Career capital, career success, and perceived employability: evidence from medical billing companies in the post-COVID world.

BACKGROUND: This paper focuses on the concept of career construction based on the theory of conservation of resources to understand the overall effect of career capital on career success from both a subjective and objective manner through the mediating effect of perceived employability. OBJECTIVE: This study attempts to explain how different integrated aspects of career capital, including human, social, and psychological (antecedents), influence both subjective career success and objective career success (outcome) through the mediating effect of perceived employability (mediator). METHODS: Time-lagged data of 331 employees from the telehealth medical billing service companies based in Pakistan were analyzed through a structural equation modeling technique using SmartPLS software. RESULTS: The main results confirmed that career capital positively affects perceived employability and career success while perceived employability positively mediates the relationship between career capital and career success. CONCLUSION: This research responded to prior calls by explaining the positive mediating role of perceived employability (as a mediator) in explaining the positive influence of career capital on career success using different various dimensions of career capital and career success. This research included the contextual issues by testing the model in the telehealth sector of Pakistan. The findings suggested that context or occupation matters in the relationship between career capital and career success.

Results from Expanded Access Programs: A Review of Academic Literature.

BACKGROUND: Although expanded access is an increasingly used pathway for patients to access investigational medicine, little is known on the magnitude and content of published scientific research collected via expanded access. METHODS: We performed a review of all peer-reviewed expanded access publications between January 1, 2000 and January 1, 2022. We analyzed the publications for drugs, diseases, disease area, patient numbers, time, geographical location, subject, and research methodology (single center/multicenter, international/national, prospective/retrospective). We additionally analyzed endpoints reported in all COVID-19-related expanded access publications. RESULTS: We screened 3810 articles and included 1231, describing 523 drugs for 354 diseases for 507,481 patients. The number of publications significantly increased over time ([Formula: see text]). Large geographical disparities existed as Europe and the Americas accounted for 87.4% of all publications, whereas Africa only accounted for 0.6%. Oncology and hematology accounted for 53% of all publications. Twenty-nine percent of all expanded access patients (N = 197,187) reported on in 2020 and 2021 were treated in the context of COVID-19. CONCLUSIONS: By summarizing characteristics of patients, diseases, and research methods described in all scientific literature published on expanded access, we provide a unique dataset for future research. We show that published scientific research on expanded access has surged over the past decades, partly due to COVID-19. However, international collaboration and equity in geographic access remain an issue of concern. Lastly, we stress the need for harmonization of research legislation and guidance on the value of expanded access data within real-world data frameworks to improve equity in patient access and streamline future expanded access research.

A review on risk assessment of formulation development and technology transfer of COVID-19 vaccines / Una revisión sobre la evaluación de riesgos del desarrollo de formulaciones y la transferencia de tecnología de las vacunas COVID-19

Background: COVID-19 pandemic situation made the pharmaceutical companies develop the vaccine with different formulations in a short period. Objectives: The main objective of the review is to focus on different types of vaccine formulations available globally and the importance of technology transfer in vaccine development associated with potential risks. Results: Research on vaccine development led to various types of vaccines, such as Inactivated vaccines, Live Attenuated vaccines, Ribonucleic acid (RNA) and Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) vaccines, viral vector vaccines, and Protein Subunit Vaccines for COVID-19. But the process of vaccine development and technology transfer is lined with various risks and challenges. Through risk assessment, we found some major potential risks involved in product development; this leads to a smoother and more efficient method to develop safe vaccines available for public health. Conclusions: This review will explain the significance of technology collaboration for the faster development of various formulations of vaccines globally

Antecedentes: La situación de pandemia de COVID-19 hizo que las empresas farmacéuticas desarrollaran la vacuna con diferentes formulaciones en un corto período. Objetivos: El objetivo principal de la revisión es centrarse en los diferentes tipos de formulaciones de vacunas disponibles a nivel mundial y la importancia de la transferencia de tecnología en el desarrollo de vacunas asociado con los riesgos potenciales. Resultados: La investigación sobre el desarrollo de vacunas condujo al desarrollo de varios tipos de vacunas, como vacunas inactivadas, vacunas vivas atenuadas, vacunas de ácido ribonucleico (ARN) y ácido desoxirribonucleico (ADN), vacunas de vectores virales y vacunas de subunidades de proteínas para COVID-19. Pero el proceso de desarrollo de vacunas y transferencia de tecnología está lleno de varios riesgos y desafíos. A través de la evaluación de riesgos, encontramos algunos riesgos potenciales importantes involucrados en el desarrollo de productos, lo que conduce a un método más fluido y eficiente para desarrollar vacunas seguras disponibles para la salud pública. Conclusiones: Esta revisión dará una idea de la importancia de la colaboración tecnológica para el desarrollo más rápido de varias formulaciones de vacunas a nivel mundial

Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices of Face Mask Use among University Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study

At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the estimated daily use of face masks was at its highest, thereby creating huge public health and environmental challenges associated with the indiscriminate disposal of used ones. The present study assessed Abu Dhabi University students' handling and disposal of single-use face masks during the pandemic. A cross-sectional study using an online survey questionnaire was used to gather data from 255 students from the target group. Face mask type was found to be significantly influenced by both the student's gender and age, while the participant's habit of hand washing after handling a used face mask was found to be significantly influenced by the student's age. The student's educational level significantly influenced group decisions regarding the most appropriate face mask to use, as well as environmental and health consequences awareness of indiscriminate face mask disposal. While the students are adequately aware of COVID-19's impact and had good knowledge of face mask use, a high proportion professed to the unsafe disposal of used face masks in public areas, thereby adding to microplastic pollution in the environment and its associated impacts. The study alluded to the need for strengthening the participant's knowledge, attitude, and practices as precautionary measures that mitigate the environmental effect of the indiscriminate disposal of used face masks. The findings also call for a collaborative partnership among stakeholders toward designing effective educational campaigns to minimize the environmental impacts posed by face mask disposal. © 2023 by the authors.

Development of a COVID-19-Related Anti-Asian Tweet Data Set: Quantitative Study.

BACKGROUND: Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals of Asian descent (colloquial usage prevalent in North America, where "Asian" is used to refer to people from East Asia, particularly China) have been the subject of stigma and hate speech in both offline and online communities. One of the major venues for encountering such unfair attacks is social networks, such as Twitter. As the research community seeks to understand, analyze, and implement detection techniques, high-quality data sets are becoming immensely important. OBJECTIVE: In this study, we introduce a manually labeled data set of tweets containing anti-Asian stigmatizing content. METHODS: We sampled over 668 million tweets posted on Twitter from January to July 2020 and used an iterative data construction approach that included 3 different stages of algorithm-driven data selection. Finally, we found volunteers who manually annotated the tweets by hand to arrive at a high-quality data set of tweets and a second, more sampled data set with higher-quality labels from multiple annotators. We presented this final high-quality Twitter data set on stigma toward Chinese people during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data set and instructions for labeling can be viewed in the Github repository. Furthermore, we implemented some state-of-the-art models to detect stigmatizing tweets to set initial benchmarks for our data set. RESULTS: Our primary contributions are labeled data sets. Data Set v3.0 contained 11,263 tweets with primary labels (unknown/irrelevant, not-stigmatizing, stigmatizing-low, stigmatizing-medium, stigmatizing-high) and tweet subtopics (eg, wet market and eating habits, COVID-19 cases, bioweapon). Data Set v3.1 contained 4998 (44.4%) tweets randomly sampled from Data Set v3.0, where a second annotator labeled them only on the primary labels and then a third annotator resolved conflicts between the first and second annotators. To demonstrate the usefulness of our data set, preliminary experiments on the data set showed that the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) model achieved the highest accuracy of 79% when detecting stigma on unseen data with traditional models, such as a support vector machine (SVM) performing at 73% accuracy. CONCLUSIONS: Our data set can be used as a benchmark for further qualitative and quantitative research and analysis around the issue. It first reaffirms the existence and significance of widespread discrimination and stigma toward the Asian population worldwide. Moreover, our data set and subsequent arguments should assist other researchers from various domains, including psychologists, public policy authorities, and sociologists, to analyze the complex economic, political, historical, and cultural underlying roots of anti-Asian stigmatization and hateful behaviors. A manually annotated data set is of paramount importance for developing algorithms that can be used to detect stigma or problematic text, particularly on social media. We believe this contribution will help predict and subsequently design interventions that will significantly help reduce stigma, hate, and discrimination against marginalized populations during future crises like COVID-19.

Emergence of Post COVID-19 Vaccine Autoimmune Diseases: A Single Center Study.

Introduction: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS CoV-2) became a major concern since the announcement that it is a pandemic in early 2020. Vaccine trials were started in November 2020, and completed rapidly due to the urgency to get over the infection. Side effects to vaccines started to be reported. There were minor side effects including site of injection pain and heaviness and constitutional symptoms like fever which are considered minor. One of the rare adverse events is post vaccine new onset autoimmune diseases. Methods: Data were obtained from one center in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia (King Fahd Hospital of University). All patient events reported occurred in the study period March 2021 to February 2022. We identified patients presenting with autoimmune diseases with exclusively new onset presentations. Results: We identified 31 cases of immune-mediated disease: 18 females (58%); 13 males (42%). Only 4 of them (13%) had an autoimmune background before COVID-19 vaccination. The average time between vaccination and new-onset disease symptoms was 7 days. Among all the cases in our study, 7 patients (22.5%) had new-onset vasculitis, 2 cases had IgA vasculitis and 5 cases had ANCA vasculitis, 6 cases had neurological diseases (19.3%), 4 cases (12.9%) had new-onset systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), 3 cases (9.6%) presented with new-onset inflammatory arthritis, and one had Sjogren's syndrome (3.2%). Conclusion: Our study is unique as it is the first study to include the largest number (31 patients) of new onsets of confirmed autoimmune diseases related to Covid-19 vaccines.

Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices of Face Mask Use among University Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study

At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the estimated daily use of face masks was at its highest, thereby creating huge public health and environmental challenges associated with the indiscriminate disposal of used ones. The present study assessed Abu Dhabi University students' handling and disposal of single-use face masks during the pandemic. A cross-sectional study using an online survey questionnaire was used to gather data from 255 students from the target group. Face mask type was found to be significantly influenced by both the student's gender and age, while the participant's habit of hand washing after handling a used face mask was found to be significantly influenced by the student's age. The student's educational level significantly influenced group decisions regarding the most appropriate face mask to use, as well as environmental and health consequences awareness of indiscriminate face mask disposal. While the students are adequately aware of COVID-19's impact and had good knowledge of face mask use, a high proportion professed to the unsafe disposal of used face masks in public areas, thereby adding to microplastic pollution in the environment and its associated impacts. The study alluded to the need for strengthening the participant's knowledge, attitude, and practices as precautionary measures that mitigate the environmental effect of the indiscriminate disposal of used face masks. The findings also call for a collaborative partnership among stakeholders toward designing effective educational campaigns to minimize the environmental impacts posed by face mask disposal.

SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination and Chilblain-like Lesions: What Do We Know so Far?

Introduction The coronavirus pandemic has caused massive damage to global health care and the economy. The vaccination program has been paced around the globe to return as soon as possible to pre-COVID time. Although all the vaccines have been approved after the rigorous clinical and safety trials, some adverse effects have surfaced and are being reported from different parts of the world. One such side effect is chilblain-like lesions following the COVID vaccination. Chilblain lesions, also known as pernio, are an inflammatory condition usually affecting the acral regions of the body. It is mostly reported from cold and damp areas and has multiple causes associated with it. Objective This study aims to review the publicly available data and to provide concise and comprehensive information as well as evaluate the potential pathology, clinical approach, and management of CLL post-vaccination. Methods An extensive literature search over PubMed, Cochrane library, Google Scholar, and Clinicaltrails. gov from inception till 5th October 2021, without any restriction of language was carried out. All the recruited articles were reviewed, and their bibliographies were also screened for any relevant information. Results 12 studies (10 case reports and 2 case series) were retrieved reporting the incidence of CLL post-vaccination. 8 studies reported incidence in female patients while 5 reported in males, with one study mentioning no gender. Moreover, most of them were either from Europe or the United States of America, except for two cases, reported from Turkey. Conclusions Although the overall incidence of Chilblains following COVID-19 vaccination is low, there is still a strong need to find out the exact mechanism behind this to redefine the safety and administration criteria of the vaccines and to formulate a proper management protocol.

Approaches for prevention and environmental management of novel COVID-19.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recognized a novel coronavirus as the causative agent of a new form of pneumonia. It was subsequently named COVID-19 and reported as the source of a respiratory disease occurrence starting in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. It has been affirmed a public health emergency of international significance by the World Health Organization. It is regarded as a subset of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS); COVID-19 is triggered by a betacoronavirus called SARS-CoV-2, which affects the lower respiratory tract and occurs in humans as pneumonia. A variety of drugs, such as remdesivir and favipiravir, are currently undergoing clinical trials to evaluate for the management of COVID-19. The effect of the pandemic as well as the epidemic that follows through the life cycles of various recycled plastic is evaluated, particularly those required for personal safety and health care. In response to the growth in COVID-19 cases worldwide, the energy and environmental impacts of these lifecycle management have risen rapidly. However, significant hazardous waste management concerns arise due to the need to assure the elimination of residual pathogens in household and medical wastes. This review article summarizes the preventive and environmental management of COVID-19.

A Review of the Effectiveness, Feasibility, and Acceptability of Art Therapy for Children and Adolescents during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Art therapy has been widely offered to reduce symptoms of psychological disturbance. Pooled evidence about its effectiveness in epidemic contexts, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, has not been yet established. This study reviewed the effectiveness, feasibility, and acceptability of art therapy on children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic and past epidemics. We searched PubMed/Medline, PsycINFO, CENTRAL (Cochrane Library), and CINAHL for articles on art therapy during COVID-19. Included studies reported improvements in measures of mental health, sleep quality, and psychological well-being in children with or without disabilities in the epidemic context. Results also showed that art therapy was highly feasible and accepted by children and adolescents as well as their families during epidemics in reviewed studies. Art therapy can be effective at improving various aspects of mental health, sleep quality, and psychological well-being. More empirical evidence is needed with larger sample sizes and longer duration of interventions.

Lessons learned from 2 years of influenza vaccinations in the UK and USA during the COVID-19 pandemic as respiratory viruses return.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, immunization programs for other respiratory infections, notably influenza continued worldwide but attracted less public or political attention than COVID-19 vaccinations. Due to non-pharmaceutical intervention measures the global influenza burden decreased substantially; but with lifting of restrictions a rebound in other respiratory virus pathogens is both plausible and likely. This article discusses lessons identified from the UK and USA, and provides recommendations for future influenza vaccination programs in light of emerging data from the southern hemisphere and the need for harmonization with COVID-19 vaccination, focusing on operational delivery and messaging to practitioners and the public.

Community engagement education in academic health centers, colleges, and universities.

Community engagement (CE) is critical for advancing health equity and a key approach for promoting inclusive clinical and translational science. However, it requires a workforce trained to effectively design, implement, and evaluate health promotion and improvement strategies through meaningful collaboration with community members. This paper presents an approach for designing CE curricula for research, education, clinical care, and public health learners. A general pedagogical framework is presented to support curriculum development with the inclusion of community members as facilitators or faculty. The overall goal of the curriculum is envisioned as enabling learners to effectively demonstrate the principles of CE in working with community members on issues of concern to communities to promote health and well-being. We highlight transformations needed for the commonly used critical service-learning model and the importance of faculty well-versed in CE. Courses may include didactics and practicums with well-defined objectives and evaluation components. Because of the importance of building and maintaining relationships in CE, a preparatory phase is recommended prior to experiential learning, which should be guided and designed to include debriefing and reflective learning. Depending on the scope of the course, evaluation should include community perspectives on the experience.

SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and uveitis: Are they linked?

In 2019, the discovery of a new strain of Coronavirus, later referred to as SARS-CoV2 took the world by storm, leading to a pandemic and shutting down all global activities. Several measures were taken adequately to combat the viral havoc, including developing numerous vaccines. All the vaccines currently available for the general population went through rigorous screenings and trials to ensure maximum safety and were only approved after that. However, once they were rolled out in the markets and administered to the population, some adverse reactions were reported, one of which included uveitis. It is an ocular inflammatory condition of the uveal tract, choroid, or iris. If untreated, it can lead to severe consequences, including blindness. It is further divided into four categories based on its anatomical location. Despite the rare incidence of uveitis following COVID-19 vaccination, it may contribute to vaccine hesitancy; hence addressing and digging into the pathophysiological cause is crucial. This study evaluates all the pathophysiological and demographical links between COVID-19 vaccination and uveitis, suggesting appropriate management plans.

COVID-19 management landscape: A need for an affordable platform to manufacture safe and efficacious biotherapeutics and prophylactics for the developing countries.

To gain world-wide control over COVID-19 pandemic, it is necessary to have affordable and accessible vaccine and monoclonal antibody technologies across the globe. In comparison to the western countries, Asian and African countries have less percentage of vaccination done which warrants urgent attention. Global manufacturer production capacities, dependency on advanced nations for the supply of vaccines or the raw material, national economy, limited research facilities, and logistics could be the factors. This review article elaborates the existing therapeutic and prophylactic strategies available for COVID-19, currently adopted vaccine and monoclonal antibody platforms for SARS-CoV-2 along with the approaches to bridge the gap prevailing in the challenges faced by low- and middle-income countries. We believe adoption of yeast-derived P. pastoris technology can help in developing safe, proven, easy to scale-up, and affordable recombinant vaccine or monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. This platform has the advantage of not requiring a dedicated or specialized facility making it an affordable option using existing manufacturing facilities, without significant additional capital investments. Besides, the technology platform of multiantigen vaccine approach and monoclonal antibody cocktail will serve as effective weapons to combat the threat posed by the SARS-CoV-2 variants. Successful development of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies using such a technology will lead to self-sufficiency of these nations in terms of availability of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies.

Mysterious dengue-like virus: A case report from Pakistan.

Recently, in Pakistan, several cases of mysterious dengue-like illness are being reported, which has concerned the authorities and requires prompt action. We present a case of a 52-year-old female patient presenting with a history of continuous fever, documented up to 104 F, for 5 days. The symptoms were associated with headache, nausea, retro-orbital headache, arthralgia, and myalgia. Currently, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported case in the literature for the endemic mysterious virus and may serve as the groundwork for future studies.

The Implementation of National Action Plan (NAP) on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in Bangladesh: Challenges and Lessons Learned from a Cross-Sectional Qualitative Study.

This study explored the current situation of the National Action Plan (NAP) on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) implementation in Bangladesh and examined how different sectors (human, animal, and environment) addressed the AMR problem in policy and practice, as well as associated challenges and barriers to identifying policy lessons and practices. Informed by a rapid review of the available literature and following the World Health Organization (WHO) AMR situation analysis framework, a guideline was developed to conduct in-depth interviews with selected stakeholders from January to December 2021. Data were analysed using an adapted version of Anderson's governance framework. Findings reveal the absence of required inter-sectoral coordination essential to a multisectoral approach. There was substantial coordination between the human health and livestock/fisheries sectors, but the environment sector was conspicuously absent. The government initiated some hospital-based awareness programs and surveillance activities, yet no national Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) framework was established for NAP activities. Progress of implementation was slow, constrained by the shortage of a trained health workforce and financial resources, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. To summarise, five years into the development of the NAP in Bangladesh, its implementation is not up to the level that the urgency of the situation requires. The policy and practice need to be cognisant of this fact and do the needful things to avoid a catastrophe.