IoT enabled Covid Standard Operating Procedure system

COVID-19, is caused by the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through direct or indirect contact with infected people though respiratory droplets has transitioned from a pandemic to an endemic but is still regarded as active by WHO. Restrictions and lockdowns were lifted as the situation became endemic, but the previous measures had to be kept in place. By developing a module that includes temperature monitoring, face mask detection, a non-contact sanitizer dispenser, and door automation that operates based on the number of individuals inside a closed area in order to maintain social distance, our project aims to incorporate these precautions into our everyday language. As a part of making the new normal easily adaptable, we also introduce a webpagebased reservation system, which wm essentially display the current count and also help in reducing the waiting periods. © 2023 IEEE.

Technology-Driven Implementation of Smart Entrances in Public Places during the COVID-19

This research proposes a smart entrance system to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic in public places. The system can help automate standard operating procedures (SOPs) for checking. The paper focuses on exploring the problem context related to the COVID-19 SOPs for public places. The research on technologies involves using thermal cameras, fingerprint recognition, face recognition, iris recognition, object detection and cloud computing. These technologies can be integrated to provide a more versatile and effective solution. The technological solutions proposed by contemporary researchers are also critically analysed by investigating their advantages and disadvantages. © 2023 IEEE.

Knowledge, Adherence, and the Lived Experiences of Refugees in COVID-19

Introduction and Background. The extent to which refugee communities were aware of the COVID-19 pandemic and adhered to related preventive measures remained largely unknown at its onset. This research was conducted in two settings: among urban refugees in Kampala's informal settlements and refugees in established rural settlements. Objectives. The study assessed pre-post knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) among refugees;explored local perception of risk or exposure;and analysed implementation of Uganda's national response to determine feasibility and adherence. Our study also identified existing systems in the COVID-19 response and determined their efficacy. Methodologically, this was a mixed-method cross-sectional study using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. It was conducted among 2093 participants in eleven (11) refugee settlements located within three (3) regions and hosting up to five (5) different nationalities. The urban study site was Kisenyi in Kampala, Central Uganda;the rural sites were Kyaka II in South Western Uganda and Adjumani in West Nile. Methods included a community and facility survey, interviews, focus group discussions, and observations. The study's quantitative arm used two-staged cluster sampling, and research instruments were checked for reliability using Cronbach's Alpha. T-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and multivariable linear regression were applied to analyse the data in SPSS version 22. Statistical significance was assumed at p < 0.05. Qualitative interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, coded, and thematically analysed in line with study objectives. This chapter presents empirical data from the study's qualitative arm. Findings. Refugee communities were generally aware of COVID-19 and the related preventive measures. Adherence to preventive guidelines was high in the first 12 weeks of the pandemic outbreak in Uganda;however, this behaviour steadily declined after that, and high-risk behaviour was reported alongside heightened vulnerability and breakdown of support systems. Community leadership and the social work professions were largely underutilised in Uganda's mainstream COVID response although they could have helped increase and sustain adherence to preventive guidelines and in light of limited resources. Conclusion and Recommendations. Community adherence to a known threat is contingent on not only recognising but also addressing key social, economic, political, and other determinants. Resource-limited settings with increasing COVID-19 cases such as Uganda will need to leverage a holistic approach to emergency response that effectively engages local leadership and crucial professions such as social work to support those in the biomedical field. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Saving oxygen when it was most needed.

Background: Oxygen is one of the most commonly prescribed drugs across the globe. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has put enormous burden on hospital infrastructure and oxygen demand. There is lack of knowledge among healthcare workers regarding optimal utilization of oxygen delivery devices, target oxygen saturations and adequate oxygen prescription. A quality improvement project was designed to optimize the oxygen usage in wards. Methods: A core team comprising one each of consultant, senior resident, junior resident and nursing officer was formed. Fish bone analysis was done to find deficiencies in the existing system and strategy was planned to overcome these deficiencies. The key intervention included education and training of staff, Formulation of Standard Operating Procedures, use of lower target oxygen saturation and use of oxygen concentrators. Results: The project was carried out for a very short period of 5 days, and a total of 180,000 liters of oxygen was saved. The use of oxygen concentrators increased from zero to 9.5% and thus reducing the load on central oxygen supply. Conclusion: The proper training and sensitization of health care workers can help in saving oxygen, which further helps in saving precious human life.

Maintaining Prehospital Intubation Success with COVID-19 Personal Protective Precautions.

BACKGROUND: Tracheal intubation is a high-risk intervention for exposure to airborne infective pathogens, including the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). During the recent pandemic, personal protective equipment (PPE) was essential to protect staff during intubation but is recognized to make the practical conduct of anesthesia and intubation more difficult. In the early phase of the coronavirus pandemic, some simple alterations were made to the emergency anesthesia standard operating procedure (SOP) of a prehospital critical care service to attempt to maintain high intubation success rates despite the challenges posed by wearing PPE. This retrospective observational cohort study aims to compare first-pass intubation success rates before and after the introduction of PPE and an altered SOP. METHODOLOGY: A retrospective observational cohort study was conducted from January 1, 2019 through August 30, 2021. The retrospective analysis used prospectively collected data using prehospital electronic patient records. Anonymized data were held in Excel (v16.54) and analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics (v28). Patient inclusion criteria were those of all ages who received a primary tracheal intubation attempt outside the hospital by critical care teams. March 27, 2020 was the date from which the SOP changed to mandatory COVID-19 SOP including Level 3 PPE - this date is used to separate the cohort groups. RESULTS: Data were analyzed from 1,266 patients who received primary intubations by the service. The overall first-pass intubation success rate was 89.7% and the overall intubation success rate was 99.9%. There was no statistically significant difference in first-pass success rate between the two groups: 90.3% in the pre-COVID-19 group (n = 546) and 89.3% in the COVID-19 group (n = 720); Pearson chi-square 0.329; P = .566. In addition, there was no statistical difference in overall intubation success rate between groups: 99.8% in the pre-COVID-19 group and 100.0% in the COVID-19 group; Pearson chi-square 1.32; P = .251.Non-drug-assisted intubations were more than twice as likely to require multiple attempts in both the pre-COVID-19 group (n = 546; OR = 2.15; 95% CI, 1.19-3.90; P = .01) and in the COVID-19 group (n = 720; OR = 2.5; 95% CI, 1.5-4.1; P = <.001). CONCLUSION: This study presents simple changes to a prehospital intubation SOP in response to COVID-19 which included mandatory use of PPE, the first intubator always being the most experienced clinician, and routine first use of video laryngoscopy (VL). These changes allowed protection of the clinical team while successfully maintaining the first-pass and overall success rates for prehospital tracheal intubation.

Outcomes of Standard Operating Procedures Instituted for Non-COVID Outpatient Department During COVID-19 Pandemic in Rural India.

Introduction: COVID-19 has emerged as a major health care problem during 2020. The risk of infection and transmission led to imposition of a severe lockdown by the government. The diversion of health care machinery towards the control of transmission, treatment of the infected individuals led to a compromise in delivery of care towards non-COVID ailments. This is truer in rural and unapproachable areas where the health facilities were already in jeopardy. Study Design: A prospective observational study was conducted from May 2020 to November 2020 at PGIMER satellite center, Sangrur. Methods: Standard operating procedures (SOP) were instituted for physical consultation during the COVID-19 pandemic at PGIMER satellite center, Sangrur, a branch of PGIMER, Chandigarh. These were approved by the committee constituted for this purpose. The effectiveness of these SOPs was reported as percentage of healthcare workers who contracted infection for non-COVID OPD. Results: A total of 9963 patients attended the Out Patient Department (OPD). Male to female ratio of the patients was 1.2:1. Maximum (6141) consultations were sought for general physician followed by ophthalmologist (1464). Majority of the consultation were for benign non-communicable disorders. Seventy patients who visited the OPD were referred for COVID-19 testing as they had symptoms of infection. A total of 5 (3.8%) incidents of COVID-19 infection were reported among the healthcare workers at the center. Conclusions: The SOPs proved effective in the delivery of physical care with low occupational hazard to the healthcare workers (HCW).

Real-time Face Mask Types Detection to Monitor Standard Operating Procedure Compliance Using You Only Look Once-based Framework

Real-time face mask types detection using image processing and deep learning model had seen enormous promise in real-world applications. Due to the spread of Covid-19, the practice of wearing face masks in public areas is used to safeguard people from the virus. However, to manually detect the type of face masks used can be difficult, hence this project aims to design and develop a real-time face mask detection model that can detect types of face masks worn by an individual which include 1) surgical masks, 2) KF94, 3) N95, 4) cloth or 5) double-masking. It could also identify if an individual is wearing the face masks incorrectly. This project is developed using the modified waterfall methodology. There are four phases in the methodology: (i) Requirement Analysis, (ii) Design, (iii) Implementation, and (iv) Testing. The data used for training and testing in this project was collected from available images on the internet. The data were pre-processed to remove any unwanted images and each image is then annotated with appropriate classes. The detection model was built using the You Only Look Once version 3 (YOLOv3) framework. © 2022 IEEE.

Zika, Nipah and Kala-azar: Emerging lethal infectious diseases amid COVID-19 as an escalating public health threat in South India.

As of 6 June 2022, a sum 25,782 of active cases and 524,701 deaths due to Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) have been recorded in India. Stewing in the flares of the pandemic, Kerala is entwined in the wrath of multiple emerging infectious diseases. India, a home to 1.3 billion people, recently faced a devastating second wave of COVID-19 during May of 2021, with a ruckus of chronic shortage of medicine, oxygen supplies, ventilators, besides, being challenged by secondary infections and chronic health ailments. The state of Kerala, alone contributes to 50% COVID-19 caseload, besides, recent simultaneous outbreaks of Zika Virus Disease (ZVD), Nipah Virus Disease (NiVD) and Kala-azar (black fever) on July 8, September 5 and 8, 2021 respectively. Syndemicity and a high case fatality rates of these highly contagious diseases coupled with post infection sequelae, overwhelm the already fragile healthcare system. Thus, these lethal infectious diseases along with an anticipated third wave of COVID-19 pose a serious public health threat in and around South India. With this narrative review, we aim to discuss the challenges that the emergence of intersecting outbreaks of Zika, Nipah, Kala-azar presents with, in the nation, amidst the global pandemic of COVID-19 and provide recommendations so as to help alleviate the situation. The syndemicity of COVID-19 with other infectious diseases, calls for adequate surveillance and monitoring of diseases' outbreaks. To avoid the worst situations like pandemic, the health ministry, public and private health stakeholders in India should strengthen the public healthcare delivery system and providence of quick medical facilities to control the rate of mortality and morbidity during outbreaks.

CAPIRS: COVID-19-Based Application Programming Interface Recommendation System for the Developers

Context: From the past few years, Application Programming Interface (API) is widely used for mobile- and web-based application developments. Software developers can integrate third-party services into their projects to achieve their development goals efficiently using APIs;however, with the rapid increase in the number of APIs, the manual selection of Mashup-oriented API is becoming more difficult for the developer. Objective: In the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone wants an update about the latest Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and the latest information on COVID-19. Additionally, a software developer wants to develop an application that provides the SOPs and latest information of COVID-19;a developer can add these functionalities into an application using COVID-19-based APIs. Moreover, the current work aims at proposing a COVID-19-based API recommendation system for the developers. Method: In this study, we propose a COVID-19-based API recommendation system for developers. The recommendation system takes a developer query as input and recommends top-3 APIs and supported features, which help the developer during software development. Furthermore, the proposed COVID-19-based API recommendation system ensures the maximum participation of the developers by validating the recommended APIs and recommendation system from the expert developers using research questionnaires. Results: Additionally, the proposed COVID-19-based API recommendation system's output is validated by expert developers and evaluated on 120 expert developers' queries. In addition, experiment results show that single value decomposition achieves better prediction. Conclusion: We conclude that it is significantly important to recommend APIs along with supported features to the developer for project development, and future work is needed to take more developer's queries also to build Integrated Development Environment for the developers. © 2022 World Scientific Publishing Co.

Management of Medical Record Unit Services for Covid-19 Patients in Type C Hospitals: A Study of Legal Aspects

Background: The impact of the pandemic on medical record health service procedures has induced significant changes. The duplication of Covid-19 patient numbers in the patient medical record unit is an important concern. This study aims to analyze the legal aspects of managing medical record services during the Covid-19 pandemic in hospitals. Methods: This type of research is descriptive and quantitative with a cross-sectional approach. The key informants are 15 registration and medical record unit officers, using online interview techniques, employed in three hospitals in Semarang with a focus on group discussions. The object of research includes the management of medical records and service standards for Covid-19 patients as regulations in the medical record unit of the Semarang city general hospital. Results: Policies and standards for medical record services for Covid-19 patients, have not been adjusted to the provisions based on Circular Letter Number HM.01.01/001/III/2020 concerning procedures for work in situations of the Covid-19 outbreak. The medical record service for Covid-19 patients still applies paper-based or semi-electronic medical records so that errors can occur. This can cause legal problems for hospitals;therefore, medical record service standards must meet legal aspects as legal evidence that can protect the interests of various parties. Conclusions: It is necessary to manage a medical resume form design that is better, complete, electronical, and in accordance with legal aspects. © 2022 Setijaningsih et al.

RFID Based Identity Authentication System in COVID-19 Era

To control the COVID-19 outbreak, the Malaysia government has to tighten the rules and add on some standard operating procedures (SOP) for all premises. There will be an entrance registration for people that enter any shops, malls, schools, or offices. This entrance registration will take their identities, such as name, contact number, and current temperature. Thus, the government can easily track down and notify the person if the virus transmission occurs. This paper is mainly about improving the daily registration system to monitor the movement of Malaysians during the Covid-19 outbreak. With that needs in mind, a Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) based identity authentication system is developed and presented in this paper. Users do not need to fill in the manual form or scan the Quick Response (QR) code repeatedly, and instead, they are required to just key in the personal data once at the entrance. The RFID tag is applicable to be used as a self-registration at all premises. It can also keep track of the user identity, and the data will be recorded automatically through a monitoring application every time the users enter or leave the premises. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Utilizing Smart City Cyber-physical Infrastructure for Tracking and Monitoring Pandemics like COVID-19 with the ICCC as the Nerve Centre

Managing the ongoing COVID-19 (aka Coronavirus) pandemic has presented both challenges and new opportunities for urban local body administrators. With the Indian government's Smart City mission taking firm roots in some of the Indian cities, the authors share their learnings and experiences of how a Smart City Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) can be extended to become the nerve centre of pandemic-related operations and management, leveraging the Smart City IoT infrastructure such as surveillance cameras for monitoring and enforcement. The authors are of the opinion that the lessons learned and experiences gained from these cities are extremely valuable and can easily be replicated in other cities in a relatively short time period, thus providing a standard and uniform method across the nation for handling epidemics in the future. © 2020 ACM.

Framework for JARAK: A Monitoring and Notifier System for Social Distancing

The deadly coronavirus, or better known as COVID-19, has affected people worldwide and resulted many sectors to shut down including the economic, education, tourism, and many other social sectors. Due to the shutdown of these sectors, many people have become jobless and even worst, the virus has stolen many lives. For people to continue living in this pandemic, these sectors need to be operated. Thus, it is an urge for everyone to comply with the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). Recently, as the number of COVID-19 cases is showing a declining trend, many sectors have started to operate with strict SOP compliance. Nevertheless, to maintain the social distancing among people in business premises is quite challenging. As people move and mobile in the premise, it is very challenging for the premise authority to monitor and maintain social distancing among people. In addition, the increasing number of visitors may lead to contact tracing process to become more complicated. Thus, an automated approach in monitoring social distancing among people is needed. Therefore, this study proposes a system to monitor social distancing using the You Only Look Once (YOLO) algorithm. This study implements Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) as the methodology. The developed social distance monitoring and notifying system will benefit the public and the government to comply with the SOP. © 2021 IEEE.

Contactless Tool for COVID-19 Surveillance System

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, surveillance systems have been implemented to monitor public health and trace the infected individuals. The Malaysian government has imposed the standard operating procedure (SOP) which includes checking of temperature for fever, use of hand sanitizers, and record their name, contact number, and date of attendance at points of entry. This paper proposes a contactless tool for COVID-19 surveillance that integrates all the 3 processes into one. The system carries out each stage in sequential order for every person, starting with checking temperature, dispensing hand sanitizer, and lastly data profiling record. The temperature is done using infrared thermometry that automatically adjusts to forehead height. Hand sanitizer is automatically dispensed when hands are detected under the pump. Image processing and optical character recognition are used to capture the name and contact number that will be shown on a tag carried by the individual and saved to the database. The process is contactless and requires no human operator, and yields accurate temperature data, works as intended while demonstrating high accuracy and speed in extracting information with optical character recognition. © 2021 IEEE.

Implementation of Standard Operating Procedure in Ophthalmic Practice during Covid 19 Era across Pakistan

Purpose: To analyze the implementation of standard operating procedures (SOP) in different ophthalmic settings of Pakistan during Covid 19. Study Design: Cross sectional online survey. Place and Duration of Study: Baqai Medical University & Karachi Medical and Dental College, from 11th to 25th January 2021. Methods: This online survey included doctors working as consultants, medical officers and trainees in ophthalmology setups. A self-designed questionnaire on Google forms was sent online to see the implementation of standard operating procedures during COVID 19. Results: A total of 400 participants were selected by snowball sampling technique. A response rate was 105 (26.5%). Females were 66 (62.86%). Among all participants, 36.19% responded that they always screened patients for COVID 19 at reception. Doctors who always wore masks were 96.19%. Out of those who responded, 16.19% and 11.43% always wore protective goggles and disposable gowns respectively. Only 55.24% practiced hand sanitization, 18.10% washed hands with soap and 30.48% cleaned slit lamps after seeing each patient. Doctors who always asked for PCR before ocular surgery under general anesthesia were 65 (61.90%) and for local anesthesia were 36 (34.29%). Direct Ophthalmoscopy, tonometry, and gonioscopy were performed when necessary by 56.19%, 80.00%, 80.00% of doctors respectively. Only 69.5% were satisfied with precautionary measures. Conclusion: Clinic management needs improvement in implementing SOPs among patients in an eye OPD. Fifty percent of the ophthalmologists received PPE by their administration. Only 69.5% doctors were satisfied with precautionary measures. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Pakistan Journal of Ophthalmology is the property of Pakistan Journal of Ophthalmology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Post-COVID-19 pandemic: Standard operating procedures for gross anatomy laboratory in the new standard.

The culture of cadaver dissection remains the most commonly used method of practical teaching and learning of human anatomy. Anatomist and medical professionals considered cadaver dissection as the gold standard for teaching and learning anatomy in detail. The increase seen in the establishment of new medical training institutions globally has consequently led to a proportionate increase in the sourcing for cadavers. Moreover, the surge in mortality rates following the recent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic with no cure or approved vaccine has been a source of concern for academia, especially on the safety in the usage of cadavers for dissection. Notwithstanding, several countries continue to depend on unclaimed bodies as the primary source for cadavers, regardless of the cause of death. Besides, body donation is also usually reported to be strained during disease outbreaks thereby putting countries that depend solely on it in a dilemma. This study highlighted the recommended standard operating procedures (SOPs) to be imbibed in gross anatomy dissection halls during and post-COVID-19 pandemic.

[Crisis management strategies of hospitals during the pandemic]. / Krisenstrategien der Kliniken während der Pandemie.

BACKGROUND: The SARS-CoV­2 pandemic has led worldwide to substantial limitations in healthcare systems. This article describes the recent developments and measures from March through May 2020, which have contributed to the maintenance of ophthalmological care at in-patient departments of ophthalmology. METHODS: PubMed literature search, own data, interhospital survey. RESULTS: The rapid implementation of infection and hygiene control measures and adaptation of standard operating procedures (SOP) to minimize the risk of infection, along with prioritized urgent and emergency care combined with postponement of elective procedures enabled the continuous care of ophthalmological patients. CONCLUSION: Despite the challenge of a significant shift of medical resources during the SARS-CoV­2 pandemic, medically urgently necessary ophthalmological treatments are continuously provided by maximum care clinics; however, based on currently available data, it cannot be ruled out whether treatment of emergency patients was delayed during the pandemic.

Development and implementation of COVID-19 safety protocols for conducting a randomized trial in global mental health: Field report from Central India.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted ongoing clinical trials globally resulting in the suspension, cancellation or transition to entirely remote implementation of studies. In India, the first countrywide lockdown was imposed in phases starting from March 2020 to June 2020, followed by a continued restriction on in-person activities including study procedures, which halted the ESSENCE (Enabling translation of Science to Service to ENhance Depression CarE) trial activities such as recruitment, consenting, baseline assessment, digital training orientation, face to face training and end-line assessment evaluation. This situation made it imperative to amend procedures in order to mitigate the risk and address safety requirements for participants and the research team. This paper summarizes the need, development and implementation of the protocols focused on risk reduction and safety enhancement with an objective to resume and continue the research activities while ensuring the safety of study participants and research staff. These protocols are comprised of guidelines and recommendations based on existing literature tailored according to different components in each arm of the trial such as guidelines for supervisors, travellers, training/recruitment venue safety procedures, individual safety procedures; and procedures to implement the study activities. These protocols can be adapted by researchers in other settings to conduct research trials during pandemics such as COVID-19.

Mathematical model for COVID-19 management in crowded settlements and high-activity areas.

This paper develops and analyses a habitat area size dependent mathematical model to study the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 in crowded settlements such as refugee camps, schools, markets and churches. The model quantifies the potential impact of physical/social distancing and population density on the disease burden. Results reveal that with no fatalities and no infected entrants, the reproduction numbers associated with asymptomatic and symptomatic cases are inversely proportional to; the habitat area size, and the efforts employed in tracing and hospitalising these cases. The critical habitat area below which the disease dies out is directly proportion to the time taken to identify and hospitalise infected individuals. Results also show that disease persistence in the community is guaranteed even with minimal admission of infected individuals. Our results further show that as the level of compliance to standard operating procedures (SOPs) increases, then the disease prevalence peaks are greatly reduced and delayed. Therefore, proper adherence to SOPs such as use of masks, physical distancing measures and effective contact tracing should be highly enforced in crowded settings if COVID-19 is to be mitigated.

From Normal to Viral Body: Death Rituals During Ordinary and Extraordinary Covidian Times in Pakistan.

Death is far from being simply a physiologic event; it is a complex phenomenon with sociocultural and politicoeconomic aspects. During extraordinary times such as the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, death becomes a contested site. I argue that the Pakistani government's dealings with the bodies of people who die from COVID-19 have shifted the meaning of a normal dead body to a viral body that poses particular challenges to cultures and people, including the government. This article is both autoethnographic and ethnographic. It concurrently draws on my observations and participation in death rituals in a Pakistani village in Sindh province as a member of that society, and on a recent experience that I faced after the death of a gentle lady of my acquaintance due to COVID-19. I also build on my previous long-term ethnographic research in Pakistan and my ongoing research on COVID-19 in that country. I discuss the death rituals and ceremonies performed during "ordinary" situations as background information; and the changes in these rituals that have resulted from the coronavirus pandemic. My data demonstrate significant differences between usual and customary death rituals and those performed during Covidian times by government mandate, which have severely and negatively affected people's mental health. I show the government's "symbolic ownership" of the viral body, in that the government can control how people deal with their viral dead.