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The CDC Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) was developed to help public health officials and policymakers to identify geospatial variations in social vulnerability for each community to better respond to hazardous events, including disease outbreaks. However, the SVI does not include information on population density, which is a significant omission when considering the usefulness of the index in allocating scarce resources such as medical supplies and personnel, bedding, food, and water to locations they are most needed. Using county-level data from the initial U.S. COVID-19 outbreak, we provide empirical evidence that the existing SVI underestimates (overestimates) county-level infection rates in densely (sparsely) populated counties if population density is not accounted for. Population density remains significant even after allowing for spatial spillover effects. Going forward, the inclusion of population density to construct SVI can improve its usefulness in aiding policymakers in allocating scarce resources for future disasters, especially those with spatial dependence. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
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Resumo Objetivo Identificar as publicações que discorreram sobre a COVID-19 como acidente laboral e sua notificação pelos trabalhadores da saúde. Métodos A busca para esta scoping review, explorou literatura nacional e internacional, no período de 2020 e 2021, em inglês, português e espanhol, nas bases de dados do Portal Regional da Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde, na MEDLINE por meio do PubMed e no Portal de Periódicos da Capes empregou-se: Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL. Os textos foram importados para o EndNote, suprimido os duplicados e exportados para o aplicativo Rayyan, sendo feita a inclusão dos artigos em planilha Excel com os rótulos/etiquetas: COVID-19 como acidentes de trabalho e Notificação de COVID-19. Resultados Foram identificados 5.665 estudos, excluindo 2.088 duplicações, resultando 3.577 publicações, selecionadas por título e resumo. Destas, 3.280 não atendiam aos critérios de inclusão, resultando 297 artigos. Destes, 10 foram selecionados para análise completa do texto por tratarem da COVID-19 como acidente de trabalho e/ou notificação deste agravo pelos trabalhadores da saúde. Dois artigos foram excluídos por se tratar de revisão de literatura, permanecendo 8 como corpus do estudo. Conclusão Apesar de determinados países já reconhecerem a COVID-19 como doença ocupacional, alguns trabalhadores ainda apresentam dificuldades em relacionar a infecção pelo SARS-CoV-2 com o trabalho na assistência à saúde, caracterizando como acidente laboral. Todos devem ser orientados e capacitados quanto ao reconhecimento da COVID-19 como acidente laboral e notificar sua ocorrência, uma vez que já existe a definição da infecção como doença de notificação compulsória.
Resumen Objetivo Identificar las publicaciones que abordaron el COVID-19 como accidente laboral y su notificación por parte de los trabajadores de la salud. Métodos La búsqueda para esta scoping review exploró la literatura nacional e internacional, durante el período de 2020 a 2021, en inglés, portugués y español, en las bases de datos del Portal Regional de la Biblioteca Virtual de Salud, en MEDLINE a través de PubMed, y en el Portal de Periódicos de Capes se utilizó Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL. Los textos fueron importados a EndNote, se eliminaron los duplicados y se exportaron a la aplicación Rayyan, se incluyeron los artículos en una planilla de Excel con la clasificación/etiquetas: COVID-19 como accidente de trabajo y Notificación de COVID-19. Resultados Se identificaron 5.665 estudios, se excluyeron 2.088 duplicaciones, que dio como resultado 3.577 publicaciones, seleccionadas por título y resumen. De ellas, 3.280 no atendían los criterios de inclusión, por lo que se obtuvieron 297 artículos. De estos, 10 fueron seleccionados para análisis completo del texto porque trataban el COVID-19 como accidente de trabajo o notificación de este daño por parte de los trabajadores de la salud. Se excluyeron dos artículos porque se trataban de revisión de literatura, por lo cual permanecieron ocho como corpus de estudio. Conclusión Aunque determinados países ya reconocieron el COVID-19 como una enfermedad ocupacional, algunos trabajadores aún tienen dificultad de relacionar la infección por SARS-CoV-2 con el trabajo en la atención a la salud, caracterizándolo como un accidente laboral. Todos deben ser orientados y capacitados sobre el reconocimiento del COVID-19 como accidente laboral y notificar su ocurrencia, dado que ya existe la definición de la infección como enfermedad de notificación obligatoria.
Abstract Objective To identify the publications that discussed COVID-19 as an occupational injury and its notification by health workers. Methods The search for this scoping review explored national and international literature, between 2020 and 2021, in English, Portuguese and Spanish, in the databases of the Regional Portal of the Virtual Health Library, in MEDLINE through PubMed and in Capes Journal Portal used: Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL. The texts were imported into EndNote, duplicates were removed and exported to the Rayyan application, and the articles were included in an Excel spreadsheet with the labels: COVID-19 as injuries at work and Notification of COVID-19. Results A total of 5665 studies were identified, excluding 2088 duplicates, resulting in 3577 publications, selected by title and abstract. Of these, 3280 did not meet the inclusion criteria, resulting in 297 articles. Of these, 10 were selected for full text analysis because they dealt with COVID-19 as an injury at work and/or notification of this condition by health workers. Two articles were excluded because they were a literature review, remaining 8 as the study's corpus. Conclusion Although certain countries already recognize COVID-19 as an occupational injury, some workers still have difficulties in relating the SARS-CoV-2 infection with work in health care, characterizing it as an occupational injured. Everyone should be guided and trained regarding the recognition of COVID-19 as an occupational injury and notify its occurrence, since the definition of the infection as a notifiable disease already exists.
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Objective: To identify the publications that discussed COVID-19 as an occupational injury and its notification by health workers.Methods: The search for this scoping review explored national and international literature, between 2020 and 2021, in English, Portuguese and Spanish, in the databases of the Regional Portal of the Virtual Health Library, in MEDLINE through PubMed and in Capes Journal Portal used: Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL. The texts were imported into EndNote, duplicates were removed and exported to the Rayyan application, and the articles were included in an Excel spreadsheet with the labels: COVID-19 as injuries at work and Notification of COVID-19.Results: A total of 5665 studies were identified, excluding 2088 duplicates, resulting in 3577 publications, selected by title and . Of these, 3280 did not meet the inclusion criteria, resulting in 297 articles. Of these, 10 were selected for full text analysis because they dealt with COVID-19 as an injury at work and/or notification of this condition by health workers. Two articles were excluded because they were a literature review, remaining 8 as the study's corpus.Conclusion: Although certain countries already recognize COVID-19 as an occupational injury, some workers still have difficulties in relating the SARS-CoV-2 infection with work in health care, characterizing it as an occupational injured. Everyone should be guided and trained regarding the recognition of COVID-19 as an occupational injury and notify its occurrence, since the definition of the infection as a notifiable disease already exists.
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Objective: To review notification of incidents that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: This is a cross-sectional, exploratory descriptive quantitative study. A total of 1,466 notifications to risk management of a private hospital were analyzed from September 2020 to September 2021. Descriptive statistical analysis was used, applying Pearson's chi-square test or the likelihood ratio test. The margin of error used was 5%. Results: Communication failure (358 -24.5%), probe and catheter use failure (232 -15.9%) and article and equipment use failure (132 -9.1%) were identified as prevalent incidents. The notifiable circumstance totaled 55.9% of reports, and, of these, 33.4% were communication failure. Adverse events were 416 (28.6%), and fall was related to mild damage (43.9%), health care-associated infections, to moderate harm (31%), and medication use failure (50%), to severe harm and death. Conclusion: Communication failure was the most reported risk circumstance, followed by medication use failure as an adverse event with severe harm. The nursing unit showed the possibility of a greater number of adverse events, while in Intensive Care Units, the degree of harm from adverse events was higher.
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Objective: Compare reported patient safety incidents related to a clinical process/ procedure among patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis and with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) caused by another infectious or undetermined agent and the other patients. Results and discussion: retrospective, documentary study approved by the ethics committee in a public teaching hospital in southern Brazil. In the study, 2,191 notifications and records of COVID-19 between March and September 2020 were used. The data were submitted to descriptive analysis with frequencies of the variables in the data set, Fisher's test to determine the associations between outcomes (classification/process/ problem) and calculation of relative risk to measure its strength. The incidence of pressure ulcers was almost 3.7 times higher in patients with SARS. In the others, various tube-related incidents and events associated to the surgical process predominated. Conclusion: Intensive nursing care for patients with SARS, risk management and strengthening of good practices for the safety of all patients were relevant. © 2023, Universidade Federal do Parana. All rights reserved.
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The practice of giving presentations online has exploded during the Covid pandemic. However, in these settings, presenters often find themselves overlooking questions and feedback, e.g. via chat, from the audience, because the presenter's screen is dominated by their slides, with other channels becoming less noticeable. This causes frustration among presenters and their audience alike. We investigate the impact of additional visual, auditory, and haptic cues for presenters in online scenarios, using a wrist-worn prototype. For this, we conducted a study where participants gave presentations via the videoconferencing tool Zoom on specific topics while trying to notice and correctly identify incoming notifications. Our findings indicate that supplementary notifications can be helpful in online presentations without inappropriately disturbing the presenter. © 2023 Owner/Author.
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This work focuses on the development of a portable physiological monitoring framework that can continuously monitor the patient's heartbeat, oxygen levels, temperature, ECG measurement, blood pressure, and other fundamental patient's data. As a result of this, the workload and the chances of being infected by COVID-19 of the health workers will be reduced and an efficient patient monitoring system can be maintained. In this paper, an IoT based continuous monitoring system has been developed to monitor all COVID-19 patient conditions and store patient data in the cloud server using Wi-Fi Module-based remote communication. In this monitoring system, data stored on IoT platform can be accessed by an authorized individual and ailments can be examined by the doctors from a distance based on the values obtained. If a patient's physical condition deteriorates, the doctor will immediately receive the emergency alert notification. This model proposed in this research work would be extremely important in dealing with the Corona epidemic around the world. © 2022 IEEE.
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Background: Public health surveillance data do not always capture all cases, due in part to test availability and health care seeking behaviour. Our study aimed to estimate under-ascertainment multipliers for each step in the reporting chain for COVID-19 in Toronto, Canada. Design and methods: We applied stochastic modeling to estimate these proportions for the period from March 2020 (the beginning of the pandemic) through to May 23, 2020, and for three distinct windows with different laboratory testing criteria within this period. Results: For each laboratory-confirmed symptomatic case reported to Toronto Public Health during the entire period, the estimated number of COVID-19 infections in the community was 18 (5th and 95th percentile: 12, 29). The factor most associated with under-reporting was the proportion of those who sought care that received a test. Conclusions: Public health officials should use improved estimates to better understand the burden of COVID-19 and other similar infections.
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The lack of an in-depth system for determining exposure to COVID-19 has left people with a need for an autonomous method of tracking/monitoring user habits and active COVID-19 cases. The COVID Risk Aversion System (CRS) was created to track users and how often they encounter these risks around them. This project currently uses Ontario as a testbed. The CRS system consists of two main components: an in-house server and user application. Using internal and external technologies, CRS logs how often users interact with other users who have the application and the locations they visit. A server was developed to store every location that each user encounters and then categorizes a quantified risk to that specific location based on multiple factors. Risk is determined by COVID-19 cases in the area, risk values of people at given locations, and regional per capita cases of COVID-19. The server alters area risk based on decreasing or increasing cases within a specific region. Every hour, the server checks Ontario's COVID-19 statistics and updates the database's values, and then recalculates the dynamic values for all locations stored in the system. The client-side application reports the user's location every 5 minutes and requests information on all users geographically close to that person using Vincenty's formula. Twice a day, the application updates the user's risk based on the interactions the user has had throughout the day. Users can also view a map of Ontario that displays regional risk and can check the risk of specific locations. CRS aims to be an effective method at reducing the user's exposure to COVID-19.
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COVID-19 is a contagious disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The disease has spread worldwide, leading to an ongoing pandemic. The most common symptom of COVID-19 is fever which can be detected using various manual screening techniques that have the risk of exposing the personnel. Since the virus has globally spread, a reliable system to detect COVID-19-infected people, especially before entering any premises and buildings, is in high demand. The most common symptom that can be detected is fever, even though people with fever might not have COVID-19. Thus, a real-time analytic face thermal recognition system integrated with email notification that has the capability to scan the person's temperature and simultaneously analyze the measured temperature with the recorded/stored information/data is presented in this paper. The proposed system is also able to send an email notification to the relevant authorities during the real-time analytical process. Besides that, this information is also recorded in the system database for continuous monitoring of the respective person's health status. The development of the proposed system is integrated with a Thermal Module AMG8833, Pi camera, and Raspberry Pi Zero Wireless. The proposed system has been tested and the captured results successfully accomplished the development objectives.
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To help prevent the spread of COVID-19, countries around the world have implemented a range of measures and virus containment strategies, including digital contact-tracing (DCT) in the form of smartphone apps. While early studies showed a high level of acceptability of such technologies, the adoption rates varied greatly between countries after contact-tracing apps became available to download. This cross-national user survey (n=871) aims to explore public attitudes and factors that affect user acceptability and adoption of contact-tracing apps in the USA, UK, and the Republic of Ireland, which employ similar underlying technology, but have uneven adoption rates. The results indicate interactions between installation decisions and public trust in actors and institutions communicating COVID-related information, and releasing such technologies. Beyond the immediate case of contact tracing, our findings hold implications for the deployment and communicative framing of technology for public health and the public good, and inform the design of crisis response public health information systems.
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What is already known about this topic?: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic could have a damaging impact on access to tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis and treatment. What is added by this report?: The overall delay experienced by TB patients during the COVID-19 pandemic has shown a modest decrease in comparison to the period before the pandemic. Notably, higher patient delays were observed among agricultural workers and those identified through passive case-finding methods. Furthermore, the patient delay in eastern regions was shorter compared to western and central regions. What are the implications for public health practice?: The observed increase in patient delay in 2022 should be of concern for ongoing TB control efforts. Health education and active screening initiatives must be enhanced and broadened among high-risk populations and regions characterized by extended patient delays.
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An elderly squire indicated the importance of medication intake in everyday life. Some individuals forget to take medicine on time. Also, monitor using the scheduled medicine to help people with an illness. In addition, technology has increased for utilization in healthcare. According to Harvard Medical School by Stephanie Watson about the technology advancement is flourishing in the Philippines, and telehealth stays with innovation to improve digital health platforms. In addition, healthcare services are facing challenges with Covid-19. On the other hand, telehealth gives good service, and about 91% of consumers use digital healthcare services. Also, A reminder system should be simple, familiar, flexible, and recognizable.Technology can positively impact the lives of older people, including their physical and mental health and daily activities. Technology can help people become active. It also increases awareness and motivation to increase physical activity. © 2022 IEEE.
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There are still outbreaks of COVID-19 across the world. Ships increase the risk of worldwide transmission of the virus. Close contact tracing remains as an effective method of reducing the risk of virus transmission. Therefore, close contact tracing in ship environments becomes a research topic. Exposure Notifications API (Application Programming Interface) can be used to determine the encountered location points of close contacts on ships. Location points of close contact are estimated by the encountered location points. Risky areas in ships can be calculated based on the encountered location points. The tracking of close contacts is possible with Bluetooth technology without the Internet. The Bluetooth signal can be used to judge the proximity among detecting devices by using the feature that Bluetooth has a strong signal at close range. This Bluetooth feature makes it possible to trace close contacts in ship environments. In this paper, we propose a method for close contact tracing and showing the risky area in a ship environment by combining beacon and Exposure Notification API using Bluetooth technology. This method does not require an Internet connection for tracing close contacts and can protect the personal information of close contacts. Copyright © 2023 KSII.
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In recent days, the agile dashboard plays a vital role in business platforms to organize and manage tasks in an efficient way. Nowadays, communication among team members has become virtual due to COVID-19 pandemic. Considering this situation, the supervisors find it difficult to manage the team. So, a dashboard with the necessary features is needed for a quick glance at the team member's work and activity. To avoid confusion among the team members while doing a project, what is happening, what is to be done, and what is completely done must be shown in the dashboard. This sets the seal for the team to be motivated and productive in this virtual environment. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Background: The (GuideSafe™) Exposure Notification System (ENS) was built and deployed in (Alabama) for anonymous sending and receiving of COVID-19 exposure alerts to people who have been in close contact with someone who later reports a positive COVID-19 test. Little is known about how the demographic groups perceive recent privacy-preserving the ENS innovations, including their usability, usefulness, satisfaction, and continued interest in sharing COVID-19 exposure information. The purpose of this study was to investigate how users across the demographic groups perceive the sharing of exposure information with various types of organizations and to investigate how end-user perceptions of the ENS usability, usefulness, and satisfaction differ across the demographic groups within the context of a statewide deployment of an exposure notification system. Methods: A survey was administered to (state residents blinded for review) (N = 1,049) to assess propensity to share COVID-19 infection data and evaluate end-user perceptions about usability, usefulness, and satisfaction with the (Alabama) ENS. The ANOVA and the Tukey's Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) post-hoc tests were conducted to assess the demographic group differences. Results: The ENS survey participants had a high awareness of contact tracing, exposure notifications, and the (GuideSafe™) ENS and reported having downloaded the app. Survey results revealed the majority of participants rated the app as useful (n = 490, 79%), easy to use (n = 490, 79%), and reported satisfaction with its use (n = 546, 88%). Other results suggest that ethnicity and age may be important factors for trust in sharing exposure information. Conclusion: The (GuideSafe™) system was one integrated component of comprehensive education and work re-entry strategy across (Alabama) that reached a broad user base. Users across the different demographic groups perceive the sharing of information about their communicable disease exposures differently. Furthermore, demographic factors play a role in which types of organizations individuals are willing to share their communicable disease exposure information. Public health institutions, employers, schools, healthcare providers, and technology designers may want to consider these findings as they construct technologies and perform outreach campaigns aimed at reducing infection rates with the ENS and related technologies.
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The highly contagious COVID'19 virus's extensive distribution caused the pandemic, which intensified the importance of personal cleanliness and health. Wearing a protective face mask, keeping a certain physical distance, and regularly washing your hands with soap or hand sanitizer are a few precautions you may take to stay safe during this pandemic. An automatic touchless temperature-monitoring doorbell can provide guarded and touch-free temperature sensing, thus informing the household members. The widespread usage of outdated touch-type doorbells may result in the transmission of the coronavirus. The aforementioned article describes a novel approach to creating a Novel Doorbell system that can be activated using gestures and simultaneously detects the person's temperature and notifies the home of a suspected infectious disease. © 2023 IEEE.
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Origin destination (OD) data describing passengers' flows is essential for improving bus route operational efficiency. Manual collection of OD data is still conducted, so automatic OD data acquisition using the internet of things (IoT) is desired. One method utilizes Bluetooth beacon identifiers to understand passengers' flows while considering their privacy. Still, while random MAC addresses can estimate the number of devices there, they are insufficient for generating ODs. In contrast, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the government promoted the exposure notification system to prevent secondary infection. The smartphone app exchanges short-term identifiers called Rolling Proximity Identifiers (RPIs), updated every 15 minutes. This research aims to realize tracking during bus rides with only a few RPIs carryovers, since bus rides are only about an hour long at most. We evaluated the system on a bus in Kyoto City and successfully tracked passengers for 55 minutes, the experiment's maximum length. © 2022 IEEE.
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Despite the effectiveness of social isolation and, in particular, contact tracing for infection management, there are a number of drawbacks, including that it is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and adhoc. Following the COVID-19 outbreak, a number of mobile technologies are emerging to combat the inefficiencies of human contact tracing. However, there is a lack of actual, transparent platform design, and the production of maps for active infection, particularly in the state-of-the-art Blockchain technology. In this paper we introduce CTChain, a blockchainbased tool that collects, organizes, and generates maps of active infections to assist public health officials in their work. Utilizing a hierarchical network architecture, a regional map for active infection is built by navigating via a cache memorystored blockchain. Our architecture continuously filters out outdated infections to produce batches of the most pertinent dynamic regional data, which may be utilized to issue timely health recommendations and temporarily seal off high-infection areas. CTChain's platform can map the active infections across three different parameters: sparse vs densely populated region, number of people in each location, and initial infection rate. We can examine infection transmission and region "popularity” on a per-region basis because of our region handler capabilities. Due to the network's widespread storage of many copies of the chain, our model is safeguarded against single points of failure. © 2022, International Society for Computers and Their Applications. All rights reserved.