Recent Coronavirus Outbreak Research Articles

The challenges of breast cancer care in Mexico during health-care reforms and COVID-19.

The challenges of breast cancer care in Mexico during health-care reforms and COVID-19.

Natural Products, a Potential Therapeutic Modality in Management and Treatment of nCoV-19 Infection: Preclinical and Clinical Based Evidence.

A recent outbreak of novel coronavirus (nCoV-19) has put an enormous burden on global public health. Millions of people were affected by this pandemic, and as of now, no effective antiviral drug has been found for the management of this situation. Cytokine storm, acute respiratory distress, hypoxia and multi-organ failure are hallmark clinical conditions of this disease. Trials for several investigational and repurposed drugs are being conducted, but none of them were found to be safe and effective. However, for the critically ill patient, plasma therapy, dexamethasone, and remdesivir are included in the treatment protocol. For a long time, various natural drugs have been used as antiviral agents in Indian and Chinese traditional medicines, which can be explored as a potential therapeutic option in such situation. It is, therefore, speculated that the proper screening and standardization of these medicines can be a breakthrough in the management and treatment of nCoV-19 infection. As natural products possess antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-apoptotic, immunomodulatory properties and also specifically act on various viral enzymatic machinery and affect their replication process, thus they may be useful as alternatives in relieving symptoms and treatment of nCoV-19 infection. However, only on the basis of their traditional value, discrimination and off-label use of these natural drugs must be prevented, and robust preclinical and clinical data along with appropriate guidelines are needed for them to enter into clinical practice.

Implementation of lean Six-Sigma project in enhancing health care service quality during COVID-19 pandemic.

The recent outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has exposed the weakness of the existing healthcare facilities in developing countries, and Pakistan has no exception. The increasing amount of patients has made this condition more vulnerable to failure. It became difficult for health care management to handle the surge of patients. This case study is based on the XYZ hospital system of Pakistan. The hospital initiates passive immunization as a savior in the absence of a vaccine. The process initiates numerous challenges as the same facility was using for passive immunization and routine operations of the hospital. DMAIC lean sig-sigma problem-solving methodology has been adopted to Define, Measure, Analyze, Implement and Control the improvement process for smooth special and routine activities. The staff and patients were interviewed, their issues were listed, and a comprehensive solution was suggested to deal with operational uncertainties. The results identified various factors through VOC and SIPOC processes, prioritized using fishbone diagram, analyzed through Kano model, and finally proposed process improvement by incorporating Kaizen process improvement methodology. Other industries could use this set of tools to evaluate and optimize routine problems, which ultimately enhances the quality and reduces cost.

Investigation of the potential covid-19 inhibitor from Cassia alata and Dendrophthoe petandra using computational approach

COVID-19 is a recent coronavirus outbreak caused by SARS-CoV-2 beginning in early December 2019 in Wuhan China raising global health problems. The SARS coronavirus main peptidase (SARS-CoV M(pro)) plays an essential role in the life-cycle of the virus and is a primary target for the development of anti-SARS agents. Also, the viral 3-chymotrypsin-like cysteine protease 3 (3CLpro) enzyme controls coronavirus replication and is essential for its life cycle. Therefore, herein, we performed in silico virtual screening of the compounds from Cassia alata and Dendrophthoe petandra such as; aloe-emodin, emodin, kaempferol, quercetin and quercitrin against SARS-CoV-2 Mpro and also 3CLpro through molecular docking approach using Autodock 4.2, with the Lamarckian Genetic Algorithm. The binding energies obtained from the result of molecular docking of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro and also 3CLpro quercetin, kaempferol and aloe-emodin appeared to have the best potential to act as COVID-19 inhibitors.

The coronavirus trade-off - Life vs. economy: Handling the trade-off rationally and optimally.

The recent coronavirus outbreak has made governments face an inconvenient trade-off choice, i.e. the choice between saving lives and saving the economy, forcing them to make immensely consequential decisions among alternative courses of actions without knowing what the ultimate results would be for the society as a whole. This paper attempts to frame the coronavirus trade-off problem as an economic optimization problem and proposes mathematical optimization methods to make rationally optimal decisions when faced with trade-off situations such as those involved in managing through the recent coronavirus pandemic. The framework introduced and the method proposed in this paper are on the basis of the theory of rational choice at a societal level, which assumes that the government is a rational, benevolent agent that systematically and purposefully takes into account the social marginal costs and social marginal benefits of its actions to its citizens and makes decisions that maximize the society's well-being as a whole. We approach solving this trade-off problem from a static as well as a dynamic point of view. Finally, we provide several numerical examples clarifying how the proposed framework and methods can be applied in the real-world context.

Outbreak of Health Care-associated Novel Coronavirus (SARS-coV-2) COVID-19 infections in the Spring of 2020.

As the Director General of Keio University Hospital, I hereby document the recent outbreak of health care-associated novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19 infections at our hospital in the spring of 2020.

COVID-19: Role of dental nurse in the management of patients in the dental operatory

The recent outbreak of coronavirus created a massive impact on the healthcare profession. The especially dental community has been focused more on by various researchers. The role of the dental nurse in a dental operatory was also crucial. Unlike other health care professions, the dental nurse role is very imperative in the dental operatory. Hence, the purpose of the present short communication was to discuss the role of dental nurses in dental operatory, discussion on established guidelines and opinions of dental nurses.

The CIEES 2020 Conference Chair’s Preface

Welcome to the International Scientific Conference of Communications, Information, Electronic and Energy Systems – CIEES 2020. The goal of the CIEES 2020 conference is to provide an international forum for researchers, academics, people in industry, and students to address recent research results and to present and discuss their ideas, theories, technologies, systems, tools, applications, work in progress and experiences on all theoretical and practical issues arising in telecommunications, electronics, signal processing and applications, information technologies and energy.CIEES 2020 is scheduled to be held on 26 – 29 November, 2020 in Borovets, Bulgaria. The year of 2020 has been unprecedented with the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting our life. Due to the recent coronavirus outbreak, the Organizing Committee and the CIEES 2020 Program Committee, saw that it would not have been possible to hold CIEES 2020 in November in person, we decided to turn CIEES 2020 in a virtual format – online conference on the same period. The health and safety of the participants involved in CIEES 2020 is our priority. We all know that the value of CIEES is not only in listening to the papers, but in the networking, the face-to-face interactions, the exchange of ideas, also the gathering in the social events. Many things are changing and our perceptions are different these days. It may happen that we have to rethink the way we are used to organize the conferences.CIEES 2020 ORGANIZING COMMITTEE and CIEES 2020 INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE are available in this pdf.

Enseñanza remota y redes sociales: estrategias y desafíos para conformar comunidades de aprendizaje

El reciente brote de coronavirus transformó los procesos de formación llevándolos de manera emergente a la virtualidad y obligando a las instituciones de educación a desarrollar estrategias para transitar hacia la enseñanza remota. La Web Social facilitó la transición tecnológica y junto a la conformación de comunidades virtuales de aprendizaje se flexibilizaron los ambientes de enseñanza y crearon diferentes formas de interacción para cumplir los objetivos académicos. Este ensayo, a través de la revisión documental, propone lineamientos para convertir a las Redes Sociales en comunidades de aprendizaje e identifica que entre los principales beneficios están: (1) facilitar el acceso a la información, (2) la interconectividad ubicua y (3) la distribución de contenidos de forma rápida, libre y con gran alcance.

Rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2 with CRISPR-Cas12a.

The recent outbreak of betacoronavirus Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which is responsible for the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic, has created great challenges in viral diagnosis. The existing methods for nucleic acid detection are of high sensitivity and specificity, but the need for complex sample manipulation and expensive machinery slow down the disease detection. Thus, there is an urgent demand to develop a rapid, inexpensive, and sensitive diagnostic test to aid point-of-care viral detection for disease monitoring. In this study, we developed a clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-CRISPR associated proteins (Cas) 12a-based diagnostic method that allows the results to be visualized by the naked eye. We also introduced a rapid sample processing method, and when combined with recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA), the sample to result can be achieved in 50 minutes with high sensitivity (1–10 copies per reaction). This accurate and portable detection method holds a great potential for COVID-19 control, especially in areas where specialized equipment is not available.

The Impact of Social Support on Public Anxiety amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic in China.

The recent coronavirus outbreak has captured worldwide attention. This study investigated the anxiety of the Chinese public and its relationship with social support during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, thereby providing empirical support for interventions on improving the public’s mental health. On the basis of an online questionnaire survey conducted on 10–18 February 2020, this study shows that 19.8%, 68.5%, and 11.1% of the respondents suffered mild anxiety, moderate anxiety, and severe anxiety, respectively. Significant differences are reported in state anxiety between people with different household incomes. There are significant differences in trait anxiety and state anxiety between different social support groups. Social support and trait anxiety are negatively correlated. Social support and state anxiety are negatively correlated. Social support affects state anxiety both directly and indirectly (through the mediation of trait anxiety). Therefore, during the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing public support for society can effectively reduce public anxiety.

Integrating Dimension of Trust into the Theory of Planned Behavior: A Case Study of Electronic Wallet Amidst the Coronavirus Outbreak

This study proposes the integration of the dimension of trust within the theory of planned behavior (TPB) model in explaining electronic wallet adoption in Indonesia. The use of electronic wallets can get rid of the dominance of paper money and coins, which are a medium for spreading germs, as happened in the recent coronavirus outbreak. One hundred forty-six respondents filled out the questionnaire online. By using structural equation modeling, the dimension of trust was proven to positively influence customer intentions and strengthened the TPB model. The findings of this study indicated that customers pay attention to the service and security provided by the technology provider and their basic ability to trust the technology. Surprisingly, customers still pay less attention to the quality of digital infrastructure.

An open toolbox for generating map of actively confirmed SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 cases in Vietnam

The recent outbreak of novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19, discovered in late 2019, being continued to spread across regions worldwide, has resulted in 1,914,916 “confirmed” cases with up to 123,010 deaths, as in situation report –85 by World Health Organization (WHO). Most of the developed disease monitoring and tracking tools currently available only present the reported cases up to country-level and not detail down to provincial- or state-, city- level within the countries. This is insignificant for supporting activities in quickly reducing and preventing the spread of the disease within a certain country because further detail potential infectious locations are not provided for people to avoid traveling or passing by there. Thus, this work presents an open toolbox for generating map of actively “Confirmed” cases in a country, i.e., Vietnam, given a dataset containing their statuses and current locations, detail down to provincial-or state-, city-level. The newly released algorithm reduced approximately 24.41% of processing time of the preceding one. In addition, the algorithm can be easily extended for supporting other countries given suitable datasets.

Negotiation during A Crisis: Possible Problems and Three Suggestions for SME Leaders

Negotiation skills are essential for everyone especially business leaders to agree on how to share a limited resource, create mutual benefit and avoid conflicts in crisis. In this recent coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese government is encouraging people to stay at home as much as possible, prohibiting any gathering activities, and forcing some businesses to close. Therefore, this paper will use data analysis, case study and investigation for a small garment processor enterprise to indicate the problem about capital chain rupture and loss of profit from macro to micro perspectives. From the second half of this paper, there are three suggestions including preparation, adjustment of emotions and some common tactics for SMEs to use in negotiation in crisis.

SARS-CoV-2 cell receptor gene ACE2 -mediated immunomodulation in breast cancer subtypes

The recent outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has impacted the world severely. The binding of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) and its intake by the host cell is a necessary step for infection. ACE2 has garnered widespread therapeutic possibility as it is entry/interactive point for SARS-CoV-2, responsible for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and providing a critical regulator for immune modulation in various disease. Patients with suffering from cancer always being on the verge of being immune compromised therefore gaining knowledge about how SARS-CoV-2 viruses affecting immune cells in human cancers will provides us new opportunities for preventing or treating virus-associated cancers. Despite COVID-19 pandemic got center stage at present time, however very little research being explores, which increase our knowledge in context with how SARS-CoV-2 infection affect cancer a cellular level. Therefore, in light of the ACE-2 as an important contributor of COVID-19 global, we analyzed correlation between ACE2 and tumor immune infiltration (TIL) level and the type markers of immune cells were investigated in breast cancer subtypes by using TIMER database. Our findings shed light on the immunomodulatory role of ACE2 in the luminal A subtype which may play crucial role in imparting therapeutic resistance in this cancer subtype.

Online learning of English language courses via blackboard at Saudi universities in the era of COVID-19: perception and use

Purpose Due to the recent coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, a temporary interruption of education activities occurred all over the world. The sudden and quick shift from blended or face-to-face learning mode to the sole online learning mode affected the perceptions of students toward the Blackboard application and the usage. This study aims to investigate the perceptions of students toward the Blackboard application in the process of learning Preparatory Year (PY) English courses as the mere tool of learning and the impact of the students’ perceptions on the students’ use of Blackboard. Design/methodology/approach The results are based on a survey conducted with 228 of PY students: 1st level n = 126 and 2nd level n = 102 at Najran University. The data are analyzed to compare the two levels, as the students’ prior experience with Blackboard is not the same. The 2nd level students have prior experience of blended learning through Blackboard, whereas 1st level students have no prior experience of learning through Blackboard. Findings The data of the perceptions of both levels showed that 1st level students’ perceptions toward online learning of English via Blackboard were higher than 2nd level students. The data on the frequency of the use of the Blackboard application reflected the perceptions of students. Research limitations/implications The findings suggest that the students’ prior experience of e-learning via Blackboard has an impact on the students’ perceptions. Originality/value The findings of the study contributed to the learning through the management systems research field and online learning of English during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Coronavirus Disease 2019: A Brief Review of the Clinical Manifestations and Pathogenesis to the Novel Management Approaches and Treatments.

The recent outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China, which spread to the rest of the world, led the World Health Organization to classify it as a global pandemic. COVID-19 belongs to the Bettacoronavirus genus of the Coronaviridae family, and it mainly spreads through the respiratory tract. Studies have now confirmed a human-to-human transmission as the primary pathway of spread. COVID-19 patients with a history of diseases such as respiratory system diseases, immune deficiency, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer are prone to adverse events (admission to the intensive care unit requiring invasive ventilation or even death). The current focus has been on the development of novel therapeutics, including antivirals, monoclonal antibodies, and vaccines. However, although there is undoubtedly an urgent need to identify effective treatment options against infection with COVID-19, it is equally important to clarify management protocols for the other significant diseases from which these patients may suffer, including cancer. This review summarizes the current evidence regarding the epidemiology, pathogenesis, and management of patients with COVID-19. It also aims to provide the reader with insights into COVID-19 in pregnant patients and those with cancer, outlining necessary precautions relevant to cancer patients. Finally, we provide the available evidence on the latest potent antiviral drugs and vaccines of COVID-19 and the ongoing drug trials.

ROLE OF MINISTERIAL MEDIA ARMS DURING COVID-19 IN MALAYSIA

The recent outbreak of novel corona virus known as COVID-19, has caused over 556.335 deaths, left more than 12 million infected people worldwide by 11th of July 2020 (Organization, 2020a), in addition to global negative impact on nearly most life sectors. Media played -and still- a vital role in the containment of this global health threat by spreading the essential knowledge and awareness between people. Comparing to its neighbours, Malaysia seems to have good score in the battle of COVID-19. With 8,815 confirmed cases, 8,562 total discharged cases and 123 deaths by 21th of July 2020 (Malaysia, 2020), it was interesting to study the role of media in shaping people’s awareness during the current global crisis to face the danger of such virus on the national level. Aim: To analyse and understand the Malaysian government role in shaping people’s awareness toward COVID-19. Method: Authors are tracking and analysing the ministerial media arms role in handling the situation, based on the official data and statements released by the national news agency, Bernama. This article is divided into three main parts as it discusses the role of three specific governmental official; Prime Minister, General Director of Ministry of Health, and Senior Security Minister, Findings: The Malaysian governmental officials namely; Prime Minister, General Director of Ministry of Health, and Senior Security Minister followed a successful strategy during COVID-19 pandemic to rely a part on people’s awareness by providing them with the accurate information to avoid the viral spread of fake news. Conclusion: Malaysia was able to contain the pandemic on the national level powered by people’s awareness.

Integrating Regulatory Technology (RegTech) into the digital transformation of a bank Treasury

The volume and complexity of financial regulations have increased significantly since the 2008 financial crisis. This has put increasing pressure on banks to monitor and report a range of intricate exposures to comply with new prudential requirements. Regulatory Technology (RegTech) is an emerging technology trend leveraging information technology and digital innovations that can greatly assist with a bank’s regulatory management process. A consideration is that these technologies can sometimes be expensive and inefficient if deployed on an ad hoc and stand-alone basis. An option is to incorporate RegTech into the digital transformation strategy of a management function such as Treasury. Integrated adoption would mean the digital platform can be deployed to support both strategic management activities and enhanced regulatory processes within Treasury, thereby ensuring commercial and prudential objectives are aligned. RegTech can provide an invaluable tool, in a business-as-usual environment, as well as in real-life stress events, such as the recent coronavirus outbreak. This paper explores the potential of RegTech and the merit of incorporating it into a Smart Treasury department.

Possible impact of COVID-19 on senior secondary school students performance in science education in Nigeria

The recent outbreak of Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has led to the total lockdown of major cities globally which resulted in the early closure of schools in the cities affected, Nigeria inclusive. It is hypothesized that COVID-19 may have a negative outcome on the performance of senior secondary school students in class 3 (SS3) who are yet to write their 2020 external examination (West Africa Senior Secondary Certificate Examination as well as National Examination Council) especially in the science subjects namely Biology, Physics and Chemistry. This study collected data from three teachers who are science experts and head of their respective departments in three government secondary schools in Ado-Ekiti local government area of Ekiti State, Nigeria. A semi-structured interview was used to collect data from the teachers through phone calls and WhatsApp chats. This qualitative study employed a case study research approach. Findings from this study revealed that there is the possibility of a further drop in the pass rate (%) of senior secondary school students’ in this year’s external examinations if this pandemic is not contained soon knowing fully well that the school academic calendar has already been disrupted due to early closure of schools in Nigeria. As part of COVID-19 relief package, recommendations are made to the Federal government of Nigeria and policymakers to distribute iPads and electronic tablets preloaded with e-textbooks in these subject areas to SS3 students and their teachers to facilitate online learning as this will enhance their performance in Science subjects in this year’s national examination.