Spread Of Novel Coronavirus Research Articles

Risk Perception and Coping Strategies among Direct Support Professionals in the Age of COVID-19.

The spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) across the globe and its associated morbidity and mortality has impacted and challenged society in many ways, which resulted in adapting to a new way of life. One underrecognized and unaddressed area is the mental health of essential employees providing services to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Direct support professionals (DSPs) serve an important function in the daily supervision and care of clients with IDD. It is not clear, however, how these essential workers perceived their own risk of contracting COVID-19 while working during this pandemic. Our research presents results of a national survey of 478 DSPs that focused on perceptions of risk and ways of coping with COVID-19. Using an online survey, we examined DSPs’ perception of risk and on the emotional and problem-solving strategies they used to cope with the global crisis. We found that DSPs engaged in higher problem-focused strategies rather than emotion-focused strategies in coping with the virus. As such, we show that it is critical for IDD provider organizations to assess DSPs’ needs to provide coping supports during the age of COVID.

A broadly neutralizing humanized ACE2-targeting antibody against SARS-CoV-2 variants

The successive emergences and accelerating spread of novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) lineages and evolved resistance to some ongoing clinical therapeutics increase the risks associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. An urgent intervention for broadly effective therapies to limit the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19 and future transmission events from SARS-related coronaviruses (SARSr-CoVs) is needed. Here, we isolate and humanize an angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (ACE2)-blocking monoclonal antibody (MAb), named h11B11, which exhibits potent inhibitory activity against SARS-CoV and circulating global SARS-CoV-2 lineages. When administered therapeutically or prophylactically in the hACE2 mouse model, h11B11 alleviates and prevents SARS-CoV-2 replication and virus-induced pathological syndromes. No significant changes in blood pressure and hematology chemistry toxicology were observed after injections of multiple high dosages of h11B11 in cynomolgus monkeys. Analysis of the structures of the h11B11/ACE2 and receptor-binding domain (RBD)/ACE2 complexes shows hindrance and epitope competition of the MAb and RBD for the receptor. Together, these results suggest h11B11 as a potential therapeutic countermeasure against SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2, and escape variants.

Therapeutic implications of SARS-CoV-2 dysregulation of the gut-brain-lung axis.

The emergence and rapid spread of novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused over 180 million confirmed cases resulting in over 4 million deaths worldwide with no clear end in sight for the coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic. Most SARS-CoV-2 exposed individuals experience mild to moderate symptoms, including fever, cough, fatigue, and loss of smell and taste. However, many individuals develop pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, septic shock, and multiorgan dysfunction. In addition to these primarily respiratory symptoms, SARS-CoV-2 can also infiltrate the central nervous system, which may damage the blood-brain barrier and the neuron's synapses. Resultant inflammation and neurodegeneration in the brain stem can further prevent efferent signaling to cranial nerves, leading to the loss of anti-inflammatory signaling and normal respiratory and gastrointestinal functions. Additionally, SARS-CoV-2 can infect enterocytes resulting in gut damage followed by microbial dysbiosis and translocation of bacteria and their byproducts across the damaged epithelial barrier. As a result, this exacerbates pro-inflammatory responses both locally and systemically, resulting in impaired clinical outcomes. Recent evidence has highlighted the complex interactions that mutually modulate respiratory, neurological, and gastrointestinal function. In this review, we discuss the ways SARS-CoV-2 potentially disrupts the gut-brain-lung axis. We further highlight targeting specific responses to SARS-CoV-2 for the development of novel, urgently needed therapeutic interventions. Finally, we propose a prospective related to the individuals from Low- and Middle-Income countries. Here, the underlying propensity for heightened gut damage/microbial translocation is likely to result in worse clinical outcomes during this COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 and psychological distress: Lessons for India

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly altered the routine of life and caused unanticipated changes resulting in severe psychological responses and mental health crisis. The study aimed to identify psycho-social factors that predicted distress among Indian population during the spread of novel Coronavirus.MethodAn online survey was conducted to assess the predictors of distress. A global logistic regression model was built, by identifying significant factors from individual logistic regression models built on various groups of independent variables. The prediction capability of the model was compared with the random forest classifier.ResultsThe respondents (N = 1060) who are more likely to be distressed, are in the age group of 21-35 years, are females (OR = 1.425), those working on site (OR = 1.592), have pre-existing medical conditions (OR = 1.682), do not have health insurance policy covering COVID-19 (OR = 1.884), have perceived seriousness of COVID-19 (OR = 1.239), have lack of trust in government (OR = 1.246) and whose basic needs’ fulfillment are unsatisfactory (OR = 1.592). The ones who are less likely to be distressed, have higher social support and psychological capital. Random forest classifier correctly classified 2.3% and 17.1% of people under lower and higher distress respectively, with respect to logistic regression.ConclusionsThis study confirms the prevalence of high distress experienced by Indians at the time of COVID-19 and provides pragmatic implications for psychological health at macro and micro levels during an epidemiological crisis.

The Upsurge and Impact of COVID 19 in India: Health Issues and Remedial Measures

The novel Coronavirus was something that nobody was prepared for. It was that part of the syllabus which was always neglected. The contagious disease which started in the Wuhan region of China had started to settle in various parts of the World. The outbreak of this disease has reached such a huge number that all the countries witnessed lockdown in some form or the other. Some people have witnessed destruction of mankind while some have even leisured this time to their fullest but as it has been always said “Prevention is better than cure”. Prevention of covid 19 in all the nations was one of the major steps which was taken in the year 2020. In India it all started in the year of 2019 December when the first ever case of covid 19 was reported in the state of Kerala followed by Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Delhi. Following such a situation and then sudden increase in the no of cases all over the country a major decision was taken that was of Complete lockdown excluding the emergency and essential services. Before taking the step of lockdown, as a gesture of respect to the frontline workers, government of India announced Tali Bajao movement. In the period of lockdown Certain norms were even made mandatory that were wearing a mask, maintenance of hand sanitation and following social distancing of 1.5 meters in public places. All the educational institutes and teachings were even suspended during the time period of lockdown as it could have become a hub for the virus to spread. With time, the restrictions which were laid down in lockdown were started to be reduced in the phase wise manner and finally India noticed its very first Unlock period. In all this scenario mankind has dealt with various situations and have emerged to be a better person. All these steps were crucial to control the spread of Novel Coronavirus and prevention from the already spread cases.

A multi-task fully deep convolutional neural network for contactless fingerprint minutiae extraction

With the outbreak and wide spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19), contactless fingerprint recognition has attracted more attention for personal recognition because it can provide significantly higher user convenience and hygiene than the traditional contact-based fingerprint recognition. However, it is still challenging to achieve a highly accurate recognition due to the low ridge-valley contrast and pose variances of contactless fingerprints. Minutiae points are a kind of ridge flow discontinuities, and robust and accurate extraction is an important step for most automatic fingerprint recognition algorithms. Most of existing methods are based on two stages which locate the minutiae points first and then compute their directions. The two-stage method cannot make full use of location and direction information. In this paper, we propose a multi-task fully deep convolutional neural network for jointly learning the minutiae location detection and its corresponding direction computation which operates directly on the whole gray scale contactless fingerprints. The proposed method consists of offline training and online testing stages. In the training stage, a fully deep convolutional neural network is built for the tasks of minutiae detection and its direction regression, with an attention mechanism to make the direction regression branch concentrate on the minutiae points. A new loss function is proposed to jointly learn the tasks of minutiae detection and its direction regression from the whole fingerprints. In the testing stage, the trained network is applied on the whole contactless fingerprint to generate the minutiae location and direction maps. The proposed multi-task leaning method performs better than the individual single task and it operates directly on the raw gray-scale contactless fingerprints without preprocessing. The results on three contactless fingerprint datasets show the proposed algorithm performs better than other minutiae extraction algorithms and the commercial software.

English

BACKGROUND Healthcare worker’s adherence to prevent the spread is related directly to their knowledge and attitude towards practices. Postgraduates (PG’s) are expected to be at high risk of infection due to their exposure to saliva, blood, and aerosol / droplet production during dental procedures. We wanted to assess knowledge, attitude and practice of Indian dental postgraduate students to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus (Covid-19). METHODS The comprehensive cross-sectional survey questionnaire study was designed. The survey was conducted in the lockdown period (May 2020) among the Indian dental postgraduate students. A total of 1560 postgraduates made up the sample of study. The survey questionnaire was divided into four parts as demographic details, knowledge (9), attitude (7), and practice (5). The institutional ethical committee approved the study. The obtained data were transferred to the SPSS 13.01 program to draw the result. RESULTS Among the total participants (N = 1570), 64.81 % were women, 20 % of the total postgraduate students were not working in college. When the subjects were questioned regarding knowledge of Covid-19, female postgraduates compared to male, non working postgraduates, working postgraduate students of central zone and other zones showed higher knowledge. Also, while assessing the attitude and preventive measures taken by postgraduates, statistically significant difference was obtained irrespective of knowledge. CONCLUSIONS Dental postgraduate students did not have sufficient knowledge about the present critical situation. It is necessary that they should update their knowledge by pursuing educational courses regarding Covid-19 and by improving the standard of selfprotection. KEY WORDS Coronavirus 19, Dental Postgraduate, Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, Survey

Solid waste management practices and challenges in seven cities of Nepal before and during lockdown against COVID-19 pandemic

The nationwide lockdown imposed to control the spread of novel coronavirus induced dramatic alterations in different sectors of the Nepalese governance, including Solid Waste Management (SWM) practices. The study identifies SW collection gaps in seven major cities of Nepal and highlights the municipal and public households on SW management practices before and during the lockdown to emphasize the linkage between COVID-19 and SWM. It includes information on solid waste status, collection frequency and coverage, workers' safety practices, types of vehicles operated for collection and alternative methods adopted by households to manage SW during the lockdown. For this, 1329 households survey and key informant interviews were conducted in seven cities of Nepal during the lockdown. It was found that although the coverage of the collection service was similar during the pandemic in surveyed households, there was a drastic decrease in the collection frequency leading to a collection gap of around 570 tons/day. More than 50% of the surveyed households adopted no proper alternative measures as they claimed that they stored solid waste with proper management so that municipal authorities can take it. While other 50% adopted practices such as open burning, throwing in streets or composting. The study reveals poor occupational health and safety practices among solid waste workers due to the unavailability of safety gear and equipment despite being aware of the modes of transmission of the virus. The pandemic exacerbated the challenges of smooth SWM as it is an essential and needy service. This study highlights the need for a timely strategic management framework to be developed by the government to continue the smooth SWM practices during the lockdown.

Investor sentiment and government policy interventions: evidence from COVID-19 spread

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the moderating role of government policy interventions amid the early spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) (January–May 2020) on the investor sentiment and stock returns relationship.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses panel data from a sample of 53 countries to examine the impact of investor sentiment, measured by the financial and economic attitudes revealed by the search (FEARS) index (Da et al., 2015) on the stock return.FindingsThe moderating role of government policy response indices with the FEARS index on the global stock returns is further explored. This paper finds that government policy responses have a moderating role in the sentiment and stock returns relationship. The effect holds true even when countries are split based on five classifications, i.e. cultural distance, health standard, government effectiveness, social well-being and financial development. The results are robust to an alternative measure of pandemic search intensity, quantile regression and two measures of stock market activity, i.e. conditional volatility and exchange traded fund returns.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample period of this study encompasses the early spread phase (January–May 2020) of the novel COVID-19 spread.Originality/valueThis paper provides some early evidence on whether the government policy interventions are helpful to mitigate the impact of investor sentiment on the stock market. The paper also helps to shed better insights on the role of different country characteristics for the sentiment and stock return relationship.

Editorial

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted labour markets globally during 2020. The short-term consequences were sudden and often severe. Millions of people were furloughed or lost jobs, and others rapidly adjusted to working from home as offices closed. Many other workers were deemed essential and continued to work in hospitals and grocery stores, on garbage trucks and in warehouses, yet under new protocols to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Does Pandemic Crisis Mean Education Crisis? The Chicago Academic Plastic Surgery Collaborative Response to COVID-19.

The health care crisis related to the spread of novel coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) has created new challenges to plastic surgery education, mostly because of the decreased volume of procedures. The plastic surgery program directors in Chicago decided to act and identify ways to promote surgical education through citywide, multi-institutional, systematic clinical case discussions. Although the initiative has no impact on the surgical skill of the trainees, it was welcomed by residents and faculty and promoted clinical core knowledge in plastic surgery and collaboration among the institutions.

Study on PCM Assisted Constant Temperature Water Heating System

Spread of novel coronavirus across the globe creates panic situations internationally. Major challenge of this pandemic situation is the absence of a specific treatment or vaccine for curing the disease. As per published report of WHO, temperature above 55 ° C is potentially kill Corona virus. This study focuses on design a water heating system that could provide water above the required temperature with minimal input power even during the off-sunshine hours. The thermal performance of Phase Change Material (PCM) integrated solar water heating system providing water temperature above 56 ° C both during the day and the off sunshine hours has been discussed in this present study.The phase change behaviour of paraffin-wax-6035 confined within a copper tube of 100 mm diameter and 1000 mm length and 1 mm thickness, has been studied using CFD analysis. The analysis is carried out for three different cases viz. conventional solar water heating system, modified solar water heating system integrated with bare PCM tube and finned PCM tube of 1 mm fin thickness. The thermal storage capacity of solar water heater is compared based on the thermal storage capacity factor which is calculated to be 1.1149 & 1.1586 for bare PCM tube and finned PCM tube case, respectively with respect to the conventional solar water heater.

Breaking the walls of classroom through Micro learning : Short burst of learning

To avoid spread of novel corona virus, in the second week of March, state government advised to close schools & colleges till further announcement. There was no certainty about reopening. This was a decisive time for the education sector to switch from physical classroom teaching to online classroom teaching. The primary objective of our institute was continuous learning and facilitates teaching-learning process through online teaching. It is an observation that few courses are found to be difficult for students even in physical classrooms and teacher need to employ different active learning strategies to make class active & engaged. Thus same issue was found in online teaching. Therefore we employed micro learning strategy for the course Theory of computation at S.Y. B.Tech.(Computer Science & Engineering). “Micro learning is a holistic approach for skill based learning and education which deals with relatively small learning units.[1]” In this approach, micro level activities were designed, each activity containing a series of short videos, quiz & assignments. Thus we have designed 25 micro level activities for 2 units covering 25% curriculum. Flipped classroom is used as instructional strategy while implementing micro learning. These activities helped to engage students and keep active even in online environment. Tests conducted at the end of topic and perception survey showed that students enjoyed while learning.

A Method for Prevention of Spread of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in a Dental Clinic

A Method for Prevention of Spread of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in a Dental Clinic

Computational studies by molecular docking of some antiviral drugs with COVID-19 receptors are an approach to medication for COVID-19

Abstract The COVID-19 outbreak is a matter of concern worldwide due to unavailability of promising treatment comprising medication or vaccination till date. The discovery of antiviral drug is of immense importance in the existing spread of novel coronavirus. The goal of the present study was to evolve an opposite antiviral drug against the novel COVID-19 virus. A directly succeeding perspective would be to use the prevailing influential drugs from several antimicrobial and chemotherapeutic agents. The encouraging approach is to identify promising drug molecules and compounds through virtual screening via molecular docking of FDA-approved drugs and some previously synthesized pyridone and coumarin derivatives for probable therapeutic outcome. In this conceptual milieu, an effort has been made to propose a computational in silico relationship among FDA-approved drugs and coronavirus-associated receptors and proteins. The study results were evaluated on the basis of a dock score by using molecular operating environment. Out of 15 compounds screened, the compounds with the best docking scores toward their targets was 3d. Therefore, compound 3d deserves further investigations and clinical trials as a possible therapeutic inhibitor of the COVID-19 caused by the novel SARS-CoV-2.

Racial and Socioeconomic Inequality on the Spread of Covid-19: Evidence from US Pollution across Counties

This paper explores disparities in the effect of pollution on confirmed cases of Covid-19 based on counties’ socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Using data on all US counties on a daily basis over the year 2020 and applying a rich panel data fixed effect model, we document that: (1) there are discernible social and demographic disparities in the spread of Covid-19. Blacks, low educated, and poorer people are at higher risks of being infected by the new disease; (2) The criteria pollutants including Ozone, CO, PM10, and PM2.5 have the potential to accelerate the outbreak of the novel coronavirus; (3) The disadvantaged population is more vulnerable to the effects of pollution on the spread of coronavirus. Specifically, the effects of pollution on confirmed cases become larger for blacks, low educated, and counties with lower average wages in 2019. The results suggest that welfare programs during a global pandemic should be differentially distributed among families with different socioeconomic status since the effects of these programs in reducing the spread of the pandemic is different among subpopulations. This paper is the first study to evaluate the differential effects of pollution on the spread of novel coronavirus across different subpopulations based on their socioeconomic status.

Structure-activity relationship (SAR) and molecular dynamics study of withaferin-A fragment derivatives as potential therapeutic lead against main protease (Mpro) of SARS-CoV-2.

The spread of novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has directed to a state of an unprecedented global pandemic. Many synthetic compounds and FDA-approved drugs have been significantly inhibitory against the virus, but no SARS-CoV-2 solution has been identified. However, small molecule fragment–based derivatives of potent phytocompounds may serve as promising inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2. In the pursuit of exploring novel SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors, we generated small molecule fragment derivatives from potent phytocompounds using neural networking and machine learning–based tools, which can cover unexplored regions of the chemical space that still retain lead-like properties. Out of 300 derivative molecules from withaferin-A, hesperidin, and baicalin, 30 were screened out with synthetic accessibility scores > 4 having the best ADME properties. The withaferin-A derivative molecules 61 and 64 exhibited a significant binding affinity of − 7.84 kcal/mol and − 7.94 kcal/mol. The docking study reveals that withaferin-A mol 61 forms 5 polar H-bonds with the Mpro where amino acids involved are GLU166, THR190, CYS145, MET165, and GLN152 and upon QSAR analysis showed a minimal predicted IC50 value of 7762.47 nM. Furthermore, the in silico cytotoxicity predictions, pharmacophore modeling, and molecular dynamics simulation studies have resulted in predicting the highly potent small molecule derivative from withaferin-A (phytocompound from Withania somnifera) to be the potential inhibitor of SARS-CoV 2 protease (Mpro) and a promising future lead candidate against COVID-19. The rationale of choosing withaferin-A from Withania somnifera (Ashwagandha) was propelled by the innumerous applications of Ashwagandha for the treatment of various antiviral diseases, common cold, and fever since time immemorial. Graphical abstractSupplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00894-021-04703-6.

Socioeconomic Disparities in the Effects of Pollution on Spread of Covid-19: Evidence from US Counties

This paper explores disparities in the effect of pollution on confirmed cases of Covid-19 based on counties’ socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Using daily data on all US counties over the year 2020 and applying a rich panel data fixed effect model, we document that: 1) there are discernible social and demographic disparities in the spread of Covid-19. Blacks, low educated and poorer people are at higher risks of being infected by the new disease. 2) The criteria pollutants including Ozone, CO, PM10, and PM2.5 have the potential to accelerate the outbreak of the novel corona virus. 3) The disadvantaged population is more vulnerable to the effects of pollution on the spread of corona virus. Specifically, the effects of pollution on confirmed cases become larger for blacks, low educated, and counties with lower average wages in 2019. The results suggest that welfare programs during a global pandemic should be differentially distributed among families with different socioeconomic status since the effects of these programs in reducing the spread of the pandemic is different among subpopulations. This paper is the first study to evaluate the differential effects of pollution on the spread of novel corona virus across different subpopulations based on their socioeconomic status.

The role of ideological attitudes in responses to COVID-19 threat and government restrictions in Australia

Many government strategies to reduce the spread of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) involved unprecedented restrictions on personal movement, disrupting social and economic norms. Although generally well-received in Australia, community frustration regarding these restrictions appeared to diverge across political lines. Therefore, we examined the unique effects of the ideological subfactors of Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA; Aggression, Submission and Conventionalism) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO; Dominance and Anti-egalitarianism) in predicting perceived personal threat of COVID-19, and support for and reactance to government restrictions, in Australian residents across two separate samples (S1 N = 451, S2 N = 838). COVID-19 threat was positively predicted by Submission, and negatively by Conventionalism, and Anti-egalitarianism. Support for restrictions was also positively predicted by Submission, and negatively by Conventionalism, Dominance, and Anti-egalitarianism. Reactance to government restrictions was negatively predicted by Submission, and positively by Conventionalism, Dominance, and Anti-egalitarianism. These findings suggest that right-wing ideological subfactors contribute to the one's perception of COVID-19 threat and government restrictions differentially.

Balancing Economy and COVID 19

BACKGROUND 
 COVID-19 or coronavirus disease 2019 has multispectral consequences attached to it. Economic downturn is one of them. Almost all countries are facing economic challenges post covid-19 and are searching for panacea. 
 SUMMARY 
 Along with the medical impact which has resulted into almost more than 85 million infection of COVID-19 worldwide and almost two million case fatalities, there is also economic downfall attached to it. After the great depression of 1930, the pandemic induced crisis is worst in almost past hundred years. Even the basic needs of human beings such as food was not able to fulfil after pandemic. The prolonged lockdown to contain the viral spread of novel coronavirus made almost all the economic activities closed leading to widespread loss of livelihood and jobs. GDP outputs were contracted and demand also soared due to saving nature of people in uncertain times. 
 CONCLUSION 
 As the vaccine is in final stage and is ready to be distributed, more and more businesses can restart. Policy makers should not shy away from providing any fiscal package if necessary, to revive the economy.