, (2) PTSD level of university student volunteers was significantly positively correlated with negative coping style, and significantly negatively correlated with social support and positive coping style; on the contrary, the PTG level is significantly positively correlated with social support and positive coping styles, and (3) Positive coping style plays a partial mediating role in the influence of social support on PTG; in the influence of social support on PTSD, the mediating effect of positive or negative coping style was not significant. These results show that in the prevention and control of the coronavirus, the positive coping style and social support of university student volunteers can positively predict the PTG level of them, while the negative coping style can positively predict the severity of their PTSD symptoms. Among them, a positive coping style plays a partial mediating role in the influence of social support on the PTG level.
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Based on big data on migration from the Baidu Map platform, this paper divides China's epidemic prevention and control efforts into four stages. Then, the characteristics and spatial patterns of daily population flows are studied by social network analysis. Subsequently, the exponential random graph model is used to investigate the influence of dynamic characteristics of changes in the spatial structure of the interprovincial population flow network during the postepidemic period. The spatial structure of the population flow network before, during, and after the epidemic shows significantly different characteristics, with epidemic prevention and control measures playing a significant role in restricting population flows. Interprovincial population flows have a certain degree of transmissibility, but two-way flows are not obvious. In addition, for regions with a larger resident population and a higher unemployment rate, a larger population tends to flow out. For regions with higher per capita GDP, the secondary and tertiary industries account for a relatively larger proportion, and the public environment is better. The more attractive a region is to the population, the higher is the tendency towards population inflows. Moreover, the level of medical care and epidemic prevention and control have become the main influencing factors of population movement.
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Face masks are recommended to reduce the transmission of many viruses, especially SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, the automatic detection of whether there is a mask on the face, what type of mask is worn, and how it is worn is an important research topic. In this work, the use of thermal imaging was considered to analyze the possibility of detecting (localizing) a mask on the face, as well as to check whether it is possible to classify the type of mask on the face. The previously proposed dataset of thermal images was extended and annotated with the description of a type of mask and a location of a mask within a face. Different deep learning models were adapted. The best model for face mask detection turned out to be the Yolov5 model in the "nano" version, reaching mAP higher than 97% and precision of about 95%. High accuracy was also obtained for mask type classification. The best results were obtained for the convolutional neural network model built on an autoencoder initially trained in the thermal image reconstruction problem. The pretrained encoder was used to train a classifier which achieved an accuracy of 91%.
ABSTRACT
As important combat platforms, large warships have the characteristics of compact internal space and dense personnel. Once infectious diseases occur, they are very easy to spread. Therefore, it is very important to select suitable forecasting models for infectious diseases in this environment. This paper introduces 4 classic dynamics models of infectious diseases, summarizes various kinds of compartmental models and their key characteristics, and discusses several common practical simulation requirements, helping relevant health personnel to cope with the challenges in health and epidemic prevention such as the prevention and control of coronavirus disease 2019.Copyright © 2022, Second Military Medical University Press. All rights reserved.
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The COVID-19 epidemic is running at a high level globally, affecting all aspects of society, and medical education is no exception. With the rapid development of medical science, continuing medical education is an important way for medical workers to receive lifelong education. Meanwhile, attending continuing medical education is an inevitable requirement to ensure clinical ability. Under the background of normalization of epidemic prevention and control and the new situation of medical development, the management of continuing medical education in hospitals must follow the current situation and keep pace with the times. Therefore, the Internet support system to continuing education has emerged. This study used PDSA method to explore the construction of the regional center of continuing medical education through Internet under the background of normalization of epidemic prevention and control, aiming to promote the integration of medical education resources under the new situation, expand the learning channels of medical staff, and improve the level of medical education and teaching. © 2022 IEEE.
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PurposeDecision-making problems in emergency plan selection for epidemic prevention and control (EPAC) are generally characterized by risky and uncertainty due to multiple possible emergency states and vagueness of decision information. In the process of emergency plan selection for EPAC, it is necessary to consider several obvious features, i.e. different states of epidemics, dynamic evolvement process of epidemics and decision-makers' (DMs') psychological factors such as risk preference and loss aversion.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, a novel decision-making method based on cumulative prospect theory (CPT) is proposed to solve emergency plan selection of an epidemic problem, which is generally regarded as hybrid-information multi-attribute decision-making (HI-MADM) problems in major epidemics. Initially, considering the psychological factors of DMs, the expectations of DMs are chosen as reference points to normalize the expectation vectors and decision information with three different formats. Subsequently, the matrix of gains and losses is established according to the reference points. Furthermore, the prospect value of each alternative is obtained and the comprehensive prospect values of alternatives under different states are calculated. Accordingly, the ranking of alternatives can be obtained.FindingsThe validity and robustness of the proposed method are demonstrated by a case calculation of emergency plan selection. Meanwhile, sensitivity analysis and comparison analysis with fuzzy similarity to ideal solution (FTOPSIS) method and TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for interactive and MADM) method illustrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.Originality/valueAn emergency plan selection method is proposed for EPAC based on CPT, taking into account the psychological factors of DMs.HighlightsThis paper proposes a new CPT-based EDM method for EPAC under a major epidemic considering the psychological factorsof DMs, such as risk preference, loss aversion and so on.The authors' work gives approaches of normalization, comparison and distance measurement for dealing with the integration of three hybrid formats of attributes.This article gives some guidance, which contributes to solve the problems of risk-based hybrid multi-attribute EDM.The authors illustrate the advantages of the proposed method by a sensitivity analysis and comparison analysis with existing FTOPSIS method and TODIM method.
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Purpose: By serving and providing a guide for other regional places, this study aims to advance and guide the epidemic prevention and control methods, and practices and strengthen people's ability to respond to COVID-19 and other future potential public health risks. Design/methodology/approach: A comparative analysis was conducted that the COVID-19 epidemic development trend and prevention and control effects both in Beijing and Shanghai. In fact, regarding the COVID-19 policy and strategic areas, the differences between governmental, social, and professional management were discussed and explored. To prevent and be ready for potential pandemics, experience and knowledge were used and summarized. Findings: The strong attack of the Omicron variant in early 2022 has posed challenges to epidemic prevention and control practices in many Chinese cities. Shanghai, which had achieved relatively good performance in the fight against the epidemic, has exposed limitations in its epidemic prevention and control system in the face of Omicron. In fact, the city of Beijing has undertaken prompt and severe lockdown measures and achieved rather good results in epidemic prevention and control because of learning from Shanghai's experience and lessons; adhering to the overall concept of "dynamic clearing," implementing precise prevention and monitoring, enhancing community control, and making emergency plans and preparations. All these actions and measures are still essential in the shift from pandemic response to pandemic control. Research limitations/implications: Different places have introduced different urgent policies to control the spread of the pandemic. Strategies to control COVID-19 have often been based on preliminary and limited data and have tended to be slow to evolve as new evidence emerges. Hence, the effects of these anti-epidemic policies need to be further tested.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Humans , COVID-19/epidemiology , COVID-19/prevention & control , SARS-CoV-2 , Beijing/epidemiology , Communicable Disease Control/methods , China/epidemiology , Pandemics/prevention & controlABSTRACT
We live in a world of borders, which influence our perception and movement. Traditional mapping techniques show limitations as borders have become shifting and complex, and borders' multi-scale and multi-spatial properties have been strengthened significantly. To fill the knowledge gap, we explored the multi-spatiality of borders and provided approaches for border symbol design and visualization by taking the coronavirus-hit border city, Ruili, China, as an example. This work could shed light on multi-spatial geographic visualization and policy-making.
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To stop the COVID-19 spread, artificial intelligence and new technologies are also actively participating in the battle. For fighting against the virus, disinfection is one of the effective ways to block the spread of the virus. According to the preliminary market research, only in the large distribution centers is the operator-controlled machine disinfection, at present most of the small and medium-sized express logistics stations are through human resources to carry out disinfection, and sorting of express packages, so the dependence on human costs, medical resources can be imagined. To this end, we designed ultrasonic atomization disinfection, sorting, and whole load notification integrated machine based on deep learning [1] and Internet of Things [2] technology to cope with the trend of normalization and recurrence of the epidemic. After testing logistics with different labels, the experimental results show that the system can effectively distinguish different labels and carry out a series of operations such as disinfection, sorting, and notification of full load, which can be put into production and contribute to epidemic prevention work. © 2023 IEEE.
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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of the Perceptions of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) questionnaire and the Information System Success Questionnaire on students when using the school's COVID-19 epidemic prevention website. The study is aimed toward analyzing both questionnaires as well as evaluating an epidemic prevention website.Design/methodology/approachThe school's COVID-19 prevention website and two questionnaires (Perceptions of COVID-19 and the Information System Success Questionnaire) are examined in order to investigate 73 students' COVID-19 perceptions. An open-ended question was used as the qualitative data to support quantitative data and evaluate a university's COVID-19 epidemic prevention website from a southern university in Taiwan.FindingsThe findings indicated that most students evaluated the school's COVID-19 website positively and were satisfied. In the open-ended questions, the majority of students rated the quality of the system positively and the need to fix some defects. Students have different COVID-19 perceptions and social distance compliance based on their current situations.Practical implicationsThis study provides researchers and website developers a broader understanding of the construction of the school's COVID-19 prevention website and a better understanding of student's COVID-19 perceptions.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study examining a school's epidemic prevention website, which is measured by the Information Success Questionnaire and the Perceptions of COVID-19 Questionnaire for college students.
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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has posed a serious threat to international public health. The SARS-COV-2 gene continues to mutate in COVID-19 outbreaks. Mutation mainly manifests in 3 forms: point mutation, gene recombination and epigenetic modification. Viral mutations are driven by multiple factors, with mutation rates modulated at 3 levels, the nature of virus, host-virus interactions and natural selection. Therefore, it is particularly important to strengthen the monitoring of the global novel coronavirus genome and the protection of immunosuppressed populations. In the early stage of virus evolution, the mutant strains exhibit greater transmissibility and less virulence than the wild-type strain, although 5 variants of concern (VOCs) showed different stability, transmission capacity, adaptability and pathogenicity. So physical interventions need to be further strengthened. As herd immunity is established, novel mutant strains tend to mutate against vaccines and antibodies. In that case, VOCs, especially the prevailing Omicron variant, bring challenges to the prevention and control of COVID-19 worldwide. The existing and potential prevention, diagnosis and treatment approaches for COVID-19 were summarized. In the vaccination part, the protective efficacy of COVID-19 vaccine against VOCs and the factors influencing the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccine were analyzed. In the detection part, the detection methods based on nucleic acid, antigen and antibody were summarized in order to satisfy the requirements for point-of-care testing and timely recognition of novel variants. And in the treatment part, the potential therapeutic drugs and targets of SARS-CoV-2 were summarized. Drug targets are generally divided into extracellular targets and intracellular targets. In general, this review proposes possible countermeasures by analyzing the impact of mutations on global epidemic prevention and control, hoping to provide theoretical basis for possible large-scale epidemic prevention and control in the future. © 2022 Institute of Biophysics,Chinese Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To investigate the factors affecting quality of life in healthcare providers who care for patients with COVID-19. BACKGROUND: Healthcare providers caring for COVID-19 patients during the pandemic suffered a deterioration in their quality of life. Several studies have explored their psychological impact of working with COVID patients, but none have examined the causes of this deterioration. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study. METHODS: In the current study, the authors investigated the factors affecting quality of life in 293 healthcare providers recruited from a medical centre in northern Taiwan who had recently cared for patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 by analysing their responses to an online self-report questionnaire, using bivariate correlations and structural equation modelling. Reporting of this research adheres to the STROBE guideline. RESULTS: The study identified an important sequence of factors that mediated the effects of perceived success of epidemic prevention policies, family relations problems and education level on quality of life in a sample of healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients. The mediators were use of approach-oriented coping strategies and current mental health status. Specifically, use of approach-oriented coping strategies was found to directly cause improved quality of life and indirectly cause improved mental health, whereas use of avoidant coping strategies was found to directly cause worsening of mental health. Poor mental health predicted poor quality of life. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that implementation of sound epidemic prevention policies that promote adoption of approach-oriented coping behaviour should lead to a better quality of life in the future for healthcare providers working in challenging circumstances. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Assessment of these policies as well as the providers' family relations are necessary first steps to improving the success of approach-oriented coping behaviour in this population, which in turn can improve their mental health and quality of life. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: Neither patients nor members of the public were involved in the design or execution of the study.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Humans , COVID-19/epidemiology , Quality of Life , Cross-Sectional Studies , Health Personnel/psychology , PandemicsABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the limitations of urban public health emergency response capabilities. Taking Wuhan as an example, this study used breakpoint regression, kernel density analysis, overlay analysis, and accessibility analysis from Stata and ArcGIS, and divided epidemic prevention facilities into the basic epidemic prevention facilities (hospitals), and the emergency epidemic prevention facilities (mobile cabin hospitals) for further analysis. The results showed that over 70% of the basic epidemic prevention facilities in Wuhan were located in high density population areas. On the contrary, most of the emergency epidemic prevention facilities were located in low density population areas. The local treatment effect of the implementation of the emergency epidemic prevention facility policy is about 1, indicating that there was a significant impact of emergency epidemic prevention facilities on outbreak control, which passed the bandwidth test. What's more, the analysis of the accessibility of residential points revealed that more than 67.3% of people from the residential points could arrive at the epidemic prevention facilities within 15 min, and only 0.1% of them took more than 20 min to arrive. Therefore, the epidemic prevention facilities can effectively curb the spread of the epidemic, and people from residential areas can quickly get there. This study summarized the spatial characteristics of epidemic prevention facilities in Wuhan and analyzed the importance of them, thus providing a new perspective for future research on upgrading the city's comprehensive disaster prevention system.
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COVID-19 , Humans , COVID-19/epidemiology , COVID-19/prevention & control , Cities , Pandemics , Disease Outbreaks/prevention & control , HospitalsABSTRACT
The COVID-19 has had a profound impact on human society, the elderly, as a vulnerable group, are the most affected. Based on two cases of disease narrative collected by the department of neurology of a hospital in Guiyang, this paper analyzed the shortcomings of elderly care in the context of epidemic prevention and control. The overall health information literacy of the elderly was low, which made it difficult to obtain correct epidemic related information. The lifestyle of the elderly has changed during the epidemic prevention and control stag. The long time isolation at home has reduced their constitution and made them prone to illness, thus affecting the quality of healthy elderly care. In this stage, the psychological burden of the middle-aged and elderly people has been increasing, which reduced the life satisfaction and subjective well-being of the elderly, and increased the risk of depression. In view of these outstanding problems, this paper proposed corresponding measures, aiming to improve the quality of life and physical and mental health of the elderly during the epidemic prevention and control stage, and provide reference for realizing healthy aging in China. © 2023, Editorial department of Chinese Medical Ethics. All rights reserved.
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The wind environment in residential areas can exert a direct or indirect influence on the spread of epidemics, with some scholars paying particular attention to the epidemic prevention and control of residential areas from the perspective of wind environments. As a result, it is urgent to re-examine the epidemic prevention response of residential spaces. Taking high-rise residential areas in Xi'an as an example, the article defines the air flow field area based on on-site wind environment measurements, crowd behavior annotation, and CFD simulation. Using the double-effect superposition of crowd behavior and risk space, the paper undertook a multiple identification strategy of epidemic prevention space. The identification methods and management and control strategies of epidemic prevention in high-rise residential areas are proposed. Additionally, the living environment of residential areas is optimized, and a healthy residential space is created. The transformation from concept and calls for action to space implementation is made to provide a reference for improving the space management and control capabilities in high-rise residential areas in China. The results of this study can be used as a guideline for future residential planning and design from the perspective of preventing airborne diseases.
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Several studies have shown that fatigue driving is one of the important causes of public transport safety accidents. With the outbreak of the COVID-19, the wearing of masks by public transport drivers presents new challenges for computer-based visual fatigue detection. In order to achieve the goal of accurately capturing the landmark information of the face even when the face is occluded by a large area, we adopt the DNN-based face detection method which has the highest accuracy and the best occlusion resistance. When the driver's face is blocked, the landmark information of the blocked face can be accurately detected by using our optimized face landmark detector. The accuracy rate of landmark recognition can reach 97.80%. On this basis, we calculate the driver's eye information, mouth information and the driver's head deflection angle information in real time as the judgment indicators of the degree of fatigue to comprehensively evaluate the driver's fatigue state. And use mathematical methods to fuse indicators in real time, classify the driver's fatigue state according to the value of the fusion indicators, and adopt different early warning methods for different levels of fatigue. In addition, in order to further improve the accuracy of the detection results and exclude the influence of other facial behaviors on our fatigue judgment indicators, we propose a kinetic energy calculation formula for facial organs based on the improved optical flow method. According to the different kinetic energy of facial organs in different states, which can accurately distinguish the different behaviors of the same facial organs such as blinking and closing eyes, yawning and speaking, which significantly increases the robustness and generalization ability of the detection program. The final experimental results show that the correct rate of the method for determining the degree of fatigue of the driver and passengers can reach 98.40% and 92.30% respectively when the driver does not wear a mask or wears a mask. © 2022 IEEE.