Bioactive compounds of Jingfang Granules against SARS-CoV-2 virus proteases 3CLpro and PLpro.

OBJECTIVE: Jingfang Granules have been recommended for the prevention and treatment of corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Through chemical analysis and bioactivity evaluation, this study aims to elucidate the potential effective components of Jingfang Granules. METHOD(S): The inhibitory acti-vities of Jingfang Granules extract against 3-chymotrypsin-like protease (3CLpro), papain like protease (PLpro), spike protein receptor-binding domain (S-RBD) and human cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) were evaluated using enzyme assay. The antitussive effects were evaluated using the classical ammonia-induced cough model. The chemical constituents of Jingfang Granules were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS). The 3CLpro and PLpro inhibitory activities of the major compounds were determined by enzyme assay, molecular docking, and site-directed mutagenesis. RESULT(S): Jingfang Granules exhibited 3CLpro and PLpro inhibitory activities, as well as COX-2 inhibitory and antitussive activities. By investigating the MS/MS behaviors of reference standards, a total of fifty-six compounds were characterized in Jingfang Granules. Sixteen of them were unambiguously identified by comparing with reference standards. The contents of the 16 major compounds were also determined, and their total contents were 2 498.8 mug/g. Naringin, nodakenin and neohesperidin were three dominating compounds in Jingfang Granules, and their contents were 688.8, 596.4 and 578.7 mug/g, respectively. In addition, neohesperidin and naringin exhibited PLpro inhibitory activities, and the inhibition rates at 8 mumol/L were 53.5% and 46.1%, respectively. Prim-O-glucosylcimifugin showed significant inhibitory activities against 3CLpro and PLpro, and the inhibitory rates at 8 mumol/L were 76.8% and 78.2%, respectively. Molecular docking indicated that hydrogen bonds could be formed between prim-O-glucosylcimifugin and amino acid residues H163, E166, Q192, T190 of 3CLpro (binding energy, -7.7 kcal/mol) and K157, D164, R166, E167, T301 of PLpro(-7.3 kcal/mol), respectively. Site-directed mutagenesis indicated amino acid residue K157 was a key active site for the interaction between prim-O-glucosylcimifugin and PLpro. CONCLUSION(S): Prim-O-glucosylcimifugin, neohesperidin, and naringin as the major compounds from Jingfang Granules could inhibit severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus proteases 3CLpro and PLpro. The results are valuable for rational clinical use of Jingfang Granules.

The unequal others: mediation of distant COVID-19 suffering in Chinese television news

This study explores how the Chinese media have legitimated the Chinese government's anti-COVID policy at home by constructing the spectatorship of foreign countries' suffering during the pandemic. Using the Oriental News of Shanghai Media Group (SMG), a leader in Chinese provincial media, as a case study, the present study reveals that the core countries within the world system have been reported on more often than the semi-peripheral and peripheral countries. News about core countries also precedes news about non-core countries during the parts of broadcasts that concern the global COVID-19 pandemic. China's specific geopolitical and national political contexts have significantly influenced the mediation of COVID-19 suffering in various countries. While the US is represented as experiencing multiple forms of "chaos” during the pandemic, African countries are represented as "allied others” or "weak others.” News about India, a country with national conditions similar to those of China, reminds Chinese spectators that the Chinese government's strict controls are correct and effective. The mediation of other countries' sufferings has produced various degrees of emotional involvement on the part of the Chinese public. © 2023 The Centre for Chinese Media and Comparative Communication Research, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Preservice Teachers' Envisioning of ELT in the Post-Pandemic Era: An Exploratory Study of Korean EFL Teachers

Teachers' accountability has arisen to swiftly respond to changes in teaching and learning in the time of COVID-19. Many researchers and educators have responded to the inquiry for envisioning teacher education during the pandemic;however, there is a dearth of research on preservice teachers' envisioning of English language teaching (ELT). Drawing upon the sociocultural perspectives of teachers and teaching, therefore, this qualitative study provided a glimpse of EFL preservice teachers' envisioning of ELT through their perceptions, experiences, and reflections regarding the post-COVID-19 pandemic era. Thirty-five EFL preservice teachers in South Korea participated in this study. Data included interviews, observations, fieldnotes, and argumentative essays written by the participants. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The study revealed three major findings. First, the participants perceived and envisioned ELT with emphasis on human interactions, task-based teaching, individualization, and technology use. Second, the participants indicated that teachers should play a major role to ensure effective language teaching. Third, the participants stated that preservice teachers need to be well-prepared in teacher education for the postCOVID-19 era. These findings suggest that teacher education should consider the needs and prospects of preservice teachers in the uncertain circumstances of the post-pandemic era. © 2022 Editorial Board TESL - EJ. All rights reserved.

Anti-Asian Discourse in Quora: Comparison of Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic with Machine- and Deep-Learning Approaches

The current study attempts to compare anti-Asian discourse before and during the COVID-19 pandemic by analyzing big data on Quora, one of the most frequently used community-driven knowledge sites. We created two datasets regarding "Asians” and "anti-Asians” from Quora questions and answers between 2010 and 2021. A total of 1,477 questions and 5,346 answers were analyzed, and the datasets were divided into two time periods: before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted machine-learning-based topic modeling and deep-learning-based word embedding (Word2Vec). Before the pandemic, the topics of physical difference and racism were prevalent, whereas, after the pandemic, the topics of hate crime, the need to stop Asian hate crimes, and the need for the Asian solidarity movement emerged. Above all, the semantic similarity between Asian and Black people became closer, while the similarity between Asian people and other racial/ethnic groups was diminished. The emergence of negative and radical language, which increased saliently after the outbreak of the pandemic, and the considerably wider semantic distance between Asian and White people indicates that the relationship between the two races has been weakened. The findings suggest a long-term campaign or education system to reduce racial tensions during the pandemic. © The Author(s) 2022.

Instant Message App-Based COVID-19 Outbreak Reminder Service Via Climate-Based Prediction

Now that the COVID-19 pandemic is serious, in order to maintain the quality of life and safety, it is very important to remind people of the outbreak. Because when the SARS pandemic occurred in the past, it was found that the pandemic situation had a certain relationship with the weather. Therefore, we tried to analyze the relationship between the pandemic situation and the weather by analyzing big data information, and we also tried to conclude the possible pandemic situation and climate-related prediction rules through big data. We hope to use the most popular instant messaging software - LINE in Taiwan to assist in the auxiliary reminders of the pandemic. When people use the weather pandemic robot, they can also find the correlation between the weather and the pandemic, and it also helps to remind the public to pay more attention to their own health. © 2022 IEEE.

Two-Stage OD Flow Prediction for Emergency in Urban Rail Transit

Urban rail transit (URT) is vulnerable to natural disasters and social emergencies including fire, storm and epidemic (such as COVID-19), and real-time origin-destination (OD) flow prediction provides URT operators with important information to ensure the safety of URT system. However, hindered by the high dimensionality of OD flow and the lack of supportive information reflecting the real-time passenger flow changes, study in this area is at the beginning stage. A novel model consisting of two stages is proposed for OD flow prediction. The first stage predicts the inflows of all stations by Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) in real time, where the dimension is reduced compared with predicting OD flows directly. In the second stage, the notion of separation rate, namely, the proportion of inbound passengers bounding for another station, is estimated. Finally, The OD flow is predicted by multiplying the inflow and separation rate. Experiments based on Hangzhou Metro dataset show the proposed model outperforms the contrast model in weighted mean average error (WMAE) and weighted mean square error (WMSE). Results also suggest that the proposed prediction model performs better on weekdays than on weekends, and with greater accuracy on larger OD flows. IEEE

Diagnosing Clinical Diseases using an Edge-Enabled Deep Learning Technology

Along with the development of high-speed communication networks, edge-enabled mobile devices have opened new possibilities for diagnosing health conditions or developing suitable treatment plans. While the latest deep learning technology has deployed to restructure and translate complex medical applications, the costly training operation using large-scale neural networks with tremendous amount of data remain the major challenge. In this work, we take advantages of reservoir computing to develop a reliable and low-cost medical diagnostic system for edge-enabled devices. Specifically, an echo state network (ESN) was trained to discover non-obvious correlation and likelihood from biomedical data with respect to various patients. Through the determination of cardiovascular and coronavirus diseases, numerical evaluations demonstrated advantage of ESN against the state-of-the-art. At particularly no computation overhead, ESN precisely described the prediction tasks of health conditions, offering improvements of up to 1000x in sample reduction, 175x in training speedup, and 15 percentage points in prediction accuracy. © 2022 IEEE.

Public information needs during the COVID-19 outbreak: a qualitative study in mainland China

PurposeThe impact of COVID-19 has led to a surge in the public's reliance on the Internet for pandemic information, and the policy of home isolation has exacerbated this. This study aimed to investigate public information needs and ways of accessing and disseminating information during COVID-19 in mainland China.Design/methodology/approachThis study used a qualitative research approach to conduct semi-structured interviews with 15 participants from 9 cities in mainland China about information needs and access behaviors during the COVID-19 outbreak. All interview recordings were converted into text and proofread, then coded and summarised in correspondence with the research questions using the grounded theory.FindingsThis study summarized the dynamics of public information needs during the 2.5-year pandemic and identified the difficulties in accessing certain information.Originality/valueAlthough information needs of public health emergencies have been a hot topic during COVID-19, scant studies focus on information needs in specific countries in Asia, especially in mainland China, the first country with a major outbreak and stringent lockdown mandates. Therefore, the current study is well enriched by focusing on information demand behavior in the context of COVID-19. Possible measures for improvement were also given to existing and potential problems, taking into account the participants' views.

[Bioactive compounds of Jingfang Granules against SARS-CoV-2 virus proteases 3CL(pro) and PL(pro)]

OBJECTIVE: Jingfang Granules have been recommended for the prevention and treatment of corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Through chemical analysis and bioactivity evaluation, this study aims to elucidate the potential effective components of Jingfang Granules. METHODS: The inhibitory acti-vities of Jingfang Granules extract against 3-chymotrypsin-like protease (3CL(pro)), papain like protease (PL(pro)), spike protein receptor-binding domain (S-RBD) and human cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) were evaluated using enzyme assay. The antitussive effects were evaluated using the classical ammonia-induced cough model. The chemical constituents of Jingfang Granules were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS). The 3CL(pro) and PL(pro) inhibitory activities of the major compounds were determined by enzyme assay, molecular docking, and site-directed mutagenesis. RESULTS: Jingfang Granules exhibited 3CL(pro) and PL(pro) inhibitory activities, as well as COX-2 inhibitory and antitussive activities. By investigating the MS/MS behaviors of reference standards, a total of fifty-six compounds were characterized in Jingfang Granules. Sixteen of them were unambiguously identified by comparing with reference standards. The contents of the 16 major compounds were also determined, and their total contents were 2 498.8 μg/g. Naringin, nodakenin and neohesperidin were three dominating compounds in Jingfang Granules, and their contents were 688.8, 596.4 and 578.7 μg/g, respectively. In addition, neohesperidin and naringin exhibited PL(pro) inhibitory activities, and the inhibition rates at 8 μmol/L were 53.5% and 46.1%, respectively. Prim-O-glucosylcimifugin showed significant inhibitory activities against 3CL(pro) and PL(pro), and the inhibitory rates at 8 μmol/L were 76.8% and 78.2%, respectively. Molecular docking indicated that hydrogen bonds could be formed between prim-O-glucosylcimifugin and amino acid residues H163, E166, Q192, T190 of 3CL(pro) (binding energy, -7.7 kcal/mol) and K157, D164, R166, E167, T301 of PL(pro)(-7.3 kcal/mol), respectively. Site-directed mutagenesis indicated amino acid residue K157 was a key active site for the interaction between prim-O-glucosylcimifugin and PL(pro). CONCLUSION: Prim-O-glucosylcimifugin, neohesperidin, and naringin as the major compounds from Jingfang Granules could inhibit severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus proteases 3CL(pro) and PL(pro). The results are valuable for rational clinical use of Jingfang Granules.

S2 Subunit of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Induces Domain Fusion in Natural Pulmonary Surfactant Monolayers.

Pulmonary surfactant has been attempted as a supportive therapy to treat COVID-19. Although it is mechanistically accepted that the fusion peptide in the S2 subunit of the S protein plays a predominant role in mediating viral fusion with the host cell membrane, it is still unknown how the S2 subunit interacts with the natural surfactant film. Using combined bio-physicochemical assays and atomic force microscopy imaging, it was found that the S2 subunit inhibited the biophysical properties of the surfactant and induced microdomain fusion in the surfactant monolayer. The surfactant inhibition has been attributed to membrane fluidization caused by insertion of the S2 subunit mediated by its fusion peptide. These findings may provide novel insight into the understanding of bio-physicochemical mechanisms responsible for surfactant interactions with SARS-CoV-2 and may have translational implications in the further development of surfactant replacement therapy for COVID-19 patients.

Racial disparity in COVID-19 severity after adjusting for chronic illnesses and sociodemographic factors

Background. Research has reported that African American (AA) cancer patients with COVID-19 had a higher hospitalization rate than their white counterparts. Because the severity of COVID-19 is partly related to existing chronic diseases, one of the speculations is that racial differences in COVID-19 severity are attributable to AA cancer patients having a higher prevalence of chronic illnesses. Our study aimed to assess the impact of existing chronic diseases on the racial differences in hospitalization and length of hospitalization in COVID-19 cancer patients in Louisiana. Methods. We linked cancer cases diagnosed in 2015-2019 from the Louisiana Tumor Registry (LTR) with the statewide COVID-19 data to identify COVID-19 patients who had been previously diagnosed with cancer. We also identified chronic illnesses (i.e., heart disease, peripheral vascular and cerebrovascular diseases, pulmonary disease, renal disease, liver disease, diabetes, and others) from 2012-2020 hospital discharge data and LTR data. Age and census tract level poverty were at the time of COVID-19 diagnosis. Bivariate and multivariable logistic regressions were used to exam the association of race with hospitalization after adjusting for socio-demographic and chronic illnesses. The multivariable Poisson model was used to assess the racial disparity in length (in days) of hospitalization. Results. Of 6,518 COVID-19 cancer patients, there were 30.8% AA, 68.4% whites, and 0.8% other races. AA, male, older, residing in high poverty, and patients with chronic illnesses were more likely (P<0.05) to be hospitalized. The odds of hospitalization was 87.2% higher among AA patients than white patients in bivariate analysis. After adjusting for age, gender, poverty, obesity, smoking status, and chronic illnesses, the odds of hospitalization was still higher for AA than white patients (OR=1.81;95% CI: 1.55-2.09). The length of hospital stay for AA was more (P<0.05) than whites After adjusting for the same covariates. Conclusion. Sociodemographic factors and chronic illnesses are associated with the severity of COVID-19 among cancer patients. However, AA COVID-19 cancer patients have significantly higher odds of hospitalization and longer hospital stays even when controlling these factors. More research is warranted to determine underlying factors of the observed racial disparities.

Redirection of anti-virus immunity towards anti-tumor immunity using nanoparticle-induced immune tolerance for oncolytic adenovirus therapy

Recent clinical observations that some coronavirus infections induced complete remissions in lymphoma patients emphasized again the potential of cancer virotherapy. Infection of cancer cells with oncolytic viruses reshapes the tumor microenvironment by activating anti-viral and anti-tumor immunity. A phase 1 clinical trial using oncolytic adenovirus Delta-24-RGD (DNX-2401) to treat recurrent malignant gliomas demonstrated activation of CD8+ T-cells and significant clinical benefits for a subset of patients. However, both anti-virus and anti-tumor immune responses are contingent on the activation of respective clones of CD8+ T-cells, which compete for clonal expansion. Thus, overexpansion of T-cells against viral antigens reduces the frequency of subdominant clones against tumor antigens. We hypothesized that inducing immune tolerance for viral antigens will decrease anti-viral immunity and in turn derepress anti-tumor immunity, resulting in enhanced efficacy of cancer virotherapy. In this work, we used nanoparticles encapsulating adenoviral antigens E1A, E1B and hexon that distributed to liver resident macrophages (P<0.0001) and induced peripheral immune tolerance. Functional experiments to restimulate immune cells with viral or tumor antigens showed that injection of nanoparticles induced virus-specific immune tolerance and redirected the focus of the immune response towards tumor peptides as measured by interferon-gamma secretion (P<0.0001). Co-culture experiments also showed increased activation of immune cells against fixed tumor cells after nanoparticle treatment (P<0.0001). Reduction of virus-specific T-cells and concurrent expansion of tumor-specific T-cell clones were further confirmed with E1A or OVA tetramers (P<0.05). Flow cytometry analysis suggested increased anti-tumor responses were due to differences in T-cell clones and not due to other immune populations including natural killer cells or myeloid-derived suppressor cells (P=0.3). Importantly, virotherapy in combination with nanoparticle-induced immune tolerance towards viral antigens in tumor-bearing mice increased the overall survival and doubled the percentage of long-term survivors compared to virus treatment alone. Our data should propel the development of a future clinical trial aiming to maximize the potential of anti-tumor immunity during cancer virotherapies.

Factors Influencing on Performance for Infection Control of Nurses Working in Comprehensive Nursing Care Service Ward under COVID-19 Pandemic

Purpose: This study aimed to explore the factors influencing the infection control performance of nurses working in comprehensive nursing care service wards during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Methods: Data were collected from 107 nurses working in the comprehensive nursing care service unit at four general hospitals from March 15 to April 3, 2021. Factors influencing infection control performance were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression analysis. Results: Awareness of importance (β=.55), surgical ward (β=.29), and infection control organizational culture (β=.25) were the factors affecting the infection control performance of nurses working in comprehensive nursing care service wards. The total explanatory power was 46%. Conclusion: Nurses must establish a positive infection control organizational culture as leaders in team leaders to enhance the infection control performance of nurses working in comprehensive nursing care service wardss. Moreover, the awareness of the risks of COVID-19 and ways to use the defense environment more efficiently should be strengthened. © 2022 Korean Academy of Nursing Administration

Modelling the Relationship between English Language Learners’ Academic Hardiness and Their Online Learning Engagement during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study presents a structural relationship model that integrates English language learners’ academic hardiness with their online learning engagement. Two questionnaires, Academic Hardiness (OH) and Online English Learning Engagement (OLLE), were developed and administered to 453 Chinese university students. The results indicated that AH is composed of four factors, namely commitment, control-effort, control-affect and challenge. Meanwhile, OLLE consists of four factors: behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement, emotional engagement and social engagement. The path analysis revealed that academic hardiness played a positive role in the different aspects of their online learning engagement. Surprisingly none of the sub-dimensions of academic hardiness could predict emotional engagement. Related pedagogical implications are also discussed. © 2021 29th International Conference on Computers in Education Conference, ICCE 2021 - Proceedings. All rights reserved

Incidence of adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccination: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Objective: To systematically evaluate the incidence of adverse reactions to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination. Methods: We systematically searched PubMed, Embase, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CNKI, WanFang Data, and VIP Database from the inception of each database to August 31, 2021. Randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) on the safety of different types of COVID-19 vaccines were retrieved and analyzed. A random or fixed-effects model was used with an odds ratio as the effect size. The quality of each reference was evaluated. The incidence of the adverse reactions of the placebo group and the vaccination group was compared. Heterogeneity and publication bias were taken care of by meta-regression and sub-group analyses. Results: A total of 13 articles were included, with 81 287 subjects. Compared with the placebo group, the vaccination group showed a higher combined risk ratio (RR) of total adverse reactions (RR=1.67, 95% CI: 1.46-1.91, P<0.01), local adverse reactions (RR=2.86, 95% CI: 2.11-3.87, P<0.01), systemic adverse reactions (RR=1.25, 95% CI: 0.92-1.72, P=0.16), pain (RR=2.55, 95% CI: 1.75-3.70, P<0.01), swelling (RR=4.16, 95% CI: 1.71-10.17, P=0.002, fever (RR=2.34, 95% CI: 1.84-2.97, P<0.01), fatigue (RR=1.36, 95% CI: 1.32-1.41, P<0.01) and headache (RR=1.22, 95% CI: 1.18-1.26, P<0.01). The subgroup analysis showed the incidence of adverse reactions of the vaccination group after injection of the three COVID-19 vaccines (inactivated viral vaccines, mRNA vaccines and adenovirus vector vaccines) was higher than that of the placebo group, and the difference between the placebo group and the vaccination group in the mRNA vaccine subgroup and the adenovirus vector vaccine subgroup was statistically significant (P<0.01). The incidence of adverse reactions after injection of COVID-19 vaccine in subgroups of different ages was significantly higher than that in the placebo group (P<0.01). Conclusions: COVID-19 vaccines have a good safety, among which adenovirus vector vaccine has the highest incidence of adverse reactions. Both adolescents and adults vaccinated with novel coronavirus vaccine have a certain proportion of adverse reactions, but the symptoms are mild and can be relieved by themselves. Our meta-analysis can help boost global awareness of vaccine safety, promote mass vaccination, help build regional and global immune barriers and effectively curb the recurrency of COVID-19.

Health System Strategy to Safely Provide Surgical Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Houston Methodist’s policies designed to avoid the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 during hospital-based surgeries or procedures led to a postintervention nosocomial Covid-19 infection rate of 0.1% during the first 19 months of the pandemic. Preoperative polymerase chain reaction testing was found to be particularly effective. Summary During the initial onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was little information regarding how to deliver surgical care safely. Houston Methodist, an eight-hospital system with a flagship academic medical center (Texas Medical Center), adopted and implemented policies that were driven by science and expert opinion, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) polymerase chain reaction preoperative testing to decrease patient risk of Covid-19 diagnosis postintervention. In examining outcomes of the policies during the first 19 months of the pandemic, the authors discovered from a retrospective cohort study of 141,439 patients that the policies — especially SARS-CoV-2 preoperative testing — were effective in reducing postintervention Covid-19 disease, with an overall rate of 0.6%. Analysis of patients who had Covid-19 after intervention found that most had contracted the disease from community sources, which led to a nosocomial Covid-19 rate of 0.1%. Effective policy implementation was associated with successful delivery of safe surgical care during the pandemic.

Recent progress in clinical research of mRNA technologies

As the first mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in 2020, its great safety profile and high protection efficacy has been well demonstrated. As a result of its unique advantage in the mechanism of action, mRNA can effectively trigger strong humoral and cellular immune response. Of note, many other prophylactic or therapeutic mRNA vaccines developed for preventing different infectious diseases or treatment of cancer are under clinical trial investigations. mRNA-based protein supplementation and gene therapy also begin to emerge. There will be bigger stage for the development of mRNA technology-based products, posing a revolutionary effect in the field of biopharmaceuticals.

PIN20 Predicting the IMPACT of Vaccination Strategies in the COVID-19 Pandemic Using a Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Removed (SEIR) MODEL

Objectives: Coronavirus (COVID-19) has resulted in 84.53 million infections and 1.85 million deaths world-wide in 2020 and both numbers are still increasing. Using a Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Removed (SEIR) model, this study aimed to predict the impact of different vaccination strategies in the UK on mortality, productivity loss, and healthcare burden. Methods: A SEIR model was built in R using the UK estimated age-group specific proportions of asymptomatic infections, probability of severe symptoms and death rate from published literature. Assuming vaccine supply covers 20% or 50% of the UK population as two base scenarios, three population-wide vaccination strategies with different age group priorities were modelled. Total number of infections, COVID-19 related deaths, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) lost, cost for critical and non-critical care, and productivity loss were estimated. Results: In the 20% population coverage scenario, 2 million more infections were prevented by vaccinating the 15-34 age group first, compared to vaccinating those over 65 first. A £6.6 billion reduction (13%) in direct healthcare costs was predicted by prioritising people over 65. Productivity and QALY losses were minimised by prioritising the 15-34 age group, while only vaccinating those over 65 resulted in the lowest number of deaths. Increasing population coverage from 20% to 50% resulted in drops in QALY loss and healthcare burden, but did not affect the age group strategy. A strategy that prioritises elderly vaccination would minimise QALY losses only if the death rate amongst 15-34s dropped by 17.4% (from 10.9% to 9%). Conclusions: With constraints in vaccine supplies, greater reductions in hospitalisation costs related to COVID-19 and deaths were associated with a vaccination strategy prioritising older age groups. Lower QALY and productivity losses were associated with a vaccination strategy prioritising younger cohorts. Future research adding age-group specific social distancing measures may provide further insights.

Geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering education during the pandemic

This paper reports the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 on the practice and delivery of geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering (GGE) education modules, including lectures, lab sessions, student assessments and research activities, based on the feedback from faculty members in 14 countries/regions around the world. Faculty members have since adopted a series of contingent measures to enhance teaching and learning experience during the pandemic, which includes facilitating active learning, exploring new teaching content related to public health, expanding e-learning resources, implementing more engaged and student-centred assessment and delivering high-impact integrated education and research. The key challenges that faculty members are facing appear to be how to maximise the flexibility of learning and meet physical distancing requirements without compromising learning outcomes, education equity and interpersonal interactions in the traditional face-to-face teaching. Despite the challenges imposed by the pandemic, this could also be a good opportunity for faculty members obliged to lecture, to rethink and revise the existing contents and approaches of professing GGE education. Three future opportunities namely, smart learning, flipped learning and interdisciplinary education, are identified. The changes could potentially provide students with a more resilient, engaged, interactive and technology-based learning environment. © 2021 ICE Publishing: All rights reserved.