Pharmacy responses during the COVID-19 pandemic: a questionnaire survey.

BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has heavily affected the economy, industries, and medicine. Local governments and medical institutions have struggled to respond. The purpose of this questionnaire survey was to evaluate strategies for pharmacy services, availability of ethanol for disinfection, and measures adopted for in-house infection control aiming to enhance future infection control efforts. METHODS: Since pharmacies have been also affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, we surveyed COVID-19 measures taken at 174 pharmacies in Ehime prefecture, Japan. RESULTS: The survey showed that pharmacies made changes to facilities and equipment, such as installing partitions at dispensing counters, procuring personal protective equipment for employees, and using ethanol for disinfection, even when these items were in short supply. Pharmacies also adopted new strategies, such as holding meetings with suppliers and internal staff via online platforms. Many pharmacies also undertook COVID-19 preventive measures, such as preparing documentation of infection control measures and disinfectants. Moreover, they held lectures and workshops on disinfection and infection control measures. CONCLUSIONS: From public health perspectives, pharmacies should adopt measures to prevent infections spread and, if necessary, utilise online tools and other new strategies to achieve this goal. It is also essential to educate the public about infection control, stockpile supplies, and work with hospitals to prevent COVID-19 spreads.

Confined water inside single-walled carbon nanotubes: global phase diagram and effect of finite length.

Studies on confined water are important not only from the viewpoint of scientific interest but also for the development of new nanoscale devices. In this work, we aimed to clarify the properties of confined water in the cylindrical pores of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) that had diameters in the range of 1.46 to 2.40 nm. A combination of x-ray diffraction (XRD), nuclear magnetic resonance, and electrical resistance measurements revealed that water inside SWCNTs with diameters between 1.68 and 2.40 nm undergoes a wet-dry type transition with the lowering of temperature; below the transition temperature T(wd), water was ejected from the SWCNTs. T(wd) increased with increasing SWCNT diameter D. For the SWCNTs with D = 1.68, 2.00, 2.18, and 2.40 nm, T(wd) obtained by the XRD measurements were 218, 225, 236, and 237 K, respectively. We performed a systematic study on finite length SWCNT systems using classical molecular dynamics calculations to clarify the effect of open ends of the SWCNTs and water content on the water structure. It was found that ice structures that were formed at low temperatures were strongly affected by the bore diameter, a = D - σ(OC), where σ(OC) is gap distance between the SWCNT and oxygen atom in water, and the number of water molecules in the system. In small pores (a < 1.02 nm), tubule ices or the so-called ice nanotubes (ice NTs) were formed irrespective of the water content. On the other hand, in larger pores (a > 1.10 nm) with small water content, filled water clusters were formed leaving some empty space in the SWCNT pore, which grew to fill the pore with increasing water content. For pores with sizes in between these two regimes (1.02 < a < 1.10 nm), tubule ice also appeared with small water content and grew with increasing water content. However, once the tubule ice filled the entire SWCNT pore, further increase in the water content resulted in encapsulation of the additional water molecules inside the tubule ice. Corresponding XRD measurements on SWCNTs with a mean diameter of 1.46 nm strongly suggested the presence of such a filled structure.