Spread Of COVID-19 Infection Research Articles

Role of admission rapid antigen testing (RATs) for COVID-19 on patients transferred from acute hospitals to a post-acute rehabilitation setting.

BackgroundRapid antigen tests (RATs) are suitable for point-of -care testing, require no laboratory time and give immediate results. However, are RATs useful for detecting asymptomatic COVID-19 infection when compared with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing in healthcare settings? AimThe aim of this study was to implement a reliable testing system utilising RATs to promptly detect COVID-19 infection in predominantly asymptomatic patients transferred from acute hospitals to a post-acute rehabilitation unit (PARU). MethodsRAT testing was carried out on all new admissions without a history of confirmed Covid-19 infection within three months of admission. PCR testing was carried out on all patients with a positive RAT for confirmation purposes. The cycle threshold (Ct) values of COVID-19 detected results on PCR testing were examined to determine the utility of the RATs. ResultsA total of 1,403 patients were transferred to the PARU from January to December 2023. The results of the study revealed an 85% accuracy of RATs with a 15% rate of false negative results at the time of admission. All patients that had a positive RAT at the time of admission also had a positive PCR test. ConclusionThis testing algorithm resulted in early detection and prompt isolation of positive cases reducing the likely spread of COVID-19 infection, hospital outbreaks and bed/ward closures.

Returning to work with long covid in the UK during lockdown and other COVID-19 restrictions: A qualitative study.

Few previous studies have considered the experiences of people with long covid returning to work beyond symptoms in terms of employer and other support factors. The aim of this research was to understand the experience of returning to work for those with long covid symptoms in contrast to the non-long covid group who had not experienced COVID-19 during the time restrictions were imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19 infection. Twenty-one participants with long covid and 13 participants who had not had COVID-19 were interviewed. Themes were identified from transcripts using framework analysis. Participants with long covid experienced difficulties returning to work, particularly from fatigue, cognitive symptoms and breathlessness. Symptoms were heterogeneous and fluctuated in severity over time. A lack of understanding from colleagues and managers sometimes led to a premature return to work without adequate support, associated with further long covid relapse. Outside-of-work, support was salient for a successful return to work. The standard phased return offered by employers may be too short and rigid for some people with long covid. They may benefit from a tailored intervention to support a return to work that targets symptom management, and engages with work colleagues, managers, and family members.

A New Tailored Approach to Calculate the Optimal Number of Outdoor Air Changes in School Building HVAC Systems in the Post-COVID-19 Era

Air conditioning systems can play a positive or negative role in the spread of COVID-19 infection. The importance of sufficient outdoor air changes in buildings was highlighted by the World Health Organization, therefore these should be guaranteed by mechanical ventilation systems or adequate air conditioning systems. The proposed case study concerns the optimal number of outdoor air changes to limit COVID-19 contagion for a school building in Central Italy. The Wells–Riley model is used to assess the risk of airborne infection, while energy consumption is calculated by a dynamic energy simulation software. The scope of the paper offers an innovative method to define the optimal ventilation strategy for the building’s HVAC system design to reduce the risk of infection with limited increases in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Results show that the desirable approach is the one in which the same low value of contagion risk is set in all rooms. This new approach results in significant energy savings, compared to the most common ones (setting the same high outdoor air rates for all rooms) to counteract the risk of infection. Finally, the zero-emission building target is verified by introducing a suitable photovoltaic system to offset pollutant emissions.

Development and validation of the COVID-19 Anxiety Scale for Japanese elite athletes

Abstract: Introduction: Japanese elite athletes were affected by the spread of COVID-19 infection. Four years after the pandemic, COVID-19 is still spreading and subsiding, and it is expected that some athletes are still concerned about COVID-19. Therefore, we developed the COVID-19 Anxiety Scale for Elite Athletes (CAS-EA) to measure COVID-19 anxiety among Japanese elite athletes and to examine its reliability and validity. Method: This is an observational cross-sectional study. In study 1, a 35-item anxiety questionnaire about COVID-19 was administered to 100 elite athletes on 8/18-9/1/2020. In study 2, 296 elite athletes were asked to respond to the CAS-EA, the Japanese version of State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), and the Japanese version of the Fear of Coronavirus Virus Scale (FCV-19S) from 8/31-11/8/2022. Results: In study 1, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to create CAS-EA, which consisted of 19 items with four factors: Restrictions, Sport, Practice and Athlete value. The reliability of the scales was examined, confirming a certain internal consistency. In addition, study 2 showed significant positive correlations with CAS-EA and related scales. In the COVID-19 disaster, psychological stress was more strongly associated with A-trait than physical stress, a result that could be explained by Spielberger’s Trait-state anxiety theory. Furthermore, CAS-EA scores were significantly higher for female than for male, which was consistent with the results of previous studies. Conclusion: An attempt was made to create a scale to measure anxiety about COVID-19 in Japanese elite athletes, and a 4-factor, 19-item CAS-EA was created. The reliability and validity of the scale were tested and confirmed successfully.

Impact of alternative Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions strategies for controlling COVID-19 outbreak in Bangladesh: A modeling study.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major health concern in Bangladesh until very recently. Although the Bangladesh government has employed various infection control strategies, more targeted Non-Pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), including school closure, mask-wearing, hand washing, and social distancing have gained special attention. Despite significant long-term adverse effects of school closures, authorities have opted to keep schools closed to curb the spread of COVID-19 infection. However, there is limited knowledge about the impact of reopening schools alongside other NPI measures on the course of the epidemic. In this study, we implemented a mathematical modeling framework developed by the CoMo Consortium to explore the impact of NPIs on the dynamics of the COVID-19 outbreak and deaths for Bangladesh. For robustness, the results of prediction models are then validated through model calibration with incidence and mortality data and using external sources. Hypothetical projections are made under alternative NPIs where we compare the impact of current NPIs with school closures versus enhanced NPIs with school openings. Results suggest that enhanced NPIs with schools opened may have lower COVID-19 related prevalence and deaths. This finding indicates that enhanced NPIs and school openings may mitigate the long-term negative impacts of COVID-19 in low- and middle-income countries. Potential shortcomings and ways to improve the research are also discussed.

EFFECTIVE BIOMEDICAL SYSTEM FOR DETECTING, TRACKING, AND PREVENTING ASYMPTOMATIC COVID-19 PATIENTS NON-INVASIVELY USING IoT AND MIXED REALITY

This article proposes a novel biomedical system integrating internet of things (IoT) and mixed reality (MR) technologies for detecting, tracking, and preventing asymptomatic corona virus disease (COVID) patients from entering into public places which prevents the further spread of COVID-19 infection. Asymptomatic patients are the very active carriers for virus transmission, and the most challenging conditions in mitigating the virus transmission are contact tracking and contact tracing of asymptomatic patients. The proposed system can be implemented in public places such as theaters, malls, railway stations, airport, markets, conferences, and other gatherings for screening people to detect asymptomatic COVID patients and restrict them from entry. The arrest or decrease in spread of COVID infection during pandemic situation is the most challenging factor around the globe. However, with the proposed system, detection and prevention of asymptomatic COVID patients will result in drastic decrease in the spread of COVID infection during pandemic situation. The proposed system comprises an IoT-based sensing system to get the current sensor values and an MR vision software system to retrieve the pre-saved sensor values from the server. The MR vision system compares the present sensor values and the server values of the human and displays accurately with green MR images for permitted persons and red MR images for restricted asymptomatic COVID patients.

Awareness of Patients Regarding Restorative and Endodontic Treatment during COVID-19: A Survey

Objective: The aim of the study was to assess the awareness of patients visiting the dental Outpatient Department of JSS Dental College Hospital regarding coronavirus symptoms and their willingness to get dental treatment done during this period. Materials and Methods: Five hundred and twenty-five patients in the age group of 25–65 years who reported to the department of conservative dentistry and endodontics during 6 months were assessed for coronavirus symptoms using a questionnaire of descriptive statistics and analysis. Results: Patients were willing to undergo treatment during the pandemic (97%). Conclusion: Irrespective of the coronavirus, patients seem to be keen to get either their restorative or endodontic treatment done, which shows that the patients are not completely aware of the spread of COVID-19 infection and awareness programs have to be conducted to educate people.

Assessing Healthcare Provider's Skills in the Management of COVID-19 Infection at Busia County Referral Hospital, Kenya

Context: The zoonotic coronavirus of 2019 (COVID-19) was caused by an enveloped Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) virus from the Coronaviridae family in the Sarbecovirus subgenus and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome – Coronavirus – 2 (SARS-Cov-2) organism. The index case was believed to have originated and transmitted from animals (bats) to humans in November 2019 at the Wuhan live market in China, and subsequently, transmissions were among the human race through direct and indirect contact with respiratory droplets from an infected person(s) to the vulnerable person(s), while talking, sneezing, or coughing. World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a pandemic on March 11, 2020, while in Kenya, it was on March 20, 2020, and by June 11, 2021, Busia County had 3,982 infected individuals, with a positivity rate of 3.9%, 157 being health care providers across all cadres were infected and two deaths reported. Busia County Referral Hospital contributed 30% of the total infected healthcare providers across the seven sub-counties due to non-adherence to standard and transmission-based precautions as guided by the World Health Organization.
 Aim: The study assesses the healthcare provider's skills in managing COVID-19 infection at Busia County Referral Hospital in Kenya.
 Methods: The study utilized a descriptive cross-sectional study design, using a semi-structured questionnaire to collect qualitative and quantitative data from 153 study subjects stratified per cadre. The data collection tool was adapted from the facility readiness assessment questionnaire for COVID-19 (Centre for Disease Control and Prevention) and the risk assessment and management of exposure questionnaire of healthcare workers in the context of COVID-19 (World Health Organization).
 Results: The study reveals that respondents who had worked for shorter duration (1 to 3 years) and were taken through shorter training sessions (1 to 2 days) had higher odds 2.3 and 2.1 (p = 0.03) and p=0.04), respectively to demonstrate good skills in the management of COVID-19, which was statistically significant. Furthermore, knowledge of five moments of hand hygiene had p=0.007, with a higher odds ratio on availability of essential commodities such as gloves 2.5 odds, surgical face masks 3.8 odds, thermos-gun 3.8 odds, designated focal person at triage 6.1 odds and screening checklist 3.2 odds with p-value ≤ 0.05 enhanced good skills required to curb the pandemic.
 Conclusion: Frequent shorter periods of training of the health care providers and the availability of essential commodities for managing COVID-19 enhanced good skills to curb the pandemic infection. Knowledge of the five moments of hand hygiene influences good skills to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infection. The study recommended regular drills on appropriate use of personal protective equipment and adherence to five moments of hand hygiene by healthcare providers as key skills in managing COVID-19 infection. It further recommends establishing and disseminating policy on an essential list of health products and technologies required to manage COVID-19. In addition, the study recommends a further in-depth study on the impact of the mitigation strategies put in place to manage the pandemic.

Synthesis and Antiviral Activity of Novel β-D-N4-Hydroxycytidine Ester Prodrugs as Potential Compounds for the Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 and Other Human Coronaviruses.

The spread of COVID-19 infection continues due to the emergence of multiple transmissible and immune-evasive variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Although various vaccines have been developed and several drugs have been approved for the treatment of COVID-19, the development of new drugs to combat COVID-19 is still necessary. In this work, new 5'-O-ester derivatives of N4-hydroxycytidine based on carboxylic acids were developed and synthesized by Steglich esterification. The antiviral activity of the compounds was assessed in vitro-inhibiting the cytopathic effect of HCoV-229E, and three variants of SARS-CoV-2, on huh-7 and Vero E6 cells. Data have shown that most synthesized derivatives exhibit high activity against coronaviruses. In addition, the relationship between the chemical structure of the compounds and their antiviral effect has been established. The obtained results show that the most active compound was conjugate SN_22 based on 3-methyl phenoxyacetic acid. The results of this study indicate the potential advantage of the chemical strategies used to modify NHC as a promising avenue to be explored in vivo, which could lead to the development of drugs with improved pharmacological properties that potently inhibit SARS-CoV-2.

An Intelligent Framework Based on Deep Learning for Online Quran Learning during Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic influenced the whole world and changed social life globally. Social distancing is an effective strategy adopted by all countries to prevent humans from being infected. Al-Quran is the holy book of Muslims and its listening and reading is one of the obligatory activities. Close contact is essential in traditional learning system; however, most of the Al-Quran learning schools were locked down to minimize the spread of COVID-19 infection. To address this limitation, in this paper, we propose a novel system using deep learning to identify the correct recitation of individual alphabets, words from a recited verse and a complete verse of Al-Quran to assist the reciter. Moreover, in the proposed approach, if the user recites correctly, his/her voice is also added to the existing dataset to leverage proposed approach effectiveness. We employ mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) to extract voice features and long short-term memory (LSTM), a recurrent neural network (RNN) for classification. The said approach is validated using the Al-Quran dataset. The results demonstrate that the proposed system outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches with an accuracy rate of 97.7%. This system will help the Muslim community all over the world to recite the Al-Quran in the right way in the absence of human help due to similar future pandemics.

Willingness and Perception About COVID-19 Vaccine Among Rural Adults

Introduction: The most successful and cost-effective method of preventing the spread of COVID-19 infection is vaccination. But there are challenges to vaccinating the mass population in a developing country like Bangladesh. This survey aimed to assess the willingness to receive and perception of COVID-19 vaccines and the association of this willingness with the baseline characteristics and the level of perception of the respondents. Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 672 rural people from six villages of Palashbari Upazilla, Gaibabdha district. A convenient sampling technique was used and data were collected by face-to-face interview. Result: Almost two third of the respondents of this study were _30 years old and the average age of respondents was 37.43±17.13 years. Majorities of the respondents were female (54.6%). About 89.1% of the respondents in this study were willing to be vaccinated and the main reason for this willingness includes respondents’ belief about the vaccine protection against COVID-19 (91.8%) reduced the fear of the respondents (60.6%), government suggestion (45.1%). The main reasons behind unwillingness included fear of side effects (71.8%), doubt about vaccine safety and efficacy (46.5%), and ignorance (59.2%). Regarding perception about the COVID-19 vaccine, more than half of the respondents (51.2%) had good perception whereas 29.8% had average perception and 19.0% of respondents had poor perception. In this study, females were significantly more willing to be vaccinated than male respondents (p=0.027). Respondents age group <30 years were significantly more willing to vaccinate than that of the age group _30 years (p=0.042). Respondents not having chronic diseases group significantly more inclined to vaccinate than that having chronic diseases (p<0.001). A good level of perception was more likely to have willingness than average or poor perception (p<0.001). Conclusion: The findings of this study reveal that despite the high prevalence of willingness to receive vaccines, still there were the challenges. Policymakers should design effective immunization policies and experts in media and communication should deliver the proper message that is understandable to everyone, especially illiterate rural people. J Rang Med Col. September 2023; Vol. 8, No. 2: 34-39

Public opinion in Japanese newspaper readers’ posts under the prolonged COVID-19 infection spread 2019–2021: contents analysis using Latent Dirichlet Allocation

During the COVID-19 pandemic, information on what people are interested in and what they are disseminating can be an important public health resource. Most studies on public opinion during the pandemic have focused on social networking services in the context of the early phases of the pandemic or on a short-term basis; research on public opinion outside of social networking services that consider long-term changes has not been conducted. To examine this gap in the research, we analyzed readers’ posts on Japanese hardcopy newspaper articles in the public domain. A total of 1910 such posts published during four emergency declaration periods in Japan were included in the study. Latent Dirichlet Allocation was applied in our analysis to extract topics and Kendall rank correlation coefficients between the emergency declaration periods, and each topic was calculated to examine the effect size. We selected 10 topics and categorized them into three themes: (1) “Life” comprising “Family,” “Daily Life in the COVID-19 Disaster,” “Education in the COVID-19 Disaster,” “The Importance of Humanity,” and “Daily Life unrelated to COVID-19”; (2) “Awareness of the emergency” comprising, “Awareness of being a party to an emergency” and “Concerns about the medical environment,”; and (3) “Policy” comprising “Domestic and foreign policies,” “Opposition to hosting the Tokyo Olympics,” and “Criticisms of the Japanese Government.” This research revealed that, as a result of the exposure to COVID-19-related material over a prolonged period, awareness of the emergency decreased (r = −0.189, p < 0.000), while other topics remained. This study showed that it is possible to extract more everyday public opinion topics from the reader’s posts in newspapers and that these are issues that should be addressed from a long-term perspective since they do not change significantly in a stressful life.

Toward Data-Model-Agnostic Autonomous Machine-Generated Data Labeling and Annotation Platform: COVID-19 Autoannotation Use Case

Quick, early, and precise detection is important for diagnosis to control the spread of COVID-19 infection. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology could certainly be used as a modulating tool to ease the detection, and help with the preventive steps further. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have achieved state-of-the-art performance in many visual recognition tasks. Nevertheless, most of these state-of-the-art networks highly rely on the availability of a high amount of labeled data, being an essential step in supervised machine learning tasks. Conventionally, this manual, mundane, and time-consuming process of annotating images is done by humans. Learning to localize or detect COVID-19 infection masks in our specific case study typically requires the collection of CT scan data that has been labeled with bounding boxes or similar annotations, which generally is limited. A technique that could perform such learning with much less annotations, and transfer the learned proposals that are algorithm-driven to generate more synthetic annotated samples would be helpful &amp; quite valuable. We present such a technique inspired by weakly trained mask region based convolutional neural networks (R-CNN) architecture for localization, in which the number of images with their pixel-level masks can be a small proportion of the total dataset, and then further improvise CNNs by inversely generating dense annotations on-the-go using an algorithmic-based computational approach. We focus on alleviating the bottleneck associated with deep learning models needing annotated data for training in an intuitive reverse engineering fashion through this work. Our proposed solution can certainly provide the prospect of automated labeling on-the-fly, thereby reducing much of the manual work. As a result, one can quickly train a precise COVID-19 infection detector with the leverage of autonomous frame-by-frame machine generated annotations. The model achieved mean precision accuracy (&#x0025;) of 0.99, 0.931, and 0.8 for train, validation, and test set, respectively. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can be adopted in a clinical setting for assisting radiologists, and also our fully autonomous approach can be generalized to any detection/recognition tasks at ease.

Pengetahuan dan Kesadaran Masyarakat Tentang Kebutuhan Vaksin COVID-19 di Kabupaten Purworejo

COVID 19 is becoming a health problem today. Several efforts have been made by the government to prevent the spread of COVID-19, one of which is by vaccinating. The public response to be active in preventing the spread of COVID19 through vaccination has not been optimal. This activity was carried out with the aim of increasing public knowledge and awareness about the COVID-19 vaccine. The activity was attended by 14 people aged 18-60 years was carried out through exposure methods, questions, and answers, and the presence of pretests and posttests to assess community understanding. Based on the results of the evaluation of activities, it is known that all participants experienced increased knowledge about COVID-19 vaccination. The result of the evaluation of public awareness about the COVID-19 vaccine is that 57% of the public is willing to vaccinate. Given the large benefits of this activity, it is expected that the activities that have been carried out can be sustainable or continued by the public and related parties, so it can increase vaccination coverage to prevent the spread of COVID19 infection

Provision of maternal health service in Indonesian primary care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maternal health services in Indonesia faced significant challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. The service had to manage the infection and ensure the continuity of maternity service for women. This research explored in depth the way maternal health service was provided in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic and provided suggestions to improve the service in primary care. We conducted a practical qualitative study using semi-structured interviews and focus groups (FGs) between May and October 2021, with the focus area of study in Yogyakarta province. The participants were general practitioners (GPs), midwives, nurses, obstetricians, and women who had experience providing or accessing maternity care during the pandemic. The data were analysed using an inductive approach of thematic analysis. A total of 23 participants participated in the FGs/interviews. Three overarching themes were identified: applied COVID safety measures, confusion and further expectations. COVID-19 safety measures, such as screening, hygiene and triage, were applied in the service. However, challenges and confusion occurred, particularly regarding the limited clinical resources, limited guidelines and escalation plan and patients' low literacy levels. Participants also expected the development of mobile apps to support care for women. Despite the classical challenges in primary care practice, Indonesia implemented strategies to provide maternity care and limit the spread of COVID-19 infection. Continuous improvements and further research are needed to provide practical recommendations and escalation plans to optimise the quality of maternity service in primary care.

Public health messages during a global emergency through an online community: a discourse and sentiment analysis.

The growing popularity of social media and its ubiquitous presence in our lives brings associated risks such as the spread of mis- and disinformation, particularly when these may be unregulated in times of global crises. Online communities are able to provide support by enabling connection with others and also provide great potential for dynamic interaction and timely dissemination of information compared with more traditional methods. This study evaluates interactions within the Essex Coronavirus Action/Support Facebook private group, which set out to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infection by informing Essex residents of guidance and helping vulnerable individuals. At the outset, 18 community administrators oversaw the group, which attracted approximately 37,900 members. Longitudinal Facebook group interactions across five periods spanning the UK lockdowns 2020-2021 were analysed using psychological discourse analysis and supplementary computed-mediated analysis to further explore sentiment and linguistic features. The findings endorsed that the group provided a protected space for residents to express their feelings in times of crises and an opportunity to address confusion and concern. The effective communication of public health messages was facilitated by promoting desired interaction and the construction of group identities. Administrators worked with group members to achieve a shared understanding of others' perspectives and the COVID-19 evidence base, which led to a mobilisation of the provision of support in the community. This was accomplished through the application of rhetorical and interactional devices. This study demonstrates how online groups can employ discursive strategies to engage audiences, build cohesion, provide support, and encourage health protective behaviours. This has implications for public health teams in terms of designing, implementing, or evaluating such interventions.

Antidepressant drug prescription and incidence of COVID-19 in mental health outpatients: a retrospective cohort study

BackgroundCurrently, the main pharmaceutical intervention for COVID-19 is vaccination. While antidepressant (AD) drugs have shown some efficacy in treatment of symptomatic COVID-19, their preventative potential remains largely unexplored. Analysis of association between prescription of ADs and COVID-19 incidence in the population would be beneficial for assessing the utility of ADs in COVID-19 prevention.MethodsRetrospective study of association between AD prescription and COVID-19 diagnosis was performed in a cohort of community-dwelling adult mental health outpatients during the 1st wave of COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. Clinical record interactive search (CRIS) was performed for mentions of ADs within 3 months preceding admission to inpatient care of the South London and Maudsley (SLaM) NHS Foundation Trust. Incidence of positive COVID-19 tests upon admission and during inpatient treatment was the primary outcome measure.ResultsAD mention was associated with approximately 40% lower incidence of positive COVID-19 test results when adjusted for socioeconomic parameters and physical health. This association was also observed for prescription of ADs of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) class.ConclusionsThis preliminary study suggests that ADs, and SSRIs in particular, may be of benefit for preventing COVID-19 infection spread in the community. The key limitations of the study are its retrospective nature and the focus on a mental health patient cohort. A more definitive assessment of AD and SSRI preventative potential warrants prospective studies in the wider demographic.

Physical function of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation recipients with anxiety during the spread of COVID-19 infection.

Physical function of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation recipients with anxiety during the spread of COVID-19 infection.

Analysis Descriptive of Anosmia and Dysgeusia in SARS CoV-2 Patients: Overview of Epidemiology, Pathogenesis, Prognosis, and Treatment Options

Introduction: SARS CoV-2 (COVID-19) is a respiratory infectious disease whose cause has been identified as the seventh type of the coronavirus family that attacks humans. Common symptoms among patients with COVID-19 include fever, dry cough, shortness of breath (dyspnea), muscle aches (myalgia), confusion, headache, sore throat, rhinorrhea, chest pain, diarrhea, nausea / vomiting, conjunctival congestion, nose. congestion, sputum production, fatigue (malaise), hemoptysis, and shivering. However, the spread of COVID-19 infection has shown new symptoms of the disease: patients with dysfunction of smell, taste and indigestion. Methods: Literature review by taking libraries from 34 journals and 2 textbook. The journal obtained from the Google, NCBI and Pubmed search engine, as well as processing research materials into new information related to the research objectives. Results: One hypothesis currently developing is that SARS-CoV-2 will cause olfactory changes through direct access and damage to the CNS through its penetration by the cribriform plate. Another hypothesis that is also developing suggests direct viral damage to olfactory cells and taste receptors. Glial cells, neurons, and the oral cavity present the ACE-2 receptor which appears to be a mechanism of cell invasion by viruses. Conclusion: People who have lost their smell or taste are six times more likely to become positive for COVID-19. Likewise, people who have anosmia have a 10-fold higher chance of being diagnosed with COVID-19. Taste and smell disorders with ageusia have a 10 times higher chance of catching COVID-19.

IMPLEMENTASI PROTOKOL KESEHATAN OLEH MAHASISWA DI KOTA MALANG SELAMA GELOMBANG KE-2 COVID-19: PERIODE JULI-AGUSTUS 2021

The second wave of COVID-19 infection spread has occurred in Indonesia. There has been an increase in COVID-19 cases in various provinces in Indonesia based on a June 2021 report. This should encourage every community group, especially students, to be more strict in carrying out health protocols. The study used a questionnaire (google form) to collect data with a number of questions as many as 15 items. Sampling techniques are accidental sampling. Data is done validation and reliability test, then the difficulty is analyzed using a univariate test. During the 2nd wave of COVID-19, the government imposed restrictions on community activities in Malang City. During this time, students are increasingly aware of implementing health protocols by government advice. The percentage of respondents who kept their distance (91%), washed their hands, and used hand sanitizer (92.6%) during the 2nd wave of COVID-19 was very high. Respondent's interest in participating in vaccination programs is very high at 85.3%. Some other positive activities are also carried out to increase immunity such as taking vitamins (75.5%), as well as exercise and sunbathing (70.5%). The discipline of implementing health protocols will reduce the potential for the emergence of the third wave of COVID-19 in Indonesia.