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Archer Odonnell posted an update 16 hours, 46 minutes ago
These principles can not only guide efforts toward a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine, but also the development of effective vaccines for viral pandemics to come.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic wave. King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Riyadh dealt with the crisis in a proactive way with the emergency department (ED) playing a pivotal role.
We searched the international literature to review the processes adopted by healthcare institutions and also used our experience of managing a previous epidemic to devise safe processes for our ED patients.
The interventions done by ED, led to safer patient care, avoidance of unnecessary admissions, reduced risk of cross infection and enhanced staff safety.
Integrated ED processes helped streamline Covid-19 patients.
Integrated ED processes helped streamline Covid-19 patients.The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus initially appeared in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China has caused a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) [1]. The disease is rapidly spread around the world causing thousands of deaths and posing critical challenges for public health and clinical research in the world. The outbreak was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a public health emergency of international concern. Nowadays, there are more than 18 millions of confirmed cases of coronavirus across the world with a total of 702,903 deaths [2]. In Morocco, there are 28,500 confirmed cases and 345 deaths. Forecasts for the cumulative number of confirmed, recovered, active and death cases were recently provided [3]. To manage the pandemic spread several countries adopted proactive and preventive measures including home confinement of the population. However, there is evidence that these measures, particularly home confinement, can cause unprecedented disruption in the well-beiinstrument to assess for the first time the impact of the home confinement on the HRQoL. Also, we evaluated the changes in behaviors by asking some questions related to lifestyle before and during the home confinement. These data can help the Moroccan authorities and other countries to more understand the impact of this crisis on citizens and therefore to set up adequate protocols for managing the post-confinement or possible future crisis. We provided two datasets (1) data we collected before confinement from a sample of 484 individuals describing their HRQoL [8] and (2) data we collected during the home confinement period from a sample of 537 individuals describing their HRQoL and behavior-related lifestyle.
Travel is a potent force in the emergence of disease. selleck compound We discussed how the traveler case reports could aid in a timely detection of a disease outbreak.
Using the traveler data, we estimated a few indicators of the epidemic that affected decision making and policy, including the exponential growth rate, the doubling time, and the probability of severe cases exceeding the hospital capacity, in the initial phase of the COVID-19 epidemic in multiple countries. We imputed the arrival dates when they were missing. We compared the estimates from the traveler data to the ones from domestic data. We quantitatively evaluated the influence of each case report and knowing the arrival date on the estimation.
We estimated the travel origin’s daily exponential growth rate and examined the date from which the growth rate was consistently above 0.1 (equivalent to doubling time < 7 days). We found those dates were very close to the dates that critical decisions were made such as city lock-downs and national emergency h as city lock-downs and national emergency announcement. Using only the traveler data, if the assumed epidemic start date was relatively accurate and the traveler sample was representative of the general population, the growth rate estimated from the traveler data was consistent with the domestic data. We also discussed situations that the traveler data could lead to biased estimates. From the data influence study, we found more recent travel cases had a larger influence on each day’s estimate, and the influence of each case report got smaller as more cases became available. We provided the minimum number of exported cases needed to determine whether the local epidemic growth rate was above a certain level, and developed a user-friendly Shiny App to accommodate various scenarios.The current standard method of diagnosing COVID status has low sensitivity which led the authors to ponder on alternative ways of taking the sample. Various studies have explored the role of nasal wash, a sample taken by injecting and aspirating saline with the help of a syringe but to the best of our knowledge, the use of Jal Neti kriya sample to detect coronavirus has not been reported in the literature so far. Jal Neti kriya is an integral part of shatkarmas-six actions of purification of the human body, written in the Yogic system of healthcare. It involves pouring water in one nostril and flushing out through the other nostril with the help of special equipment called “Neti pot”, to keep the nasal passage clean. The authors find it worthwhile to share their hypothesis, which can pave a way to future research in COVID-19 detection.
Due to the serious situation of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) worldwide, many countries have implemented policies to minimize the spread of COVID-19 infection. However, some of these policies prevent people from physical contact. Consequently, many individuals may rely on social media to obtain information concerning COVID-19. Unfortunately, social media use (especially problematic social media use) may give rise to psychological distress. Therefore, this study thus examined potential psychopathology to explain the association between problematic social media use, psychological distress, and insomnia.
Utilizing an online survey, a sample of Iranian young adults (n=1078 with 628 males; mean age=26.24years [SD±7.41]) completed questions and psychometric scales concerning psychological distress, insomnia, problematic social media use, fear of COVID-19, and COVID-19 misunderstanding.
Problematic social media use was significantly associated with psychological distress both directly and indirectly.