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The current COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on global health security, and some developed countries have promoted "vaccine nationalism” based on the principle of self-interested supremacy and have adopted the approach of seizing pre-sale opportunities in the procurement of vaccines and competing for the right to distribute vaccines to obstruct fair and reasonable distribution of vaccines worldwide. This article analyses the current situation of and predicament caused by the pandemic in the Middle East which has to bear the brunt of the influence and detrimental impact of vaccine nationalism. By analysing the vaccine cooperation model and mechanism between China and countries in the Middle East, this article investigates how China's vaccine cooperation in the Middle East has transcended vaccine nationalism. Vaccine nationalism has not only affected the availability of vaccines in countries in the Middle East but also threatened the health and safety of the region. The international vaccine cooperation between China and Middle Eastern countries is therefore an effective hedge against the negative impact of vaccine nationalism, highlighting China's fundamental stance to safeguard the attributes of vaccines as public goods and also demonstrating to the international community China's exemplary role in the fight against the pandemic. © China: An International Journal.
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This paper empirically investigates how governments' COVID-19 relief policies have affected firms in 14 post-communist economies under the global value chain shortage between May 2020 and January 2022. We construct a panel dataset with firms that were continuously observed in three rounds of the World Bank's COVID-19 survey to comprehensively evaluate the dynamic changes in the firms' value chains, production, and finances. We further estimate the determinants of these changes, especially the roles played by the government. We find that under the impact of COVID-19, (1) reduced production capacity or reduced supply significantly increased the likelihood of reduced production and finances, whereas reduced demand had the opposite impact;(2) receiving support from the government augmented the impacts of affected production capacities and value chains;(3) among firms with restricted capacity or supplies, receiving government support increased the likelihood of reduced production and finances;and (4) among firms with abundant capacity and supplies, receiving government support lowered the likelihood of reduced production and finances. Other variables, such as firms' size, remote workforce, online businesses, and exports, also exhibit significant influences. © 2023 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
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Viruses are one of the main pathogens that endanger human health. The infectious diseases caused by virus infection and transmission seriously threaten human health. At present, viral diseases with high morbidity and low cure rate such as AIDS and viral hepatitis are still spreading around the whole world, and respiratory viruses such as influenza virus and corona virus are constantly mutating. Since 2019, the global epidemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has brought severe challenges to the world, and there are still great uncertainties in the future course of the epidemic. Therefore, the development of safe and effective antiviral drugs has become an important means to deal with viral diseases. On the basis of summarizing the overall status of global antiviral drug research and development, this paper intends to analyze the progress of new drug research in key areas such as anti-HIV, hepatitis virus and SARS-CoV-2, and put forward suggestions to provide guidance and reference for the development of more efficient antiviral drugs in the future. © 2022, China Biotechnology Press. All rights reserved.
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Background. Symptoms during acute COVID-19 can limit daily activities and delay return to work and school. Little is known about the association between SARS-CoV-2 burden in either the upper airway or plasma and the duration of COVID-19 symptoms. Methods. ACTIV-2/A5401 is a platform trial for COVID-19 treatments in nonhospitalized symptomatic adults enrolled within 10 days of symptom onset. We included participants randomized to placebo from August 2020 to July 2021. Participants self-reported severity of 13 symptoms daily from day 0 (baseline) to 28 as Absent 0, Mild 1, Moderate 2, Severe 3;total symptom score was calculated as the sum of all scores. Anterior nasal (AN) and plasma SARS-CoV-2 RNA levels at day 0 were measured with a quantitative qPCR assay. The relationship between day 0 RNA and time to symptom improvement or resolution (first of 2 consecutive days of all symptoms improved or resolved from day 0, respectively) was evaluated using proportional hazards regression adjusted for time from symptom onset. Time to resolution of distinct symptoms was also assessed. Results. Among 570 participants randomized to placebo, median age was 48 years, 51% were female, and median time since symptom onset at baseline was 6 days;7% had prior COVID-19 vaccination. At day 0, AN RNA was detectable in 80% with a median of 4.1 log10 copies/ml (n=533, quartiles: 1.7, 6.0) and plasma RNA was detectable in 19% (91/476). Detectable plasma RNA at day 0, but not AN RNA, was associated with more severe symptoms at day 0 (2.4-point higher mean total symptom score, P=0.001). Both high AN (>=6 vs < 2 log10 copies/ml, adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] 0.63, P=0.001) and detectable plasma RNA (aHR 0.74, P=0.03) at day 0 predicted delayed symptom improvement. High AN RNA at day 0 also predicted a delay in symptom resolution (aHR 0.59, P=0.001). Both high AN RNA and detectable plasma RNA levels predicted delays in the resolution of cough and shortness of breath. Detectable plasma RNA also predicted delayed body pain resolution.
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Since December 2019, some hospitals in Wuhan, Hubei Province have found many cases of unidentified pneumonia, which were later named COVID-19. In recent years, the disease has spread widely all over the world. Many researchers are trying many methods to make rapid discovery and diagnosis for COVID-19, which is important to facilitate the treatment of the disease and to reduce its transmission. In this study, we propose the comparison of methods for COVID-19 pneumonia diagnosis based on chest X-ray (CXR) images using Transformer and CNN. Both of them are two of the most commonly studied deep learning method. In this paper, all four models will be trained with the COVID-19 Chest X-ray Database and tested for the performance on the four-class classification. The results showed that Swin Transformer achieved the highest score in the comparison of accuracy as 0.916. Additionally, VGG as one of CNN architectures performs well on the recognition of COVID-19 positive. This study can help doctors reduce their workload and effectively improve the speed and accuracy of detection of COVID-19 and other viral pneumonia. © 2022 SPIE.
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In many microfluidic applications, unwanted bubbles can be formed in the microfluidic device and adversely affect device operation. In this work, a novel membrane-based debubbler is developed to remove bubbles in the microfluidic device quickly and efficiently. Our experiments show that this new debubbler can perform well at a flow rate of up to 500 µl/min, and have a very small dead volume of less than 0.35µl. Besides, it has also been verified to be workable on a PCR assay for the SARS-CoV-2 test. © 2021 MicroTAS 2021 - 25th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences. All rights reserved.
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To investigate the anxiety, depression, fatigue and insomnia of the entry quarantine personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the influencing factors of psychological status were also explored. The Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), Fatigue severity scale (FSS) and the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) of 630 entry quarantine personnel were performed and the correlation analysis of the four types of scales was performed. The incidence rates of anxiety, depression, fatigue and insomnia were 4.76%, 20.00%, 48.57% and 22.86%, respectively. There was a positive correlation between the four indicators. Univariate analysis showed that age, education level, occupation, continent and reasons for going abroad were the main influencing factors of psychosomatic status. The lower the age group, the higher the education level, and the healthier the psychosomatic health of the entry quarantine personnel. The psychological status of international students was healthier than that of the staff. The psychological condition of the quarantined people in Asia was healthier than that in other continents. 630 entry quarantine personnel had different degrees of anxiety, depression, fatigue and insomnia, there was a positive correlation between them. Age, education level, occupation, continent and reasons for going abroad were the main influencing factors of psychological status. © 2022, Sociedade Brasileira de Ciencia e Tecnologia de Alimentos, SBCTA. All rights reserved.
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Introduction Hemophilia A and B are rare bleeding disorders characterized by ineffective clot formation due to impaired thrombin generation as a result of deficiency of FVIII or FIX, respectively. Fitusiran is a subcutaneously (SC) administered investigational siRNA therapeutic targeting antithrombin to restore thrombin generation and rebalance hemostasis in people with hemophilia A or B, with or without inhibitors. Here, we present the safety and efficacy of fitusiran prophylaxis for PwHI in a phase 3 study (ATLAS-INH;NCT03417102). Methods The ATLAS-INH study is a randomized, open-label Phase 3 study designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of fitusiran in PwHI. Eligible males ≥12 years receiving on-demand treatment with bypassing agents (BPA) were randomized in a 2:1 ratio to receive once monthly 80 mg SC fitusiran prophylaxis or continue with on-demand BPA. The primary endpoint is annualized bleeding rate (ABR) in PwHI on fitusiran prophylaxis compared to those on BPA on-demand in the efficacy period. The secondary endpoints include spontaneous ABR, joint ABR, and quality of life (QoL) measured by Haem-A-QoL. Results 57 subjects were randomized into the study. Mean (range) age of the study participants at screening was 28.4 (13-63) yrs. Statistical significance was achieved for primary and all secondary endpoints with significant reduction in ABRs of treated bleeds: all, spontaneous and joint bleeds for fitusiran vs on-demand BPA arm (Table 1). A total of 25 patients in fitusiran arm (65.8%) had zero treated bleeding events. Efficacy of fitusiran prophylaxis treatment was seen in both hemophilia A and hemophilia B patients with inhibitors. Statistical significance was also achieved for improvement in physical health domain score, with a difference (95% CI) of -28.72 (-39.07 to -18.37, p-value <0.0001) as well as overall HRQoL and between fitusiran and on-demand BPA arms. Overall, 38 patients (92.7%) in the fitusiran arm and 11 patients (57.9%) in the on-demand BPA arm experienced at least 1 treatment emergent adverse event (TEAE). A total of 13 treatment emergent serious adverse events (TESAEs) were reported in 7 patients (17.1%) in the fitusiran arm and 8 TESAEs were reported in 5 patients (26.3%) in the on-demand BPA arm. All TESAEs were reported in 1 patient each;in the fitusiran prophylaxis arm these included events of device related infection, hematuria, spinal vascular disorder, subclavian vein thrombosis, thrombosis, acute cholecystitis, chronic cholecystitis and asymptomatic COVID-19. One patient (2.4%) in the fitusiran arm experienced TEAEs that resulted in study drug discontinuation (spinal vascular disorder and thrombosis). There were no fatal TEAEs reported. Conclusions This Phase 3 study demonstrated the efficacy of the 80 mg monthly subcutaneous prophylaxis dose of fitusiran in people with hemophilia A or B with inhibitors. Specifically, fitusiran significantly reduced bleeding with a median ABR of zero and significant proportion of people with zero bleeds, resulting in a meaningful improvement in health-related quality of life. Reported TESAEs were generally consistent with what is anticipated in an adult and adolescent population with severe hemophilia A or B with inhibitors, or with the previously identified risks of fitusiran. A revised fitusiran dosing regimen with reduced dose and dose frequency is currently being evaluated in ongoing clinical studies. [Formula presented] Disclosures: Young: Genentech/Roche, Grifols, and Takeda: Research Funding;Apcintex, BioMarin, Genentech/Roche, Grifols, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Rani, Sanofi Genzyme, Spark, Takeda, and UniQure: Consultancy. Kavakli: Roche: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Support;Novo Nordisk A/S: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Support;Takeda: Consultancy, Other: Clinical Trial Support. Poloskey: Sanofi: Current Employment, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company. Qui: Sanofi: Current Employment, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company. Kichou: Sanofi: Current Employment, Current equity holder in publicly-tr ded company. Andersson: Sanofi: Current Employment, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company;WEST advisory committee member: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Mei: Sanofi: Current Employment, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company. Rangarajan: Sanofi: Other: Advisory Board;Pfizer: Other: Advisory Board;Reliance Life Sciences: Consultancy;Takeda: Other: Advisory Board, Conference Support, Speakers Bureau.
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As one of the ways to reflect the views of the masses in modern society, online reviews have great value in public opinion research. The analysis of potential public opinion information from online reviews has a certain value for the government to clarify the next work direction. In this paper, the event evolution graph is designed to make COVID-19 network public opinion prediction. The causal relationship was extracted in the network reviews after the COVID-19 incident to build an event evolution graph of COVID-19 and predict the possibility of the occurrence of the derivative public opinion. The research results show the hot events and evolution direction of COVID-19 network public opinion in a clear way, and it can provide reference for the network regulatory department to implement intervention. © 2021, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Background: Merkel Cell Carcinoma (MCC) is a cutaneous malignancy with neuroendocrine differentiation, linked to infection with polyomavirus (MCPyV) in 80% of cases. PD1 inhibitors have recently been approved for this indication with ORR, 33-56%;CR, 11-24%;PFS, about 17 months;OS, about 12 months. Nivolumab was tested in the neoadjuvant setting with similar responses with pathological CR, 47%. Methods: Adjuvant pilot study (NCT03798639) with two immunotherapy regimens administered for one year to patients with completely resected MCC at high risk of recurrence (primary lesion of 2 cm2 or greater, positive or close margins ( < 2 cm), perineural or lymphovascular invasion, mitotic index ≥ 20 mitotic figures per mm2 , lymph node involvement (stage pIIIA or pIIIB) with or without extracapsular extension, or completely resected stage IV disease). Arm 1, nivolumab 480 mg q 4 wks and radiation therapy (RT) 50-60 Gy in 25-30 fractions, per standard of care. Arm 2, nivolumab 240 mg q 2 wks and ipilimumab 1 mg/kg q 6 wks. Primary objective was feasibility and completion of treatment in this population. Safety profile (CTCAE v5.0) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) after 18 months were secondary endpoints. Patients were randomly allocated 1:1. Results: Ten patients were screened from January 2019 until April 2020, when COVID put the study on hold and the sponsor discontinued the free drug supply. Seven were enrolled. Four were allocated to Arm 1 and three to Arm 2. Patient characteristics in Table. All patients have completed treatment and are in follow-up. Arm 1: all four patients completed radiation therapy and immunotherapy with no dose modifications or delays. Arm 2: one patient had nivolumab delayed 2 weeks for cellulitis, and another missed the last four last doses of nivolumab for cholecystitis and pancreatitis requiring surgery, unrelated to the immunotherapy. Adverse events (AE) were as expected. Arm1 caused more grade 2 and 3 AEs then Arm2 (no grade 3). One patient each discontinued treatment, in Arm 1 for progression and Arm 2 for immunotoxicity (temporal arteritis grade 2). One recurrence was observed in Arm 1 and none in Arm 2. Conclusions: The number of patients expected to recur at 1 year is 20%. Our observed data is insufficient to establish efficacy. However with no patient recurring in the ipilimumab arm after 18 months of follow-up and lower observed side effects, we would favor this regimen for the next trial.
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Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, many people have to accept remote working. However, as COVID-19 has been effectively controlled in China, remote office services provided by enterprise social networks (ESNs) is no longer a necessary choice of users. There has not yet been any referen-tial research for ESN enterprises concerning how to encourage users willing to use ESNs continu-ously. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to identify the critical factors of ESN continuous usage intention to make up the research gap of ESN continuous usage intention and to help enterprises address the issue of sustained growth. This research combines elements of the task technology fit (TTF) model and D&M information systems success (ISS) model, explaining the continuous usage intention of ESN users. The empirical analysis results are based on the sample data of 668 Chinese respondents with experience in ESNs use and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results show that task technology fit, performance expectancy and the satisfaction degree have a significant influence on continuous usage intention of ESNs. The research findings can provide the theoretical basis for sustained development and follow-up research of the ESN industry. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
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With the acceleration of global economic integration and digital economy, cross-border mobile payment has gained growing attention. On the other hand, as COVID-19 keeps on spreading, the popularization of cross-border mobile payment can lower the risk of infection caused by cash payment of tourists. However, though previous researchers already examined mobile payment users’ behavioral intention from different perspectives, these research findings tend to concentrate on the non-cross-border section of mobile payment. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to examine factors influencing cross-border mobile payment use intention from the user perspective, and combining three theoretical models, chiefly UTAUT2 (extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology), ITM (initial trust model), and TTF (task technology fit). In this research, 786 Chinese with the experience of using cross-border mobile payment while traveling to South Korea are adopted as respondents, and the structural equation model is used to empirically analyze the data of these research samples. The study found that initial trust, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, price value, task technology fit, and initial trust have significant effects on use intention. Research findings of this paper can deepen people’s understanding of users’ intention to use cross-border mobile payment, and provide theoretical support for the development of cross-border mobile payment. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
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Research has demonstrated the cognitive and mental health benefits of learning new skills and content across the life span, enhancing knowledge as well as cognitive performance. We argue that the importance of this learning-which is not available equally to all-goes beyond the cognitive and mental health benefits. Learning is important for not only the maintenance, but also enhancement of functional independence in a dynamic environment, such as changes induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and technological advances. Learning difficult skills and content is a privilege because the opportunities for learning are neither guaranteed nor universal, and it requires personal and social engagement, time, motivation, and societal support. This paper highlights the importance of considering learning new skills and content as an important privilege across the life span and argues that this privilege becomes increasingly exclusionary as individuals age, when social and infrastructural support for learning decreases. We highlight research on the potential positive and negative impacts of retirement, when accessibility to learning opportunities may vary, and research on learning barriers due to low expectations and limited resources from poverty. We conclude that addressing barriers to lifelong learning would advance theories on life span cognitive development and raise the bar for successful aging. In doing so, our society might imagine and achieve previously unrealized gains in life span cognitive development, through late adulthood. © 2021