The Public Library "Bora Stankovic" in Vranje and the COVID-19 Pandemic

The previous year was marked by the challenges imposed by the covid-19 pandemic and epidemiological measures that significantly hindered the regular functioning of all segments of our life and work. Libraries around the world have closed their doors to limit virus transmission and preserve human health. What hasn't stopped and shut down is finding ways to preserve users and provide key services. Librarians have strengthened and focused on their essential role of serving the public, acting responsibly and reinforcing their unwavering commitment to, more than ever, providing users with the infrastructure to openly access information, collections, and meet the new demands of their community. The aim of this paper is to look at the position and functioning of public libraries during the coronavirus pandemic, with special emphasis on the activities of the "Bora Stankovic" Library in Vranje. Vranje librarians overcame the new challenges and, despite the unenviable situation, adjusted their programs to the "new normality", continued to provide their services, and successfully implemented content, among which the most important is certainly the implementation of the Biblionet 2020 in our city.

Weight gain in lung transplantation patients during the COVID-19 pandemic in Croatia

Background: To determine the effect of lockdown measures on lung transplant patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Subjects and methods: We collected data from Croatian lung transplant patients before and after the lockdown and analyzed changes in weight, BMI, lung function and blood lipid status. Result(s): An average increase of 3.74 kg (+4.92%) body weight during the 4 month lockdown period was observed. Lung function values and blood lipid status remained stable. Conclusion(s): Such weight gain could have detrimental effects on the morbidity and mortality of lung transplant patients. Further follow up is needed to determine the long term impacts of this observation. Copyright © Medicinska naklada - Zagreb, Croatia.

The COVID-19 pandemic - related psychological distress and job burnout among Serbian pharmacy practitioners: a cross-sectional online study.

OBJECTIVE: The current COVID-19 pandemic has increased occupational stress for all healthcare providers, making job burnout one of the most common and largely unrecognized mental health issues among healthcare professionals. Besides physicians and nurses, pharmacy practitioners were "front-line" healthcare professionals with a critical and unique role in the public health crisis. Considering this, the aim of this study was to examine distress levels and the prevalence of job burnout among Serbian pharmacy practitioners in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: This cross-sectional online study was conducted in April and May of 2020. A total of 176 pharmacy practitioners anonymously and voluntarily completed the two-section questionnaire, consisting of Copenhagen burnout inventory, CBI and 4DSQ Distress subscale. The two-section questionnaire was distributed online, among various social-media groups of pharmacy practitioners, as well as by personal contacts following the "snowball" sampling method. RESULTS: Results revealed moderately high burnout scores in our sample. The majority of the participants showed signs of personal-related job burnout, followed by work-related and client-related burnout. A strongly elevated distress level was obtained in almost two-thirds of study respondents. In addition, a significant and high correlation of all CBI subscales with distress was found, as well as medium correlations with sleep duration shortening as a mediator between distress and job burnout. CONCLUSIONS: Results of our study showed that job burnout significantly increased among pharmacy practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, we discovered that stress has an indirect impact on study participants' burnout via insufficient sleep.

Direct and indirect effect of intolerance of uncertainty on distress during the covid-19 pandemic

Since the coronavirus outbreak influenced the whole population in 2020, many individuals, both directly and indirectly affected, experienced increased levels of distress at that time. Such a global mental health crisis requires identification of key mechanisms which contribute to distress during pandemic. Specificity of COVID-19 outbreak was lack of sufficient information at the beginning and, consequently, a high level of perceived uncertainty. The main aim of this study was to examine the influence of the intolerance of uncertainty to the experienced level of distress during the pandemic. Additionally, influence of media exposure and fear were examined. Total of 740 participants took part in an online study during the coronavirus outbreak in Serbia. Moderately high level of distress was recorded in our sample. About 1/3 of participants were in each group: no distress, moderately high and highly elevated. Results of serial mediation analysis showed that the intolerance of uncertainty had a significant direct effect on distress, but also indirect via fear of COVID-19 and media exposure. Higher levels of intolerance of uncertainty lead to more time spent on media looking for information, and consequently to higher fear and distress levels. Furthermore, it was shown that media exposure also increased the level of fear. Such results emphasized the importance of unambiguous, clear informing during the time of crisis which can decrease uncertainty, and provided some practical implication for media and authorities. © 2020 Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, Serbia. All rights reserved.

The reliability of SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody testing - a pilot study in asymptomatic health care workers in a Croatian university hospital

Aim To evaluate three fully automated serological assays in terms of reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulin G (IgG) and perform SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody testing among asymptomatic health care workers (HCW) at the University Hospital Center Zagreb. Methods Three IgG serological assays (Abbott SARS-CoV-2 IgG, Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2, and MAGLUMI 2019-nCoV IgG) were initially evaluated by analyzing 42 samples from confirmed COVID-19-recovered patients and 48 negative individuals. A total of 1678 HCW (similar to 30% of all hospital employees) were screened for SARS-CoV-2 IgG with the Abbott assay, run on Abbott Architect i2000SR. The samples exceeding the predefined cut-off (1.4 S/C) were reanalyzed with the Elecsys, MAGLUMI, and VIDAS SARS-COV-2 IgG assays. Results Initially, the MAGLUMI 2019-nCoV IgG produced 26.2% false negatives and the Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 produced one false positive. Among 1678 HCW, the Abbott assay showed only 10 (0.6%) positive results, with mostly mildly elevated signals. Nine of these samples were nonreactive when they were retested with the Elecsys, MAGLUMI, and VIDAS assays. As for the one remaining sample, it was positive when tested with the Elecsys assay, while the other two assays yielded negative results. Conclusions SARS-CoV-2 IgG seroprevalence among asymptomatic HCW in our hospital setting was low, with different assays indicating a different number of positive samples. One of the assays yielded a large false negative rate. These findings can be attributed to differences in assay formulation but also to heterogeneity and diverse reactivity of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 antigens.