Transmission Rate Of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Research Articles

Impact of Novel Coronavirus Pandemic on Emergency and Elective Surgical Practice: A Retrospective Study in a Tertiary Care Center

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to a significant worldwide impact on general surgical practice. Since the beginning of this pandemic, hospitals have become a hot zone for the transmission of coronavirus. Routine and emergency surgical services have been severely disrupted worldwide due to this pandemic and may continue to be so for some time if more mutations take place in the virus. As of February 27, 2022, at 9 a.m., 43.5 crore positive cases were confirmed worldwide with over 6 million deaths. In India, 42,916,117 positive cases were confirmed to this date with 513,756 deaths. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on surgery daily practice and surgical patients was very high. There was a high impact on elective, semi-elective, cancer surgery, transplant programs, and education programs in our institution during the COVID-19 era. The most common reasons were being reduced number of availabilities of non-COVID-19 beds in the general surgical ward, difficulty in separating COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients, high transmission, and infection rate of COVID-19, reduced number of surgical intensive care unit beds and operation theatre due to allotment of these exclusively for COVID-19 patients. The reduced number of staff and health-care workers due to posting in the COVID-19 ward was also a major factor in the reduced number of electives and other surgeries in our institution. We need to find ways to continue providing essential medical services to patients while fighting this pandemic since it might take longer than expected to end. The present report summarizes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our surgical services and the changes that we have adopted for better care of surgical patients and safe surgical practice to provide valuable information worldwide. This article also summarizes current evidence and recommendations for changes to surgical practice in our hospital according to the World Health Organization, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Indian Council of Medical Research, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines to minimize the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on surgical services.

Meta-Analysis of COVID-19 Spread in Meat Processing Plants and Recommended Practical Actions

Recently, the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has increased among workers of meat processing plants (MPPs) around the world. This study reviewed the possible routes of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission and useful actions against it in slaughterhouses. The results revealed that the main factors for the spread of the virus included low indoor temperature, crowded area, wrong standing along production lines, contamination of high-touch surfaces, difficult education of workers with diverse native languages, low financial income, large MPPs with over 10 million Ib of packed meat per month, higher speed of production lines with 175 birds/minute, temporary contract of the workers, and weak approach of some meat processing companies against COVID-19 infection such as National Beef. COVID-19 transmission rate was 24 times higher among the workers of MPPs than among the population of the US. The practical actions against the spread of the virus were mainly marker using for remembering the previous location, mandatory mask use, especially FFP2/3 masks, and decentralization of large MPPs. By using the results of this study, slaughterhouse managers would be able to significantly control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and future bio-threats to workers of MPPs and even to society.

The impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on global air quality: A review.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. As a preventive measure, the majority of countries adopted partial or complete lockdown to fight the novel coronavirus. The lockdown was considered the most effective tool to break the spread of the coronavirus infection worldwide. Although lockdown damaged national economies, it has given a new dimension and opportunity to reduce environmental contamination, especially air pollution. In this study, we reviewed, analyzed and discussed the available recent literature and highlighted the impact of lockdown on the level of prominent air pollutants and consequent effects on air quality. The levels of air contaminants like nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and particulate matter (PM) decreased globally compared to levels in the past few decades. In many megacities of the world, the concentration of PM and NO2 declined by > 60% during the lockdown period. The air quality index (AQI) also improved substantially throughout the world during the lockdown. Overall, the air quality of many urban areas improved slightly to significantly during the lockdown period. It has been observed that COVID-19 transmission and mortality rate also decreased in correlation to reduced pollution level in many cities.

Analysis of A Coendemic Model of COVID-19 and Dengue Disease

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to spread aggressively worldwide, infecting more than 170 million people with confirmed cases, including more than 3 million deaths. This pandemic is increasingly exacerbating the burden on tropical and subtropical regions of the world due to the pre-existing dengue fever, which has become endemic for a longer period in the same region. Co-circulation dengue and COVID-19 cases have been found and confirmed in several countries. In this paper, a deterministic model for the coendemic of COVID-19 and dengue is proposed. The basic reproduction ratio is obtained, which is related to the four equilibria, disease-free, endemic-COVID-19, endemic-dengue, and coendemic equilibria. Stability analysis is done for the first three equilibria. Furthermore, a condition for coexistence equilibrium is obtained, which gives a condition for bifurcation analysis. Numerical simulations were carried out to obtain a stable limit-cycle resulting from two Hopf bifurcation points with dengue transmission rate and COVID-19 transmission rate as the bifurcation parameter, representing a stable periodic coexistence of dengue and COVID-19 transmission. We identify the period of limit cycle decreases after reaching the maximum value.

Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Using Antibody-Antigen Interactions with Graphene-Based Nanomechanical Resonator Sensors.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a newly emerging human infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Early diagnosis is essential to reducing the transmission rate and mortality of COVID-19. PCR-based tests are the gold standard for the confirmation of COVID-19, but immunological tests for SARS-CoV-2 detection are widely available and play an increasingly important role in the diagnosis of COVID-19. Nanomechanical sensors are biosensors that work based on a change in the mechanical response of the system when a foreign object is added. In this paper, a graphene-based nanoresonator sensor for SARS-CoV-2 detection was introduced and analyzed by using the finite element method (FEM). The sensor was simulated by coating a single-layer graphene sheet (SLGS) with a specific antibody against SARS-CoV-2 Spike S1 antigen. In the following, the SARS-CoV-2 viruses were randomly distributed on the SLGSs, and essential design parameters of the nanoresonator, including frequency shift and relative frequency shift, were evaluated. The effect of the SLGS size, aspect ratio and boundary conditions, antibody concentration, and the number of viruses variation on the frequency shift and relative frequency shift were investigated. The results revealed that, by proper selection of the nanoresonator design variables, a good sensitivity index is achievable for identifying the SARS-CoV-2 virus even when the number of the viruses are less than 10 per test. Eventually, according to the simulation results, by using SLGS geometry determination, an analytical relationship is presented to predict the limit of detection (LOD) of the sensor with the required sensitivity index. The results can be applied in designing and fabricating specific graphene-based nanoresonator sensors for SARS-CoV-2.

Nurses' Knowledge and Anxiety Levels toward COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia.

Background: In the battle against the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, medical care staff, especially nurses, are at a higher risk of encountering psychological health issues and distress, such as stress, tension, burdensome indications, and, most importantly, fear. They are also at higher risk of becoming infected and transmitting this virus. In Saudi Arabia, it was noticed that the healthcare workforce suffered from anxiety, and that this more evident in women than men. Objective: This study aimed to assess the knowledge of nurses regarding COVID-19 and the level of anxiety toward the COVID-19 outbreak in the current pandemic situation. Design: A cross-sectional design was used and a validated self-administered online questionnaire with a set of questions related to COVID-19 was distributed to 87 participating nurses. Results: The results showed that more than half of the nurses (71.90%) had an adequate and good knowledge about the causes, transmission, symptoms, treatment, and death rate of COVID-19. The main sources of information for the nurses were social media (51.7%) and the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health (36.8%). Conclusions: The results allowed the conclusion that, though the nurses had satisfactory knowledge about COVID-19, more than 50% of them experienced mental health issues such as anxiety. To address this, along with providing more knowledge about COVID-19, nurses should be supported in managing their anxiety.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Current Situation and Therapeutic Options

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is defined as an illness caused by SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2). COVID-19 was first reported in the Wuhan, China, in late December, 2019. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global emergency on March 11, 2020. COVID-19 was rapidly transmitted and caused infection in 21,294,845 people and 761,779 deaths in more than 213 countries worldwide till August 16, 2020. United States of America (USA), Brazil, India, Russia Federation, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and United Kingdom (UK) stand top COVID-19 affected countries in the world. The high transmission rate of COVID-19 might be due to large viral incubation time (2-14 days) and some modifications in the spike glycoprotein. Currently, effective drugs or vaccines are not developed for the treatment of novel coronavirus. However, few antibiotics like hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir have been currently used for the treatment of COVID-19 infection. Several collaboratives are working together for developing an effective and safe vaccine against COVID-19 and few vaccines are under clinical trial. Scientists are also working on plasma therapy and monoclonal antibodies. Nowadays, plasma therapy is considered the most effective treatment against COVID-19 and some promising results have been achieved. This review focuses on several therapeutic options for COVID-19, such as anti-viral drugs, vaccines, plasma therapy, and monoclonal antibodies. This review also covers the current situations of COVID-19 in the world. This review is about COVID-19, which will be beneficial to researchers for the development of potential treatment against it.

Forecasting the development of the COVID‐19 epidemic by nowcasting: when did things start to get better?

BackgroundNow the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) epidemic becomes a global phenomenon and its development concerns billions of peoples’ lives. The development of the COVID‐19 epidemic in China could be used as a reference for the other countries’ control strategy.MethodsWe used a classical susceptible‐infected‐recovered (SIR) model to forecast the development of the COVID‐19 epidemic in China by nowcasting. The linear regression analyses were employed to predict the COVID‐19 epidemic’s inflexion point. Finally, we used a susceptible‐exposed‐infected‐recovered (SEIR) model to simulate the development of the COVID‐19 epidemic in China throughout 2020.ResultsOur nowcasts show that the COVID‐19 transmission rate started to slow down on January 30. The linear regression analyses further show that the inflexion point of this epidemic would arrive between February 17 and 18. The final SEIR model simulation forecasted that the COVID‐19 epidemic would probably infect about 82,000 people and last throughout 2020 in China. We also applied our method to USA’s and global COVID‐19 data and the nowcasts show that the development of COVID‐19 pandemic is not optimistic in the rest of 2020.ConclusionThe COVID‐19 epidemic’s scale in China is much smaller than the previous estimations. After implemented strict control and prevention measures, such as city lockdown, it took a week to slow down the COVID‐19 transmission and about four weeks to really mitigate the COVID‐19 prevalence in China.

Mediation by human mobility of the association between temperature and COVID-19 transmission rate

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a major threat to global health. Relevant studies have shown that ambient temperature may influence the spread of novel coronavirus. However, the effect of ambient temperature on COVID-19 remains controversial. Human mobility is also closely related to the pandemic of COVID-19, which could be affected by temperature at the same time. The purpose of this study is to explore the underlying mechanism of the association of temperature with COVID-19 transmission rate by linking human mobility. The effective reproductive number, meteorological conditions and human mobility data in 47 countries are collected. Panel data models with fixed effects are used to analyze the association of ambient temperature with COVID-19 transmission rate, and the mediation by human mobility. Our results show that there is a negative relationship between temperature and COVID-19 transmission rate. We also observe that temperature is positively associated with human mobility and human mobility is positively related to COVID-19 transmission rate. Thus, the suppression effect (also known as the inconsistent mediation effect) of human mobility is confirmed, which remains robust when different lag structures are used. These findings provide evidence that temperature can influence the spread of COVID-19 by affecting human mobility. Therefore, although temperature is negatively related to COVID-19 transmission rate, governments and the public should pay more attention to control measures since people are more likely to go out when temperature rising. Our results could partially explain the reason why COVID-19 is not prevented by warm weather in some countries.

A mini-review on the effects of COVID-19 on younger individuals.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has uprooted our lives like never before since its onset in the late December 2019. The world has seen mounting infections and deaths over the past few months despite the unprecedented measures countries are implementing, such as lockdowns, social distancing, mask-wearing, and banning gatherings in large groups. Interestingly, young individuals seem less likely to be impacted by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus responsible for COVID-19. While the rate of transmission, symptom presentation, and fatality is lower in children than people from other age groups, they have been disproportionately affected by strict lockdown measures needed to curb viral spread. In this review, we describe the association between patient age and COVID-19, epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 infection in children, psychological effects associated with lockdowns and school closures, and possible mechanisms underlying lower transmission rate of COVID-19 in children.

A gradient boosting machine learning approach in modeling the impact of temperature and humidity on the transmission rate of COVID-19 in India.

Meteorological parameters were crucial and effective factors in past infectious diseases, like influenza and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), etc. The present study targets to explore the association between the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) transmission rates and meteorological parameters. For this purpose, the meteorological parameters and COVID-19 infection data from 28th March 2020 to 22nd April 2020 of different states of India have been compiled and used in the analysis. The gradient boosting model (GBM) has been implemented to explore the effect of the minimum temperature, maximum temperature, minimum humidity, and maximum humidity on the infection count of COVID-19. The optimal performance of the GBM model has been achieved after tuning its parameters. The GBM results in the best accuracy of R2 = 0.95 for prediction of active cases in Maharashtra, and R2 = 0.98 for prediction of recovered cases of COVID-19 in Kerala and Rajasthan, India.

Nexus between population density and novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the south Indian states: A geo-statistical approach.

The unprecedented growth of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) as a severe acute respiratory syndrome escalated to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. It has created an unanticipated global public health crisis that is spreading rapidly in India as well, posing a serious threat to 1350 million persons. Among the factors, population density is foremost in posing a challenge in controlling the COVID-19 contagion. In such extraordinary times, evidence-based knowledge is the prime requisite for pacifying the effect. In this piece, we have studied the district wise transmissions of the novel coronavirus in five south Indian states until 20th July 2020 and its relationship with their respective population density. The five states are purposefully selected for their records in better healthcare infrastructure vis-à-vis other states in India. The study uses Pearson’s correlation coefficient to account for the direct impact of population density on COVID-19 transmission rate. Response surface methodology approach is used to validate the correlation between density and transmission rate and spatiotemporal dynamics is highlighted using Thiessen polygon method. The analysis has found that COVID-19 transmission in four states (Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana) strongly hinges upon the spatial distribution of population density. In addition, the results indicate that the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 crisis are likely to differ with demographic density. In conclusion, those at the helm of affairs must take cognizance of the vulnerability clusters together across districts.

Mass screening vs lockdown vs combination of both to control COVID-19: A systematic review.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global pandemic. Non-pharmacological interventions, such as lockdown and mass testing, remain as the mainstay of control measures for the outbreak. We aim to evaluate the effectiveness of mass testing, lockdown, or a combination of both to control COVID-19 pandemic. A systematic search on 11 major databases was conducted on June 8, 2020. This review is registered in Prospero (CRD420201 90546). We included primary studies written in English which investigate mass screening, lockdown, or a combination of both to control and/or mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. There are four important outcomes as selected by WHO experts for their decision- making process: incident cases, onward transmission, mortality, and resource use. Among 623 studies, only 14 studies met our criteria. Four observational studies were rated as strong evidence and ten modelling studies were rated as moderate evidence. Based on one modelling study, mass testing reduced the total infected people compared to no mass testing. For lockdown, ten studies consistently showed that it successfully reduced the incidence, onward transmission, and mortality rate of COVID-19. A limited evidence showed that a combination of lockdown and mass screening resulted in a greater reduction of incidence and mortality rate compared to lockdown only. However, there is not enough evidence on the effectiveness of mass testing only.Significance for public healthAs of the end of June 2020, an effective pharmacological intervention or vaccine for COVID-19 is not yet available. Thus, public health measures have become the key measures in containing the outbreak. To our best knowledge, this is the first systematic review on the comparison of mass screening and lockdown effectiveness in controlling COVID-19 pandemic. From our extensive review, we found out that lockdown was consistently effective in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, a combination of lockdown and mass screening resulted in a greater reduction of incidence and mortality rate of COVID-19 compared to lockdown only but resulted in a similar mortality rate compared to mass screening only. However, there is still no clear guideline or recommendation about the public health interventions to date. This systematic review can be an essential consideration in the policy making in the COVID-19 affected countries.

A mechanism-based parameterisation scheme to investigate the association between transmission rate of COVID-19 and meteorological factors on plains in China

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which first emerged in Hubei province, China, has become a pandemic. However, data regarding the effects of meteorological factors on its transmission are limited and inconsistent. A mechanism-based parameterisation scheme was developed to investigate the association between the scaled transmission rate (STR) of COVID-19 and the meteorological parameters in 20 provinces/municipalities located on the plains in China. We obtained information on the scale of population migrated from Wuhan, the world epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak, into the study provinces/municipalities using mobile-phone positioning system and big data techniques. The highest STRs were found in densely populated metropolitan areas and in cold provinces located in north-eastern China. Population density had a non-linear relationship with disease spread (linearity index, 0.9). Among various meteorological factors, only temperature was significantly associated with the STR after controlling for the effect of population density. A negative and exponential relationship was identified between the transmission rate and the temperature (correlation coefficient, −0.56; 99% confidence level). The STR increased substantially as the temperature in north-eastern China decreased below 0 °C (the STR ranged from 3.5 to 12.3 when the temperature was between −9.41 °C and −13.87 °C), whilst the STR showed less temperature dependence in the study areas with temperate weather conditions (the STR was 1.21 ± 0.57 when the temperature was above 0 °C). Therefore, a higher population density was linearly whereas a lower temperature (<0 °C) was exponentially associated with an increased transmission rate of COVID-19. These findings suggest that the mitigation of COVID-19 spread in densely populated and/or cold regions will be a great challenge.

Assessment of Iranian Nurses’ Knowledge and Anxiety Toward COVID-19 During the Current Outbreak in Iran

Background: The world is affected by the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Because of their direct contact with patients, health workers, especially nurses, play critical roles in the prevention of the COVID-19 outbreak through proper care and preventive procedures. Objectives: This study aimed to measure the awareness level of nurses in Shiraz, Iran, during the current COVID-19 outbreak. Methods: A self-administered questionnaire containing knowledge questions was distributed to 85 participants to complete. Results: More than half of the nurses (56.5%) had good knowledge about sources, transmission, symptoms, signs, prognosis, treatment, and mortality rate of COVID-19. The sources of information for the nurses were the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health (55.29%), social applications (48.23%), and media (42.35%). Conclusions: Nurses had almost good knowledge of COVID-19. However, the WHO and the Ministry of Health still must provide more information for the medical staff for better control of the infectious disease.

Guide on diabetes and COVID-19 for healthcare professionals in Bangladesh

The world is suffering from a pandemic of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), and people with diabetes mellitus (DM) are more vulnerable to the serious effects of the COVID-19. This interaction is alarming, considering the high transmission rate of COVID-19 and the global prevalence of DM. Considering the importance of the link between COVID-19 and DM, Bangladesh Diabetic Association has formed a panel of national and international experts in the field of public health, diabetes, and endocrinology to provide some evidence-based guidance for the prevention and care of people with DM during the COVID-19 pandemic.