Engagement of Healthcare Professionals in Voluntary Activities During COVID-19: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: The coming various disasters, especially probable pandemics, will need a large number of volunteers with different capabilities. Motivation of volunteers, as a driving force, will be very important for future pandemic disaster planning. The aim of this study was to determine the enablers and barriers to the engagement of healthcare professionals in voluntary activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at the General Internal Medicine Departments of Imam Khomeini Hospital Complex in Tehran, Iran. A 44-item questionnaire was designed based on the Literature Review and Experts Panel. Items were scored on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from "strongly disagree (1)” to "strongly agree (5)”. Content validity and face validity of the questionnaire were checked by 10 experts and 10 respondents, respectively. Cronbach's alpha of the items of stimulating and inhibitory factors' section was calculated 0.83 and 0.92, respectively. A self-administrated paper-based questionnaire has been distributed among healthcare team members. Results: Out of 105 health care professionals, 80 (76.2%) were female and 41 (39%) were married. The most significant demographic predictor of willingness to volunteering was having no child (p-value=0.001). History of infection, admission, or death of family members or friends in the current pandemic was an important factor to reduce the desire to voluntary activities significantly (p-value=0.019). Depressive disorders and using antidepressants had no relation with the attraction to volunteering, but anxiety disorders had a significant relation with the willingness to be a volunteer (p-value=0.04). Conclusion: The most important demographic variables influencing the unwillingness to participate in voluntary activities during the COVID-19 crisis are parenting role, history of anxiety disorders, and history of hospitalization or death of relatives or friends. Furthermore, the voluntary participation of healthcare professionals is influenced by facilitating factors such as giving rewards, reducing the period of obligatory military service, having a sense of altruism, and helping others. Copyright © 2023, Journal of Iranian Medical Council. All rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The Prevalence of Electrolyte Imbalances and Their Relationship with Disease Severity in Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients

Since the identification of COVID-19, its various manifestations have been reported in numerous studies. However, few studies have specifically examined the electrolyte imbalances seen in this disease. Patients with a definitive diagnosis of COVID-19 admitted to our hospital entered this retrospective cross-sectional study. Upon admission of the patients, a blood sample was sent for the analysis of the electrolytes. The relationship between electrolyte imbalances and disease severity, ICU admission, and mortality was also stated. Of 1072 hospitalized patients studied, 657 were men, and 415 were women. The prevalence of hypocalcemia (47.7%), hypophosphatemia (21.1%), hypomagnesemia (15.8%), and hyponatremia (13%) was higher compared to other electrolyte imbalances in these patients. Lower levels of sodium, calcium, and magnesium were seen in severe cases, while higher serum levels of potassium and phosphorus were detected in severe cases and ICU hospitalized patients. Causes such as albumin decrease in inflammation, the role of PTH, and the effect of vitamin D can play a role in hypocalcemia in these patients. In addition, electrolyte loss from the digestive tract can contribute to electrolyte imbalances. Because of the high prevalence of electrolyte imbalance in these patients, electrolyte monitoring is recommended in COVID-19 patients to ensure better care. © 2022, Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.

A nonlinear optimal control method against the spreading of epidemics

To define a vaccination policy and antiviral treatment against the spreading of viral infections a nonlinear optimal (H-infinity) control approach is proposed. Actually, because of the scarcity of the resources for treating infectious diseases in terms of vaccines, antiviral drugs and other medical facilities, there is need to implement optimal control against the epidemics deployment. In this approach, the state-space model of the epidemics dynamics undergoes first approximate linearization around a temporary operating point which is recomputed at each time-step of the control method. The linearization is based on Taylor series expansion and on the computation of the associated Jacobian matrices. Next, an optimal (H-infinity) feedback controller is developed for the approximately linearized model of the epidemics. To compute the controller's feedback gains an algebraic Riccati equation is solved at each iteration of the control algorithm. Furthermore, the global asymptotic stability properties of the control scheme are proven through Lyapunov stability analysis. This paper's results confirm that optimal control of the infectious disease dynamics allows for eliminating its spreading while also keeping moderate the consumption of the related medication, that is vaccines and antiviral drugs.

Evaluation of the proficiency of distinguished countries in managing COVID-19

Introduction: The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become one of the important global challenges. According to World Health Organization (WHO), a long-term challenge is ahead. This study endeavored to investigate the performance of distinguished countries in the management of Covid-19 in two areas of disease control and treatment.