title: Causal Network Models of SARS-CoV-2 Expression and Aging to Identify Candidates for Drug Repurposing

text: Given the severity of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, a major challenge is to rapidly repurpose existing approved drugs for clinical interventions. While a number of data-driven and experimental approaches have been suggested in the context of drug repurposing, a platform that systematically integrates available transcriptomic, proteomic and structural data is missing. More importantly, given that SARS-CoV-2 pathogenicity is highly age-dependent, it is critical to integrate aging signatures into drug discovery platforms. We here take advantage of large-scale transcriptional drug screens combined with RNA-seq data of the lung epithelium with SARS-CoV-2 infection as well as the aging lung. To identify robust druggable protein targets, we propose a principled causal framework that makes use of multiple data modalities. Our analysis highlights the importance of serine/threonine and tyrosine kinases as potential targets that intersect the SARS-CoV-2 and aging pathways. By integrating transcriptomic, proteomic and structural data that is available for many diseases, our drug discovery platform is broadly applicable. Rigorous in vitro experiments as well as clinical trials are needed to validate the identified candidate drugs.


Early thromboembolic events in hospitalized COVID-19 patients


A dermatologic manifestation of COVID-19: Transient livedo reticularis


title: COVID-19 Chest CT Image Segmentation -- A Deep Convolutional Neural Network Solution

text: A novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was detected and has spread rapidly across various countries around the world since the end of the year 2019, Computed Tomography (CT) images have been used as a crucial alternative to the time-consuming RT-PCR test. However, pure manual segmentation of CT images faces a serious challenge with the increase of suspected cases, resulting in urgent requirements for accurate and automatic segmentation of COVID-19 infections. Unfortunately, since the imaging characteristics of the COVID-19 infection are diverse and similar to the backgrounds, existing medical image segmentation methods cannot achieve satisfactory performance. In this work, we try to establish a new deep convolutional neural network tailored for segmenting the chest CT images with COVID-19 infections. We firstly maintain a large and new chest CT image dataset consisting of 165,667 annotated chest CT images from 861 patients with confirmed COVID-19. Inspired by the observation that the boundary of the infected lung can be enhanced by adjusting the global intensity, in the proposed deep CNN, we introduce a feature variation block which adaptively adjusts the global properties of the features for segmenting COVID-19 infection. The proposed FV block can enhance the capability of feature representation effectively and adaptively for diverse cases. We fuse features at different scales by proposing Progressive Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling to handle the sophisticated infection areas with diverse appearance and shapes. We conducted experiments on the data collected in China and Germany and show that the proposed deep CNN can produce impressive performance effectively.


title: How Often Should People be Tested for Corona to Avoid a Shutdown?

text: Based on the well known SIR model, this paper develops a model for predicting the number of necessary testings of asymptomatic persons in order to push Reff below 1, thus suppressing an outbreak. The model considers R0, time for obtaining a test result, and effect of population discipline. The outcome are closed form expressions for the number of daily tests.


Perforin and resistance to SARS coronavirus 2


title: SARS-CoV-2 Inflammatory Syndrome. Clinical Features and Rationale for Immunological Treatment

text: The current pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, is a global health emergency because of its highly contagious nature, the great number of patients requiring intensive care therapy, and the high fatality rate. In the absence of specific antiviral drugs, passive prophylaxis, or a vaccine, the treatment aim in these patients is to prevent the potent virus-induced inflammatory stimuli from leading to the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which has a severe prognosis. Here, the mechanism of action and the rationale for employing immunological strategies, which range from traditional chemically synthesized drugs, anti-cytokine antibodies, human immunoglobulin for intravenous use, to vaccines, are reviewed.


The QT interval in patients with COVID-19 treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin


title: Telemedicine: Patient-Provider Clinical Engagement During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

text: BACKGROUND: The novel coronavirus pandemic has drastically affected healthcare organizations across the globe. METHODS: We sought to summarize the current telemedicine environment in order to highlight the important changes triggered by the novel coronavirus pandemic, as well as highlight how the current crisis may inform the future of telemedicine. RESULTS: At many institutions, the number of telemedicine visits dramatically increased within days following the institution of novel coronavirus pandemic restrictions on in-person clinical encounters. Prior to the pandemic, telemedicine utilization was weak throughout surgical specialties due to regulatory and reimbursement barriers. As part of the pandemic response, the USA government temporarily relaxed various telemedicine restrictions and provided additional telemedicine funding. DISCUSSION: The post-pandemic role of telemedicine is dependent on permanent regulatory solutions. In the coming decade, telemedicine and telesurgery are anticipated to mature due to the proliferation of interconnected consumer health devices and high-speed 5G data connectivity.


title: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): a scoping review

text: BackgroundIn December 2019, a pneumonia caused by a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in Wuhan, China and has rapidly spread around the world since then.AimThis study aims to understand the research gaps related to COVID-19 and propose recommendations for future research.MethodsWe undertook a scoping review of COVID-19, comprehensively searching databases and other sources to identify literature on COVID-19 between 1 December 2019 and 6 February 2020. We analysed the sources, publication date, type and topic of the retrieved articles/studies.ResultsWe included 249 articles in this scoping review. More than half (59.0%) were conducted in China. Guidance/guidelines and consensuses statements (nâ¯=â¯56; 22.5%) were the most common. Most (nâ¯=â¯192; 77.1%) articles were published in peer-reviewed journals, 35 (14.1%) on preprint servers and 22 (8.8%) posted online. Ten genetic studies (4.0%) focused on the origin of SARS-CoV-2 while the topics of molecular studies varied. Nine of 22 epidemiological studies focused on estimating the basic reproduction number of COVID-19 infection (R0). Of all identified guidance/guidelines (nâ¯=â¯35), only ten fulfilled the strict principles of evidence-based practice. The number of articles published per day increased rapidly until the end of January.ConclusionThe number of articles on COVID-19 steadily increased before 6 February 2020. However, they lack diversity and are almost non-existent in some study fields, such as clinical research. The findings suggest that evidence for the development of clinical practice guidelines and public health policies will be improved when more results from clinical research becomes available.


Airborne Transmission of COVID-19


title: Exposure to coronavirus news on mainstream media: The role of risk perceptions and depression

text: OBJECTIVE: The mainstream media tend to rely on news content that will increase risk perceptions of pandemic outbreaks to stimulate public response and persuade people to comply with preventive behaviours. The objective of this study was to examine associations between exposure to coronavirus disease (COVID-19) news, risk perceptions, and depressive symptoms. METHODS: Cross-sectional data were collected from 501 participants who were ≥18 years. Exposure to COVID-19 news was assessed as our exposure variable. We screened for depression (outcome variable) with the Patient Health Questionnaire and examined the roles of risk perceptions. Multiple linear regressions and mediation analysis with 1000 bootstrap resamples were conducted. RESULTS: Participants were 55.29% female, 67.86% White with mean age 32.44 ± 11.94 years. After controlling for sociodemographic and socio-economic factors, news exposure was positively associated with depressive symptoms ß = .11; 95% confidence interval (95%CI) = 0.02-0.20. Mediation analysis showed that perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 mediated 34.4% of this relationship (ß = .04; 95%CI = 0.01-0.06). CONCLUSION: Perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 can serve as a pathway through which exposure to COVID-19 news on mainstream media may be associated with depressive symptoms. Based on our findings, we offered recommendations for media-health partnership, practice, and research.


title: Changing the editorial process at JCI and JCI Insight in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

text: The editors of JCI and JCI Insight are revisiting our editorial processes in light of the strain that the COVID-19 pandemic places on the worldwide scientific community. Here, we discuss adjustments to our decision framework in light of restrictions placed on laboratory working conditions for many of our authors.


docid: yvnjspsc

title: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on marginalized populations in the United States: A research agenda

text: International and national crises often highlight inequalities in the labor market that disproportionately affect individuals from marginalized backgrounds. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting changes in society due to social distancing measures, has showcased inequities in access to decent work and experiences of discrimination resulting in many of the vulnerable populations in the United States experiencing a much harsher impact on economic and work-related factors. The purpose of this essay is to describe how the COVID-19 pandemic may differentially affect workers of color, individuals from low-income backgrounds, and women in complex ways. First, this essay will discuss disproportionate representation of workers from low-income and racial/ethnic minority backgrounds in sectors most affected by COVID-19. Second, it will discuss the lack of decent work for low-income workers who perform "essential" tasks. Third, this essay will highlight economic and work-related implications of increased discrimination Asian Americans are experiencing in society. Finally, role conflict and stress for women who are managing additional unpaid work, including caretaking responsibilities, while needing to continue to engage in paid work will be examined. A research agenda will be set forth throughout the essay, calling for vocational psychologists to engage in research that fully examines how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting vulnerable communities.


Which are the "emergent" dermatologic practices during COVID-19 pandemic? Report from the lockdown in Milan, Italy


A late-onset widespread skin rash in a previous COVID-19-infected patient: viral or multidrug effect?


title: Scarcity in the Covid-19 Pandemic

text: As we write, U.S. cities and states with extensive community transmission of Covid-19 are in harm's way-not only because of the disease itself but also because of prior and current failures to act. During the 2009 influenza pandemic, public health agencies and hospitals developed but never adequately implemented preparedness plans. Focused on efficiency in a competitive market, health systems had few incentives to maintain stockpiles of essential medical equipment. Just-in-time economic models resulted in storage of only those supplies needed then. At the same time, global purchasing in search of lower prices reduced the number of U.S. suppliers, with hospitals dependent on foreign companies. There is still a possibility that the pandemic will be manageably bad rather than unmanageably catastrophic in this country. Immediate, powerful, and sustained federal action could make the difference.


title: Coronavirus disease 2019: Knowledge, attitude, and practice of pregnant women in a tertiary hospital in Abakaliki, southeast Nigeria

text: OBJECTIVE: To determine the knowledge, attitude, and practice of antenatal attendees towards COVID-19 in Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, Nigeria. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was carried out among 430 consenting pregnant women attending antenatal clinics between March 1 and May 30, 2020, using pretested questionnaires. RESULTS: The mean age and mean gestational age of the respondents were 30.04 years (95% confidence interval [CI] 28.9-31.1) and 26.3 weeks (95% CI 23.3-29.3), respectively. More than four-fifths (82%) of the women believed that COVID-19 is real and their main source of information was mass media. The majority had adequate knowledge of COVID-19. More than half of the respondents said COVID-19 is a curable disease and that chloroquine can be used. The majority showed a good attitude and preventice practice of COVID-19 disease; however, one-fourth (24%) thought that infected individuals should be killed to prevent the spread of the virus. CONCLUSION: The study population has good knowledge, attitude, and practice of COVID-19 disease. However, it is worrisome that some respondents thought that infected individuals should be killed. Proper education must be given to the populace to avert these negative attitudes while promoting a positive preventive attitude.


Self-reported olfactory and taste disorders in SARS-CoV-2 patients: a cross-sectional study


The COVID-19 Pandemic: Public Health and Epidemiology


Extubation barrier drape to minimise droplet spread


'Age and ageism in COVID-19': Elderly mental health-care vulnerabilities and needs


docid: bygmlypl

title: Haddon matrix for kidney transplantation during COVID-19 pandemic: A problem solving framework for present and future


docid: llhbfrax

title: Haddon Matrix for Kidney Transplantation during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Problem Solving Framework for Present and Future

text: Novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a public health emergency with several million worldwide and a quarter of a million and soon half a million deaths including a third in the United States alone (as of May 10, 2020).1 It affects kidney transplantation and has caused mortality in waitlist dialysis and transplant patients.2,3 This inevitably raises questions about the practicality and direction of transplant surgeries during this critical period.


title: Evaluation of rapid diagnosis of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) using loop-mediated isothermal amplification

text: With the rapid spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), there is an urgent need for more rapid and simple detection technologies at the forefront of medical care worldwide. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of the Loopamp® 2019-SARSCoV-2 Detection Reagent Kit, which uses loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) technology. In this protocol, cDNA is synthesized from SARS-CoV-2 RNA using reverse transcriptase, followed by DNA amplification under isothermal conditions in one step. The RT-LAMP test kit amplified the targeted RNA of a SARS-CoV-2 isolate with a detection limit of 1.0 × 101 copies/µL, which was comparable to the detection sensitivity of quantitative reverse transcription PCR (RT-qPCR). Comparison with the results of RT-qPCR for 76 nasopharyngeal swab samples from patients with suspected COVID-19 showed a sensitivity of 100 % and a specificity of 97.6 %. In the 24 RNA specimens derived from febrile Japanese patients with or without influenza A, no amplification was observed using RT-LAMP. RT-LAMP could be a simple and easy-to-use diagnostic tool for the detection of SARS-CoV-2.


Coronavirus disease 2019: The harms of exaggerated information and non-evidence-based measures


Neuropsychiatric and cognitive effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on multiple sclerosis patients


title: [CT imaging features of patients with different clinical types of COVID-19]

text: OBJECTIVE: To investigate the CT findings of patients with different clinical types of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). METHODS: A total of 67 patients diagnosed as COVID-19 by nucleic acid testing were collected and divided into 4 groups according to the clinical stages based on Diagnosis and treatment of novel coronavirus pneumonia (trial version 6). The CT imaging characteristics were analyzed among patients with different clinical types. RESULTS: Among 67 patients, 3(4.5%) were mild, 35 (52.2%) were moderate, 22 (32.8%) were severe, and 7(10.4%) were critical ill. No significant abnormality in chest CT imaging in mild patients. The 35 cases of moderate type included 3 (8.6%) single lesions, the 22 cases of severe cases included 1 (4.5%) single lesion and the rest cases were with multiple lesions. CT images of moderate patients were mainly manifested by solid plaque shadow and halo sign (18/35, 51.4%); while fibrous strip shadow with ground glass shadow was more frequent in severe cases (7/22, 31.8%). Consolidation shadow as the main lesion was observed in 7 cases, and all of them were severe or critical ill patients. CONCLUSIONS: CT images of patients with different clinical types of COVID-19 have characteristic manifestations, and solid shadow may predict severe and critical illness.


Mild COVID-19 symptoms despite treatment with teriflunomide and high-dose methylprednisolone due to multiple sclerosis relapse


How deadly is the coronavirus? Scientists are close to an answer


Covid-19: The challenges facing endocrinology


SARS-CoV-2, the Virus that Causes COVID-19: Cytometry and the New Challenge for Global Health


COVID-19-White matter and globus pallidum lesions: Demyelination or small-vessel vasculitis?


title: A New Algorithm for Tessellated Kernel Learning

text: The accuracy and complexity of machine learning algorithms based on kernel optimization are limited by the set of kernels over which they are able to optimize. An ideal set of kernels should: admit a linear parameterization (for tractability); be dense in the set of all kernels (for robustness); be universal (for accuracy). The recently proposed Tesselated Kernels (TKs) is currently the only known class which meets all three criteria. However, previous algorithms for optimizing TKs were limited to classification and relied on Semidefinite Programming (SDP) - limiting them to relatively small datasets. By contrast, the 2-step algorithm proposed here scales to 10,000 data points and extends to the regression problem. Furthermore, when applied to benchmark data, the algorithm demonstrates significant improvement in performance over Neural Nets and SimpleMKL with similar computation time.


title: Association between renin-angiotensin system inhibitors and COVID-19 complications

text: AIMS: To describe the characteristics of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 (including their long-term at-home medication use), and compare them with regard to the course of the disease. To assess the association between renin-angiotensin system inhibitors (RASIs) and disease progression and critical outcomes. METHODS AND RESULTS: All consecutive hospitalized patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 in a university hospital in Amiens (France) were included in this study. The primary composite endpoint was admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) or death before ICU admission. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression models were used to identify factors associated with the composite endpoint. Between 28 February 2020 and 30 March 2020, a total of 499 local patients tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Of these, 231 were not hospitalized {males 33%; median [interquartile range (IQR)] age: 44 (32-54)}, and 268 were hospitalized [males 58%; median (IQR) age: 73 (61-84)]. A total of 116 patients met the primary endpoint: 47 died before ICU admission, and 69 were admitted to the ICU. Patients meeting the primary endpoint were more likely than patients not meeting the primary endpoint to have coronary heart disease and to have been taking RASIs; however, the two subsets of patients did not differ with regard to median age. After adjustment for other associated variables, the risk of meeting the composite endpoint was 1.73 times higher (odds ratio 1.73, 95% confidence interval 1.02-2.93) in patients treated at baseline with a RASI than in patients not treated with this drug class. This association was confirmed when the analysis was restricted to patients treated with antihypertensive agents. CONCLUSIONS: We highlighted a potential safety signal for RASIs, the long-term use of which was independently associated with a higher risk of severe COVID-19 and a poor outcome. Due to the widespread use of this important drug class, formal proof based on clinical trials is needed to better understand the association between RASIs and complications of COVID-19.


Understanding SARS-CoV-2-related multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children


title: Estimation of COVID-19 dynamics "on a back-of-envelope": Does the simplest SIR model provide quantitative parameters and predictions?

text: Basing on existence of the mathematically sequential reduction of the three-compartmental (Susceptible-Infected-Recovered/Removed) model to the Verhulst (logistic) equation with the parameters determined by the basic characteristic of epidemic process, this model is tested in application to the recent data on COVID-19 outbreak reported by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. It is shown that such a simple model adequately reproduces the epidemic dynamics not only qualitatively but for a number of countries quantitatively with a high degree of correlation that allows to use it for predictive estimations. In addition, some features of SIR model are discussed in the context, how its parameters and conditions reflect measures attempted for the disease growth prevention that is also clearly indicated by deviations from such model solutions.


title: Off-label use of tocilizumab for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia in Milan, Italy

text: BACKGROUND: Tocilizumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody, targets IL-6 receptors blocking downstream pro-inflammatory effects of IL-6. In preliminary reports it was suggested to be beneficial in patients with severe COVID-19. METHODS: In this open-label prospective study we describe clinical characteristics and outcome of 51 patients hospitalized with confirmed and severe COVID-19 pneumonia treated with tocilizumab intravenously. All patients had elevated IL-6 plasma level (>40 pg/mL) and oxygen saturation <93% in ambient air. Clinical outcomes, oxygen support, laboratory data and adverse events were collected over a follow-up of 30 days. RESULTS: Forty-five patients (88%) were on high-flow oxygen supplementation, six of whom with invasive ventilation. From baseline to day 7 after tocilizumab we observed a dramatic drop of body temperature and CRP value with a significant increase in lymphocyte count (p<0.001). Over a median follow-up time of 34 days from tocilizumab, 34 patients (67%) showed an improvement in their clinical severity class; 31 were discharged; 17 (33%) showed a worsening of their clinical status, of these 14 died (27%). The mortality rate was significantly associated with mechanical ventilation at baseline (83.3% vs 20% of patients on non-invasive oxygen support; p=0.0001). The most frequent side effects were an increase of hepatic enzymes (29%), thrombocytopenia (14%), and serious bacterial and fungal infections (27%). CONCLUSION: Tocilizumab exerts a rapidly beneficial effect on fever and inflammatory markers, although no significant impact on the clinical outcome can be inferred by our results. Critically ill patients seem to have a high risk of serious infections with this drug.


How environmental racism is fuelling the coronavirus pandemic


Medical students' perspective. A letter to the editor on "Impact of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on surgical practice - Part 1"


title: Brain uptake and accumulation of new levofloxacin-doxycycline combination through the use of solid lipid nanoparticles: Formulation; Optimization and in-vivo evaluation

text: The objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility of delivery of novel levofloxacin/ doxycycline (LEVO/DOX) combination to the brain by intranasal route to achieve a significant local concentration in the brain and a direct nose-to-brain pathway. Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN) were selected as a drug carrier and employed Box-Behnken design for optimizing LEVO/DOX-SLN to achieve minimum particle size and maximum apparent entrapment efficiency (EE). SLNs were prepared by hot emulsification and characterized. In vitro release of optimized formulations showed prolonged drug release from the optimized formulation. The results of pharmacokinetic study of the optimized SLN-HPMC gel in plasma and brain revealed significant increase in the brain peak concentration (420, 315â¯ng/g), the AUC 0-360 min (57130 and 48693.13â¯ng. min/g) in comparison to intranasal LEVO/DOX free solution with the values of (160, 120) ng/g, (36850, 27637.5 ngâ min/g) for LEVO and DOX, respectively. The optimized LD-SLN-HPMC gel gave a drug-targeting efficiency (DTE %) of 149.815 and 161.969 for LEVO and DOX, respectively, in comparison to the intravenous route. Moreover, the optimized formulation had a direct transport percentage (DTP %) of 33.285 and 40.236 for LEVO and DOX, respectively, which indicates a significant contribution of direct nose-to-brain pathway in brain drug delivery.


title: Analysis of clinical characteristics and laboratory findings of 95 cases of 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a retrospective analysis

text: BACKGROUND: Since December 2019, 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia emerged in Wuhan city and rapidly spread throughout China and even the world. We sought to analyse the clinical characteristics and laboratory findings of some cases with 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia . METHODS: In this retrospective study, we extracted the data on 95 patients with laboratory-confirmed 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan Xinzhou District People's Hospital from January 16th to February 25th, 2020. Cases were confirmed by real-time RT-PCR and abnormal radiologic findings. Outcomes were followed up until March 2th, 2020. RESULTS: Higher temperature, blood leukocyte count, neutrophil count, neutrophil percentage, C-reactive protein level, D-dimer level, alanine aminotransferase activity, aspartate aminotransferase activity, α - hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase activity, lactate dehydrogenase activity and creatine kinase activity were related to severe 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia and composite endpoint, and so were lower lymphocyte count, lymphocyte percentage and total protein level. Age below 40 or above 60 years old, male, higher Creatinine level, and lower platelet count also seemed related to severe 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia and composite endpoint, however the P values were greater than 0.05, which mean under the same condition studies of larger samples are needed in the future. CONCLUSION: Multiple factors were related to severe 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia and composite endpoint, and more related studies are needed in the future.


title: Covid-19: 10 lessons from young farm vets

text: The Covid-19 pandemic has been a challenging time for farm vets and their practices across the world, but how has the pandemic been seen by younger vets? Annie Kerr discusses.


Covid-19: PHE review has failed ethnic minorities, leaders tell BMJ


title: Spiralian Genomes Reveal Gene Family Expansions Associated with Adaptation to Freshwater

text: The colonization of freshwater habitats by marine-adapted organisms represents a major transition that has only occurred a few times in the evolution of animals. Only around half of the extant animal phyla have representatives in both marine and freshwater environments and even within those phyla some major clades are restricted to marine environments. Moving from marine to freshwater environments can create severe osmotic and ionic stresses and the mechanisms that animals have used to adapt to those stresses are still not well understood. In this study, we downloaded amino acid sequence data from 11 spiralian animal genomes (four freshwater taxa representing four different phyla as well as 7 marine taxa) and identified a number of gene family expansions that have occurred exclusively in the freshwater lineages. Further investigation of these gene families and the timing and nature of their expansions will illuminate one of the major evolutionary transitions in the history of life on Earth.


Celebrating the struggle against homophobia, transphobia and biphobia as central to ending HIV transmission by 2030


title: Is DPP4 inhibition a comrade or adversary in COVID-19 infection

text: Hypertension and Diabetes are the most common comorbid conditions in patients with COVID-19 and has been shown to adversely impact prognosis globally. It has been shown that hyperglycemia is one of the factors that increases the risk of poor outcomes in these patients. These patients are usually on multiple medications and recently a series of discussion on how Dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitors (DPP4i) may be beneficial in these patients has been presented. This commentary presents a nuanced debateon why the DPP4i may not bebeneficial in COVID-19 and that caution needs to be addressed in making any judgementsuntil real world data is available.


[Clinical features of respiratory coronavirus infections and relationship to otolaryngology]


The case for continuing elective cataract surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic


title: Preventive measures against COVID-19 for the residents of the Seijo School evacuation center in Shinjuku-ku, International City

text: At the Seijyo School Evacuation Center, regardless of whether the government's registration system for those who need assistance in times of disaster is used or not, we are working to identify residents and problems that may actually need assistance in times of disaster, and to create evacuation centers that focus on the physically and socially vulnerable As part of our efforts to deal with COVID-19, we made an announcement at the end of January, more than two weeks earlier than the ward's publicity, to alert the community, elderly care facilities, and schools In addition, as an emergency response to the growing damage in Japan, the company has been distributing its own stockpile of masks to high-risk populations, such as patients with chronic diseases and the elderly, since March 3 Translated with www DeepL com/Translator (free version)


TeleHealth utilization in Gastroenterology (GI) clinics amid Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic: Impact on clinical practice & GI training


COVID-19 serologic testing: FAQs and caveats


The Impact of COVID-19 in Psychiatry


Our Lane in the COVID-19 Pandemic


title: Crowdsourcing a crisis response for COVID-19 in oncology

text: Crowdsourcing efforts are currently underway to collect and analyze data from patients with cancer who are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. These community-led initiatives will fill key knowledge gaps to tackle crucial clinical questions on the complexities of infection with the causative coronavirus SARS-Cov-2 in the large, heterogeneous group of vulnerable patients with cancer.


The continuum of SARS-CoV-2's neurotropism and the potential for immune-mediated neuronal injury


title: Global Sentiments Surrounding the COVID-19 Pandemic on Twitter: Analysis of Twitter Trends

text: BACKGROUND: With the World Health Organization's pandemic declaration and government-initiated actions against coronavirus disease (COVID-19), sentiments surrounding COVID-19 have evolved rapidly. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to examine worldwide trends of four emotions-fear, anger, sadness, and joy-and the narratives underlying those emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Over 20 million social media twitter posts made during the early phases of the COVID-19 outbreak from January 28 to April 9, 2020, were collected using "wuhan," "corona," "nCov," and "covid" as search keywords. RESULTS: Public emotions shifted strongly from fear to anger over the course of the pandemic, while sadness and joy also surfaced. Findings from word clouds suggest that fears around shortages of COVID-19 tests and medical supplies became increasingly widespread discussion points. Anger shifted from xenophobia at the beginning of the pandemic to discourse around the stay-at-home notices. Sadness was highlighted by the topics of losing friends and family members, while topics related to joy included words of gratitude and good health. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, global COVID-19 sentiments have shown rapid evolutions within just the span of a few weeks. Findings suggest that emotion-driven collective issues around shared public distress experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic are developing and include large-scale social isolation and the loss of human lives. The steady rise of societal concerns indicated by negative emotions needs to be monitored and controlled by complementing regular crisis communication with strategic public health communication that aims to balance public psychological wellbeing.


title: TeleVital: Enhancing the quality of contactless health assessment

text: In the midst of rising positive cases of COVID-19, the hospitals face a newfound difficulty to prioritize on their patients and accommodate them. Moreover, crowding of patients at hospitals pose a threat to the healthcare workers and other patients at the hospital. With that in mind, a non-contact method of measuring the necessary vitals such as heart rate, respiratory rate and SPO$_2$ will prove highly beneficial for the hospitals to tackle this issue. This paper discusses our approach in achieving the non-contact measurement of vitals with the sole help of a webcam and further our design of an e-hospital platform for doctors and patients to attend appointments virtually. The platform also provides the doctor with an option to provide with voice-based prescriptions or digital prescriptions, to simplify the daily, exhausting routine of a doctor.


In reply: Spinal anesthesia for Cesarean delivery in women with COVID-19 infection: questions regarding the cause of hypotension


Laser-assisted head and neck surgery in the COVID-19 pandemic: Controversial evidence and precautions


title: Developing a risk assessment score for patients with cancer during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic

text: The novel coronavirus (CoV) pandemic is a serious threat for patients with cancer, who have an immunocompromised status and are considered at high risk of infections. Data on the novel CoV respiratory disease (coronavirus disease 2019 [COVID-19]) in patients with cancer are still limited. Unlike other common viruses, CoVs have not been shown to cause a more severe disease in immunocompromised subjects. Along with direct viral pathogenicity, in some individuals, CoV infection triggers an uncontrolled aberrant inflammatory response, leading to lung tissue damage. In patients with cancer treated with immunotherapy (e.g. immune checkpoint inhibitors), COVID-19 may therefore represent a serious threat. After a thorough review of the literature on CoV pathogenesis and cancer, we selected several shared features to define which patients can be considered at higher risk of COVID-19. We combined these clinical and laboratory variables, with the aim of developing a score to weight the risk of COVID-19 in patients with cancer.


title: Global Analysis of Multi-Host and Multi-Vector Epidemic Models

text: We formulate a multi-group and multi-vector epidemic model in which hosts' dynamics is captured by staged-progression $SEIR$ framework and the dynamics of vectors is captured by an $SI$ framework. The proposed model describes the evolution of a class of zoonotic infections where the pathogen is shared by $m$ host species and transmitted by $p$ arthropod vector species. In each host, the infectious period is structured into $n$ stages with a corresponding infectiousness parameter to each vector species. We determine the basic reproduction number $\mathcal{R}_0^2(m,n,p)$ and investigate the dynamics of the systems when this threshold is less or greater than one. We show that the dynamics of the multi-host, multi-stage, and multi-vector system is completely determined by the basic reproduction number and the structure of the host-vector network configuration. Particularly, we prove that the disease-free \mbox{equilibrium} is globally asymptotically stable (GAS) whenever $\mathcal{R}_0^2(m,n,p)<1$, and a unique strongly endemic equilibrium exists and is GAS if $\mathcal{R}_0^2(m,n,p)>1$ and the host-vector configuration is irreducible. That is, either the disease dies out or persists in all hosts and all vector species.


Association between ABO blood groups and risk of SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia


title: Exploring the nuances of R0: Eight estimates and application to 2009 pandemic influenza

text: For nearly a century, the initial reproduction number (R0) has been used as a one number summary to compare outbreaks of infectious disease, yet there is no `standard' estimator for R0. Difficulties in estimating R0 arise both from how a disease transmits through a population as well as from differences in statistical estimation method. We describe eight methods used to estimate R0 and provide a thorough simulation study of how these estimates change in the presence of different disease parameters. As motivation, we analyze the 2009 outbreak of the H1N1 pandemic influenza in the USA and compare the results from our eight methods to a previous study. We discuss the most important aspects from our results which effect the estimation of R0, which include the population size, time period used, and the initial percent of infectious individuals. Additionally, we discuss how pre-processing incidence counts may effect estimates of R0. Finally, we provide guidelines for estimating point estimates and confidence intervals to create reliable, comparable estimates of R0.


Editorial: Frailty and Seasonality


title: COVID-19: Catastrophic Cause of Acute Lung Injury

text: The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak that began in 2019 and spread rapidly across the globe has been observed to cause acute lung injury and multiorgan system failure While common symptoms are flu-like, this population has been observed to decompensate at an alarmingly rapid rate to severe hypoxia SARS-CoV-2 infects host cells by targeting the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor, which is present on endothelial cells in the lung, heart, kidney, and gastrointestinal tissue The pathophysiology of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in SARS-CoV-2 infection has a component of lung perfusion dysregulation and is described as a "cytokine storm" that causes increased vascular permeability and disease severity Older adults and those with comorbid conditions, particularly hypertension, diabetes, and history of ischemic heart disease, are especially vulnerable These high-risk populations are often on angiotensin-modulating therapies, which are theorized to increase ACE2 expressivity, but current evidence for or against discontinuation is equivocal The standard for SARS-CoV-2 testing is through reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, which has presented problems due to low sensitivity and possible co-infection with other pathogens Treatment for ARDS in the setting of SARS-CoV-2 should follow pre-established goals of care and the wishes of the patient and family members or caregivers and consider the high risk for polypharmacy, cognitive decline, malnutrition, and depression, particularly in older adults Treatment recommendations have outlined ventilation goals to minimize further lung injury Compassionate use of pharmacologic therapies such as remdesivir has shown promise, and further clinical trials of anticytokine agents are underway


Survivors' burden


England's new covid-19 monitoring outfit: the Joint Biosecurity Centre


title: Perinatal novel coronavirus infection: a case report

text: We hereby reported the diagnosis, treatment process and perinatal outcome of a patient with novel coronavirus infection in perinatal period The pregnant woman delivered a boy by cesarean section at 37 +2 gestational weeks due to severe liver dysfunction She subsequently had a high fever 2 days later, and novel coronavirus infection was confirmed by nucleic acid test in a throat swab After a 12-day isolation and support treatment, her two consecutive throat swab results for novel coronavirus turned negative and she was discharged The novel coronavirus was tested in the patient's blood, urine, breast milk as well as the neonatal throat swab, and the results were all negative The neonate had an elevated myocardial enzyme, but was otherwise well and was discharged after 14-day isolation with normal myocardial enzyme


title: Primary care management of the coronavirus (COVID-19)

text: South Africa is in the grip of a novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Primary care providers are in the frontline. COVID-19 is spread primarily by respiratory droplets contaminating surfaces and hands that then transmit the virus to another person's respiratory system. The incubation period is 2-9 days and the majority of cases are mild. The most common symptoms are fever, cough and shortness of breath. Older people and those with cardiopulmonary co-morbidities or immunological deficiency will be more at risk of severe disease. If people meet the case definition, the primary care provider should immediately adopt infection prevention and control measures. Diagnosis is made by a RT-PCR test using respiratory secretions, usually nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs. Mild cases can be managed at home with self-isolation, symptomatic treatment and follow-up if the disease worsens. Contact tracing is very important. Observed case fatality is between 0.5% and 4%, but may be overestimated as mild cases are not always counted. Primary care providers must give clear, accurate and consistent messages on infection prevention and control in communities and homes.


docid: obynkbbb

title: Will there be a silver lining in the end? Lessons from and reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong and beyond

text: This article provides an analysis of the psychological and moral transformations as people confront the risk of infection, using Hong Kong as a case example. In the face of an unfamiliar threat, the need for uncertainty reduction gives rise to hasty, uncritical, and oversimplified assumptions about risk reduction, while prejudice against people and nations who do not share similar practices, as well as those symptomatic or at risk of catching the virus, ensue. The pandemic is eroding basic human decency and our compassion for one another while the human race battles a common threat to our destiny. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).


title: The Potency of an Anti-MERS Coronavirus Subunit Vaccine Depends on a Unique Combinatorial Adjuvant Formulation

text: Vaccination is one of the most successful strategies to prevent human infectious diseases. Combinatorial adjuvants have gained increasing interest as they can stimulate multiple immune pathways and enhance the vaccine efficacy of subunit vaccines. We investigated the adjuvanticity of Aluminum (alum) in combination with rASP-1, a protein adjuvant, using the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus MERS-CoV receptor-binding-domain (RBD) vaccine antigen. A highly enhanced anti-MERS-CoV neutralizing antibody response was induced when mice were immunized with rASP-1 and the alum-adjuvanted RBD vaccine in two separate injection sites as compared to mice immunized with RBD + rASP-1 + alum formulated into a single inoculum. The antibodies produced also significantly inhibited the binding of RBD to its cell-associated receptor. Moreover, immunization with rASP-1 co-administered with the alum-adjuvanted RBD vaccine in separate sites resulted in an enhanced frequency of TfH and GC B cells within the draining lymph nodes, both of which were positively associated with the titers of the neutralizing antibody response related to anti-MERS-CoV protective immunity. Our findings not only indicate that this unique combinatorial adjuvanted RBD vaccine regimen improved the immunogenicity of RBD, but also point to the importance of utilizing combinatorial adjuvants for the induction of synergistic protective immune responses.


Known SARS-CoV-2 infections: The tip of an important iceberg


title: Estimation of the Excess COVID-19 Cases in Seoul, South Korea by the Students Arriving from China

text: Background: In March 2020, overall, 37,000 international students from China, a country at risk of the 2019-novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infection has arrived in Seoul, South Korea. Individuals from the country at risk of COVID-19 infection have been included in the Korean home-quarantine program, but the efficacy of the program is uncertain. Methods: To estimate the possible number of infected individuals within the large influx of international students from China, we used a deterministic compartmental model for epidemic and performed a simulation-based search of different rates of compliance with home-quarantine. Results: Under the home-quarantine program, the number of the infected individuals would reach 40-72 from 12 March-24 March with the arrival of 0.2% of pre-infectious individuals. Furthermore, the number of isolated individuals would peak at 40-64 from 13 March-27 March in Seoul, South Korea. Our findings indicated when incoming international students showed strict compliance with quarantine, epidemics by the international student from China were less likely to occur in Seoul, South Korea. Conclusions: To mitigate possible epidemics, additional efforts to improve the compliance of home-quarantine of the individuals from countries with the virus risk are warranted along with other containment policies.


title: Six feet apart or six feet under: The impact of COVID-19 on the Black community

text: To date, 110,000+ people in the United States have died from the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, the authors will discuss COVID-19 relative to Black people and their overrepresentation among those who are infected and died from the disease. Their dying, death, and grief experiences are explored through a cultural and spiritual lens. The physical distancing, social isolation, misinformation, and restrictive burials and cremations now elicited by this unprecedented pandemic have had diminished familial, cultural, emotional, and economic impacts on the Black community. Implications for public health and Black peoples' involvement in the political process are also addressed.


Cardiac troponins predict mortality in patients with COVID-19: A meta-analysis of adjusted risk estimates


docid: vdqwsawn

title: Virtual Conferences of dermatology during the COVID-19 Pandemic


After the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Next Wave of Health Challenges for Older Adults


title: EmotionGIF-Yankee: A Sentiment Classifier with Robust Model Based Ensemble Methods

text: This paper provides a method to classify sentiment with robust model based ensemble methods. We preprocess tweet data to enhance coverage of tokenizer. To reduce domain bias, we first train tweet dataset for pre-trained language model. Besides, each classifier has its strengths and weakness, we leverage different types of models with ensemble methods: average and power weighted sum. From the experiments, we show that our approach has achieved positive effect for sentiment classification. Our system reached third place among 26 teams from the evaluation in SocialNLP 2020 EmotionGIF competition.


Hyperreninemia and low total body water may contribute to acute kidney injury in corona virus disease 2019 patients in intensive care


title: Environmental Detection of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) from Medical Equipment in Long-Term Care Facilities undergoing COVID-19 Outbreaks

text: We conducted environmental sampling at long-term care facilities to determine the extent of surface contamination with SARS-CoV-2 virus. Medical equipment used throughout the facility was determined to be contaminated.


Protect Pregnant and Lactating Women with COVID-19 Through Research, Not from Research


docid: dgpamych

title: The role of cardiovascular imaging for myocardial injury in hospitalized COVID-19 patients

text: Recent EACVI recommendations described the importance of limiting cardiovascular imaging during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to reduce virus transmission, protect healthcare professionals from contamination, and reduce consumption of personal protective equipment. However, an elevated troponin remains a frequent request for cardiac imaging in COVID-19 patients, partly because it signifies cardiac injury due to a variety of causes and partly because it is known to convey a worse prognosis. The present paper aims to provide guidance to clinicians regarding the appropriateness of cardiac imaging in the context of troponin elevation and myocardial injury, how best to decipher the mechanism of myocardial injury, and how to guide patient management.


title: US Physicians Trained in Cuba Battle COVID-19 at Home:A Personal Account from the New York City Epicenter

text: Speaking remotely with US graduates of Havana's Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), I found them at work on hospital floors, in ICUs and health centers across the United States, putting their professional and personal commitment to the test against COVID-19. Nowhere was that more evident than in New York City, the disease's epicenter, where one grad told me virtually every hospital has at least one MD from the Cuban school, which has provided free 6-year medical training for some 30,000 doctors since the school's founding in 1999. The student body comes primarily from low- and middle-income countries worldwide, but Cuba also provided 200 US students with scholarships. One of them is Dr Joaquín Morante (ELAM Class of 2012), who did his medical residency in internal medicine, followed by fellowships in pulmonary disease and critical care medicine. Triple-licensed in internal medicine, pulmonary and critical care medicine, he is now an attending physician on staff at Jacobi Medical Center in The Bronx, one of New York City's public hospitals, and considered a 'hot spot' due to its COVID-19 caseload. I spoke with him during a break at home in mid-April.Dr Joaquín Morante, ELAM Class of 2012: Pulmonologist, critical care attending physician at Jacobi Medical Center, New York City.


title: Preparing for emerging respiratory pathogens such as SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2

text: Preparing for emerging respiratory pathogens is a fundamental requirement for enhancements of the safeguard in healthcare settings We are facing an increasing pressure to be prepared more than before Healthcare organizations should be ready to deal with such emerging infectious disease Here, we share some points that are essential to be considered while we prepare our institutions to prevent the transmission of emerging respiratory pathogens such as MERS-CoV and the recently emerging pandemic of SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19


title: Lithium and coronaviral infections. A scoping review

text: The current rapid spread of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) originating from Wuhan, China, calls for a rapid response from the research community. Lithium is widely used to treat bipolar disorder, but has been shown to exhibit antiviral activity. This brief review took a systematic approach to identify five in vitro studies reporting on the influence of lithium on coronaviral infections. We propose that in the case of urgent need, lithium be explored as a potential treatment or prophylaxis for the novel Wuhan coronavirus (2019-nCoV).


Repurposing the mucolytic cough suppressant and TMPRSS2 protease inhibitor bromhexine for the prevention and management of SARS-CoV-2 infection


title: Flexibility Is Key in Organizing a Global Professional Conference Online: The ICPE 2020 Experience in the COVID-19 Era

text: Organizing professional conferences online has never been more timely. Responding to the new challenges raised by COVID-19, the organizers of the ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering 2020 had to address the question: How should we organize these conferences online? This article summarizes their successful answer.


COVID-19 pneumonia: different respiratory treatments for different phenotypes?


title: The Nonoperative Instability Severity Index Score (NISIS): A Simple Tool to Guide Operative Versus Nonoperative Treatment of the Unstable Shoulder

text: BACKGROUND: The management of the adolescent athlete after initial shoulder instability remains controversial. HYPOTHESIS: Individual risk factors in athletes with shoulder instability who are managed nonoperatively can be integrated into a scoring system that can predict successful return to sport. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level 4. METHODS: A total of 57 scholastic athletes with primary anterior shoulder instability who were managed nonoperatively were reviewed. Success was defined as a return to index sport at the same level and playing at least 1 subsequent season without missed time as a result of the shoulder. Patient-specific risk factors were individually evaluated, and odds ratios were calculated. A 10-point Nonoperative Injury Severity Index Score (NISIS) incorporated the risk factors for failure. This score was then retrospectively applied with regression analysis and a chi-square analysis to determine the overall optimal score that predicted failure of nonoperative management. RESULTS: In total, 6 risk factors for failure were included in the NISIS: age (>15 years), bone loss, type of instability, type of sport (contact vs noncontact), male sex, and arm dominance. Overall, 79% of patients treated nonoperatively were able to successfully return to sport. Nearly all (97%) low-risk patients (NISIS <7) successfully returned to sport, while only 59% of high-risk patients returned to sport, a relative risk of 12.2 (P = 0.001). High-risk patients with unipolar bone loss successfully returned (100%), but 67% of high-risk patients with bipolar bone loss failed. CONCLUSION: The NISIS is a simple and effective clinical tool to determine successful nonoperative management following anterior shoulder instability and may be helpful in guiding decision making when presented with the unstable shoulder in the scholastic athlete.


docid: xpwmoeij

title: Computational insights into tetracyclines as inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2 Mpro via combinatorial molecular simulation calculations

text: The COVID-19 pandemic raised by SARS-CoV-2 is a public health emergency. However, lack of antiviral drugs and vaccine against human coronaviruses demands a concerted approach to challenge the SARS-CoV-2 infection. Under limited resource and urgency, combinatorial computational approaches to identify the potential inhibitor from known drugs could be applied against risen COVID-19 pandemic. Thereof, this study attempted to purpose the potent inhibitors from the approved drug pool against SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro). To circumvent the issue of lead compound from available drugs as antivirals, antibiotics with broad spectrum of viral activity, i.e. doxycycline, tetracycline, demeclocycline, and minocycline were chosen for molecular simulation analysis against native ligand N3 inhibitor in SARS-CoV-2 Mpro crystal structure. Molecular docking simulation predicted the docking score >-7â¯kcal/mol with significant intermolecular interaction at the catalytic dyad (His41 and Cys145) and other essential substrate binding residues of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro. The best ligand conformations were further studied for complex stability and intermolecular interaction profiling with respect to time under 100â¯ns classical molecular dynamics simulation, established the significant stability and interactions of selected antibiotics by comparison to N3 inhibitor. Based on combinatorial molecular simulation analysis, doxycycline and minocycline were selected as potent inhibitor against SARS-CoV-2 Mpro which can used in combinational therapy against SARS-CoV-2 infection.


Emergency department operations in a large health system during COVID-19


docid: rkyyvmun

title: A Report of the Telepsychiatric Evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 Patients

text: Objective: During the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, telemedicine has been brought to the forefront of attention. This report aimed to assess psychiatric comorbidities in COVID-19 patients by utilizing telepsychiatry. Methods: COVID-19 patients admitted in Fasa University Hospital and nonhospitalized outpatients of Fasa city were interviewed by a psychiatrist through video chat for a 1-month period (March-April, 2020). Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Generalized Anxiety Disorder Assessment (GAD-7), and Perceived Stress Scale-14 (PSS 14) questionnaires were administered for all patients. Each patient's mental status was recorded, and if any psychiatric problem was diagnosed, supportive psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy, and follow-up visits based on the patient's condition were started. Result: From a total of 82 COVID-19 patients who entered the study, 32 (39.03%) and 50 (60.97%) subjects were inpatients and outpatients, respectively. Moreover, 32 (39.03%) subjects were male and 50 (60.97%) were female. Insomnia seen in 24 (29.3%) patients and adjustment disorder in 13 (15.9%) patients were the most common psychiatric disorders among a total of 33 (40.2%) patients suffering from mental illness. Female and hospitalized patients presented significantly more frequent comorbidities than males and outpatients. Conclusions: Psychiatric disorders were significantly more common in patients with hospital admission than those without and more frequent in female versus male subjects. There were no significant differences between male and female subjects with and without admission according to the PHQ-9, GAD-7, and PSS-14 scores. It was concluded that telepsychiatry in the early stages of mental problems during a catastrophic event like the coronavirus pandemic, can be an efficient instrument for the screening of psychosomatic comorbidities, so that pharmacological treatment (considering possible drug interactions with COVID-19 medications) and psychotherapeutic intervention can be optimized by psychiatrists.


title: Aerosol-generating otolaryngology procedures and the need for enhanced PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic: a literature review

text: BACKGROUND: Adequate personal protective equipment is needed to reduce the rate of transmission of COVID-19 to health care workers. Otolaryngology groups are recommending a higher level of personal protective equipment for aerosol-generating procedures than public health agencies. The objective of the review was to provide evidence that a.) demonstrates which otolaryngology procedures are aerosol-generating, and that b.) clarifies whether the higher level of PPE advocated by otolaryngology groups is justified. MAIN BODY: Health care workers in China who performed tracheotomy during the SARS-CoV-1 epidemic had 4.15 times greater odds of contracting the virus than controls who did not perform tracheotomy (95% CI 2.75-7.54). No other studies provide direct epidemiological evidence of increased aerosolized transmission of viruses during otolaryngology procedures. Experimental evidence has shown that electrocautery, advanced energy devices, open suctioning, and drilling can create aerosolized biological particles. The viral load of COVID-19 is highest in the upper aerodigestive tract, increasing the likelihood that aerosols generated during procedures of the upper aerodigestive tract of infected patients would carry viral material. Cough and normal breathing create aerosols which may increase the risk of transmission during outpatient procedures. A significant proportion of individuals infected with COVID-19 may not have symptoms, raising the likelihood of transmission of the disease to inadequately protected health care workers from patients who do not have probable or confirmed infection. Powered air purifying respirators, if used properly, provide a greater level of filtration than N95 masks and thus may reduce the risk of transmission. CONCLUSION: Direct and indirect evidence suggests that a large number of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery procedures are aerosol generating. Otolaryngologists are likely at high risk of contracting COVID-19 during aerosol generating procedures because they are likely exposed to high viral loads in patients infected with the virus. Based on the precautionary principle, even though the evidence is not definitive, adopting enhanced personal protective equipment protocols is reasonable based on the evidence. Further research is needed to clarify the risk associated with performing various procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the degree to which various personal protective equipment reduces the risk.


Infection à SARS-CoV-2/COVID 19 et cancers solides : synthèse des recommandations à l'attention des professionnels de santé./ [SARS-CoV-2/COVID 19 Infection and Solid Cancers: Synthesis of Recommendations for Health Professionals]


title: Covid-19, cocooning and vitamin d intake requirements

text: The purpose of this report is to clarify what constitutes best practice on vitamin D supplement use, particularly among older adults, who are at highest risk of Covid-19 On Friday 3rd April, three reports were published on how vitamin D may protect against Covid-19 Two reports are aligned with national and international guidelines on vitamin intake requirements for health: one looked at the importance of vitamin D adequacy in protecting children from respiratory illness but included important advice cautioning against high dose vitamin D;the other is from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) that looked at specific ’at risk’ groups for vitamin D deficiency in those over 50 years in a representative sample from the 26 counties TILDA provides a strong evidence base for intervening in older adults with supplemental vitamin D (10 µg to 20 µg daily) A third report advises that every adult should take high doses of vitamin D (20 µg to 50 µg daily) in order to protect against Covid-19 The authors make no mention about other sources of vitamin D in adults This creates confusion at a time when there is widespread fear and anxiety about the Covid-19 pandemic The following provides a review of the evidence and summarises best practice regarding vitamin D nutrition to protect against Covid-19


title: Conducting clinical trials during the COVID-19 pandemic

text: The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted dermatology clinical trial operations due to mandated governmental and institutional shut-downs and newly implemented restrictions. During this unprecedented time, measures should be taken to maintain research conduct compliance while also ensuring the safety of trial staff and participants. Herein, we underscore the challenges facing dermatology trials during the COVID-19 pandemic, and offer strategies to maintain compliant and safe conduct.


docid: vzfkstiw

title: COVID-ResNet: A Deep Learning Framework for Screening of COVID19 from Radiographs

text: In the last few months, the novel COVID19 pandemic has spread all over the world. Due to its easy transmission, developing techniques to accurately and easily identify the presence of COVID19 and distinguish it from other forms of flu and pneumonia is crucial. Recent research has shown that the chest Xrays of patients suffering from COVID19 depicts certain abnormalities in the radiography. However, those approaches are closed source and not made available to the research community for re-producibility and gaining deeper insight. The goal of this work is to build open source and open access datasets and present an accurate Convolutional Neural Network framework for differentiating COVID19 cases from other pneumonia cases. Our work utilizes state of the art training techniques including progressive resizing, cyclical learning rate finding and discriminative learning rates to training fast and accurate residual neural networks. Using these techniques, we showed the state of the art results on the open-access COVID-19 dataset. This work presents a 3-step technique to fine-tune a pre-trained ResNet-50 architecture to improve model performance and reduce training time. We call it COVIDResNet. This is achieved through progressively re-sizing of input images to 128x128x3, 224x224x3, and 229x229x3 pixels and fine-tuning the network at each stage. This approach along with the automatic learning rate selection enabled us to achieve the state of the art accuracy of 96.23% (on all the classes) on the COVIDx dataset with only 41 epochs. This work presented a computationally efficient and highly accurate model for multi-class classification of three different infection types from along with Normal individuals. This model can help in the early screening of COVID19 cases and help reduce the burden on healthcare systems.


SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: facing the pandemic together as citizens and cardiovascular practitioners


title: Challenges of COVID-19 in children in low- and middle-income countries

text: As the coronavirus pandemic extends to low and middle income countries (LMICs), there are growing concerns about the risk of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in populations with high prevalence of comorbidities, the impact on health and economies more broadly and the capacity of existing health systems to manage the additional burden of COVID-19. The direct effects of COVID are less of a concern in children, who seem to be largely asymptomatic or to develop mild illness as occurs in high income countries; however children in LMICs constitute a high proportion of the population and may have a high prevalence of risk factors for severe lower respiratory infection such as HIV or malnutrition. Further diversion of resources from child health to address the pandemic among adults may further impact on care for children. Poor living conditions in LMICs including lack of sanitation, running water and overcrowding may facilitate transmission of SARS-CoV-2. The indirect effects of the pandemic on child health are of considerable concern, including increasing poverty levels, disrupted schooling, lack of access to school feeding schemes, reduced access to health facilities and interruptions in vaccination and other child health programs. Further challenges in LMICs include the inability to implement effective public health measures such as social distancing, hand hygiene, timely identification of infected people with self-isolation and universal use of masks. Lack of adequate personal protective equipment, especially N95 masks is a key concern for health care worker protection. While continued schooling is crucial for children in LMICs, provision of safe environments is especially challenging in overcrowded resource constrained schools. The current crisis is a harsh reminder of the global inequity in health in LMICs. The pandemic highlights key challenges to the provision of health in LMICs, but also provides opportunities to strengthen child health broadly in such settings.


Preterm delivery, maternal death, and vertical transmission in a pregnant woman with COVID-19 infection


title: Telehealth in Psychiatry of Old Age: Ordinary Care in Extraordinary Times in Rural North-West Ireland

text: The COVID-19 pandemic has required a rapid evolution of services to maintain routine care in Ireland. Services which had been previously slow to adapt technology in their practices are suddenly integrating various telehealth measures to continue routine practice where possible. In this article, we discuss the challenges we face in rapidly implementing telehealth in a rural Psychiatry of Old Age service in the North-West of Ireland.


Coronavirus (covid-19) Pandemic: Personal View to a New Model of Paediatric Practice


title: A reductive analysis of a compartmental model for COVID-19: data assimilation and forecasting for the United Kingdom

text: We introduce a deterministic model that partitions the total population into the susceptible, infected, quarantined, and those traced after exposure, the recovered and the deceased. We hypothesize 'accessible population for transmission of the disease' to be a small fraction of the total population, for instance when interventions are in force. This hypothesis, together with the structure of the set of coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equations for the populations, allows us to decouple the equations into just two equations. This further reduces to a logistic type of equation for the total infected population. The equation can be solved analytically and therefore allows for a clear interpretation of the growth and inhibiting factors in terms of the parameters in the full model. The validity of the 'accessible population' hypothesis and the efficacy of the reduced logistic model is demonstrated by the ease of fitting the United Kingdom data for the cumulative infected and daily new infected cases. The model can also be used to forecast further progression of the disease. In an effort to find optimized parameter values compatible with the United Kingdom coronavirus data, we first determine the relative importance of the various transition rates participating in the original model. Using this we show that the original model equations provide a very good fit with the United Kingdom data for the cumulative number of infections and the daily new cases. The fact that the model calculated daily new cases exhibits a turning point, suggests the beginning of a slow-down in the spread of infections. However, since the rate of slowing down beyond the turning point is small, the cumulative number of infections is likely to saturate to about $3.52 \times 10^5$ around late July, provided the lock-down conditions continue to prevail.


Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances, Microplastics, and COVID-19: Will We Ever Learn?


Impact of anti-rheumatic drugs and steroids on clinical course and prognosis of COVID-19


title: Strategies for the development of drugs targeting novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV/ 药学学报

text: @# There is no specific drug that has been approved for 2019-nCoV. There are a number of factors that pose major challenges in their development. Approaches to the development of anti-2019-nCoV include screening existing broad-spectrum antiviral drugs, repositioning of readily available clinical compounds, and <italic>de novo</italic> development of novel and specific agents for 2019-nCoV. Candidate compounds can be developed either to inhibit virus-based targets, such as RNA proteases, polymerase, spike glycoproteins, and viral envelop and membrane proteins, or to inhibit host-based targets, such as receptors and proteases that are utilized by virus for viral entry and endocytosis. Recently, the RNA polymerase remdesivir had demonstrated clinical efficacy in one patient with severe novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP). The broad-spectrum viral protease inhibitor Kaletra<sup>®</sup> is also recommended in the current NCP clinical practice. Both drugs had lately been proceeded into multiple controlled phase III clinical trials to test their safety and efficacy in NCP. Combinational therapies consisting of multiple drugs provide other viable options against 2019-nCoV, based on scientific and clinical rationales. Using bioinformatics and database analysis, we have identified 75 clinically compounds, including 20 marketed compounds, that are efficacious in inhibiting key targets in virus- and host-based approaches, which may facilitate the development of new therapeutic options for 2019-nCoV.


Key Highlights of the Canadian Thoracic Society's Position Statement on the Optimization of COPD Management During the COVID-19 Pandemic


The COVID-19 intubation experience in Wuhan


title: Persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection and the risk for cancer

text: The current SARS-CoV-2 has put significant strain on healthcare services worldwide due to acute COVID-19. However, the potential long-term effects of this infection haven't been extensively discussed. We hypothesize that SARS-CoV-2 may be able to cause persistent infection in some individuals, and should this be the case, that in a few years we may see a rise in cancer incidence due to carcinogenic effects of this coronavirus. Non-retroviral RNA viruses such as Coronaviridae have been shown to cause persistent infection in hosts. Empirical evidence of viral genomic material shedding weeks after apparent clinical and laboratorial resolution of COVID-19 may be an indirect proof for persistent viral infection. Furthermore, tropism towards certain immune-privileged territories may facilitate immune evasion by this virus. Structural homology with SARS-CoV-1 indicates that SARS-CoV-2 may be able to directly impair pRb and p53, which are key gatekeepers with tumor suppressor functions. Additionally, COVID-19 features preeminent inflammatory response with marked oxidative stress, which acts as both as initiator and promotor of carcinogenesis. Should there be a carcinogenic risk associated with SARS-CoV-2, the implications for public health are plenty, as infected patients should be closely watched during long periods of follow-up. Additional investigation to establish or exclude the possibility for persistent infection is paramount to identify and prevent possible complications in the future.


title: Viral indicators for tracking domestic wastewater contamination in the aquatic environment

text: Waterborne enteric viruses are an emerging cause of disease outbreaks and represent a major threat to global public health. Enteric viruses may originate from human wastewater and can undergo rapid transport through aquatic environments with minimal decay. Surveillance and source apportionment of enteric viruses in environmental waters is therefore essential for accurate risk management. However, individual monitoring of the >100 enteric viral strains that have been identified as aquatic contaminants is unfeasible. Instead, viral indicators are often used for quantitative assessments of wastewater contamination, viral decay and transport in water. An ideal indicator for tracking wastewater contamination should be (i) easy to detect and quantify, (ii) source-specific, (iii) resistant to wastewater treatment processes, and (iv) persistent in the aquatic environment, with similar behaviour to viral pathogens. Here, we conducted a comprehensive review of 127 peer-reviewed publications, to critically evaluate the effectiveness of several viral indicators of wastewater pollution, including common enteric viruses (mastadenoviruses, polyomaviruses, and Aichi viruses), the pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV), and gut-associated bacteriophages (Type II/III FRNA phages and phages infecting human Bacteroides species, including crAssphage). Our analysis suggests that overall, human mastadenoviruses have the greatest potential to indicate contamination by domestic wastewater due to their easy detection, culturability, and high prevalence in wastewater and in the polluted environment. Aichi virus, crAssphage and PMMoV are also widely detected in wastewater and in the environment, and may be used as molecular markers for human-derived contamination. We conclude that viral indicators are suitable for the long-term monitoring of viral contamination in freshwater and marine environments and that these should be implemented within monitoring programmes to provide a holistic assessment of microbiological water quality and wastewater-based epidemiology, improve current risk management strategies and protect global human health.


title: Unemployment in the time of COVID-19: A research agenda

text: This essay represents the collective vision of a group of scholars in vocational psychology who have sought to develop a research agenda in response to the massive global unemployment crisis that has been evoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. The research agenda includes exploring how this unemployment crisis may differ from previous unemployment periods; examining the nature of the grief evoked by the parallel loss of work and loss of life; recognizing and addressing the privilege of scholars; examining the inequality that underlies the disproportionate impact of the crisis on poor and working class communities; developing a framework for evidence-based interventions for unemployed individuals; and examining the work-family interface and unemployment among youth.


title: Pesquisa de contaminantes no doce de leite produzido no setor de laticínios de instituição pública de ensino superior no estado do Ceará

text: O Doce de leite é um importante derivado do leite, amplamente consumido em nosso País e possui uma grande importância nutricional. Diante do crescimento do consumo do doce de leite por parte da população, surge a preocupação de garantir que este alimento esteja isento de qualquer sujidade, mantendo-se o padrão de qualidade e identidade do produto. O objetivo do trabalho foi investigar a presença de contaminantes físicos e biológicos em quinze amostras de doce de leite processadas no setor de laticínio de uma instituição pública de ensino superior do Ceará. A pesquisa, de caráter experimental com abordagem qualitativa, foi desenvolvida no Laboratório de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional (LABSAN) da Universidade Estadual do Ceará, no período de 11 de novembro de 2015 a 12 de fevereiro de 2016. As metodologias empregadas na avaliação das amostras foram: pesquisa macroscópica e microscópica de contaminantes físicos e biológicos. Foi realizada a inspeção das amostras sob uma superfície plana e os materiais estranhos foram removidos fazendo-se o uso de pinça dente de rato e colher de aço inoxidável estéril, onde os contaminantes foram identificados e caracterizados. A contaminação biológica foi avaliada por meio do método de sedimentação espontânea, com modificação. Verificou-se que todas as amostras estavam contaminadas, dentre a amostragem, 29% estavam contaminadas com ácaros, 23% tinham fibras, 18% com pelos, 12% apresentavam fragmentos de insetos e 12% continham larva de inseto. Os achados significativos e sua comparação com os padrões estabelecidos pelas legislações sanitárias vigentes, permitiram sugerir que as amostras do doce de leite estão inapropriadas para o consumo humano, sendo importante adotar medidas que reduzam as chances de contaminação, a fim de favorecer a prevenção de doenças veiculadas por esses produtos.(AU)


All hands on deck: Creation of an online internal medicine redeployment curriculum


Urgency and uncertainty: covid-19, face masks, and evidence informed policy


docid: pfffwkhl

title: Adherence of infusible biologics during the time of COVID-19 among patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A nationwide VA cohort study


Use of negative pressure individual isolation system for CT scan of patients with suspected COVID-19


title: Radical change in osteosarcoma surgical plan due to COVID-19 pandemic

text: A 17-year-old man with osteosarcoma of the proximal humerus was planned for possible limb salvage surgery after standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy. However, during the surgical phase of treatment, the COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) outbreak occurred changing the healthcare landscape due to uncertainty regarding the virus, risk of COVID-19 infection and complications, and implementation of an enhanced community quarantine restricting movement of people within cities. Instead of limb salvage surgery, the patient underwent a forequarter amputation. Exposure to the virus in a high-risk hospital setting was minimised with patient discharge after a short hospital stay and home convalescence monitored by video conferencing. Multidisciplinary sarcoma team meetings with family members and a sarcoma navigator nurse were crucial in managing expectations and deciding on appropriate treatment in the setting of a novel infectious disease causing a pandemic.


COVID-19 pandemic and rural generalism: the West Coast's rural workforce solution


docid: hptyzbjt

title: A Commentary on Rural-Urban Disparities in COVID-19 Testing Rates per 100,000 and Risk Factors


title: Lack of Vertical Transmission of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, China

text: A woman with coronavirus disease in her 35th week of pregnancy delivered an infant by cesarean section in a negative-pressure operating room. The infant was negative for severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2. This case suggests that mother-to-child transmission is unlikely for this virus.


title: Threatening increase in alcohol consumption in physicians quarantined due to coronavirus outbreak in Poland: the ALCOVID survey

text: BACKGROUND: The potential risks of increased alcohol use and of the development of alcohol dependence during COVID-19 pandemic were identified. So far there have been no studies concerning pandemic influence on alcohol consumption in medical professionals in quarantine or isolation. METHODS: The 12 point 'online' ALCOVID survey with a cover letter was designed and addressed to physicians, recruited online via accessible networks, who underwent isolation or quarantine during recent pandemic. The AUDIT-3 scale was included. RESULTS: A representative trial of 113 physicians participated in the study. Over 53% of screened doctors revealed that the amounts of the consumed alcohol have escalated; almost 20% of subjects binged over seven standard drinks for one occasion. Close to every second used six or more drinks on one occasion. Over 40% used alcohol more than four times per week. Female used alcohol more often and more standard drinks per occasion. Male binged more. Anxiety and hopelessness were the most common motives to drink. CONCLUSIONS: Alcohol consumption in physicians in quarantine has threateningly increased. It is important to identify the group of people at the risk of problem drinking and dependence development, especially when it concerns key professional branches in the fight against the current crisis.


title: Different longitudinal patterns of nucleic acid and serology testing results based on disease severity of COVID-19 patients

text: Effective strategy to mitigate the ongoing pandemic of 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) require a comprehensive understanding of humoral responses against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the emerging virus causing COVID-19. The dynamic profile of viral replication and shedding along with viral antigen specific antibody responses among COVID-19 patients started to be reported but there is no consensus on their patterns. Here, we conducted a serial investigation on 21 individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 in two medical centres from Jiangsu Province, including 11 non-severe COVID-19 patients, and 5 severe COVID-19 patients and 5 asymptomatic carriers based on nucleic acid test and clinical symptoms. The longitudinal swab samples and sera were collected from these people for viral RNA testing and antibody responses, respectively. Our data revealed different pattern of seroconversion among these groups. All 11 non-severe COVID-19 patients and 5 severe COVID-19 patients were seroconverted during hospitalization or follow-up period, suggesting that serological testing is a complementary assay to nucleic acid test for those symptomatic COVID-19 patients. Of note, immediate antibody responses were identified among severe cases, compared to non-severe cases. On the other hand, only one were seroconverted for asymptomatic carriers. The SARS-CoV-2 specific antibody responses were well-maintained during the observation period. Such information is of immediate relevance and would assist COVID-19 clinical diagnosis, prognosis and vaccine design.


title: The pathological autopsy of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-2019) in China: a review

text: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-2019) that emerged in Wuhan, China, has rapidly spread to many countries across all six WHO regions. However, its pathobiology remains incompletely understood and many efforts are underway to study it worldwide. To clarify its pathogenesis to some extent, it will inevitably require lots of COVID-2019-associated pathological autopsies. Pathologists from all over the world have raised concerns with pathological autopsy relating to COVID-2019. The issue of whether a person died from COVID-2019 infection or not is always an ambiguous problem in some cases, and ongoing epidemiology from China may shed light on it. This review retrospectively summarizes the research status of pathological autopsy for COVID-2019 deaths in China, which will be important for the cause of death, prevention, control and clinical strategies of COVID-2019. Moreover, it points out several challenges at autopsy. We believe pathological studies from China enable to correlate clinical symptoms and pathological features of COVID-2019 for doctors and provide an insight into COVID-2019 disease.


title: The effect of extended closure of red-light areas on COVID-19 transmission in India

text: The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in over 200,000 cases in India. Thus far, India has implemented lockdown measures to curb disease transmission. However, commercial sex work in red-light areas (RLAs) has potential to lead to COVID-19 resurgence after lockdown. We developed a model of COVID-19 transmission in RLAs, evaluating the impact of extended RLA closure compared with RLA reopening on cases, hospitalizations, and mortality rates within the RLAs of five major Indian cities, within the cities, and across India. Closure lowered transmission at all scales. More than 90% of cumulative cases and deaths among RLA residents of Kolkata, Pune, and Nagpur could be averted by the time the epidemic would peak under a re-opening scenario. Across India, extended closure of RLAs would benefit the population at large, delaying the peak of COVID-19 cases by 8 to 23 days, and avert 32% to 60.2% of cumulative cases and 43% to 67.6% of cumulative deaths at the peak of the epidemic. Extended closure of RLAs until better prevention and treatment strategies are developed would benefit public health in India.


Correspondence COVID-19: Melatonin as a potential adjuvant treatment


docid: tkpbfroi

title: COVID-19 Literature Knowledge Graph Construction and Drug Repurposing Report Generation

text: To combat COVID-19, clinicians and scientists all need to digest the vast amount of relevant biomedical knowledge in literature to understand the disease mechanism and the related biological functions. We have developed a novel and comprehensive knowledge discovery framework, COVID-KG, which leverages novel semantic representation and external ontologies to represent text and images in the input literature data, and then performs various extraction components to extract fine-grained multimedia knowledge elements (entities, relations and events). We then exploit the constructed multimedia KGs for question answering and report generation, using drug repurposing as a case study. Our framework also provides detailed contextual sentences, subfigures and knowledge subgraphs as evidence. All of the data, KGs, resources, and shared services are publicly available.


The Treatment Paradigm of Chronic Rhinosinusitis with Nasal Polyps in the COVD-19 Era


title: Invasion Science and the Global Spread of SARS-CoV-2

text: Emerging infectious diseases, such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), are driven by ecological and socioeconomic factors, and their rapid spread and devastating impacts mirror those of invasive species. Collaborations between biomedical researchers and ecologists, heretofore rare, are vital to limiting future outbreaks. Enhancing the crossdisciplinary framework offered by invasion science could achieve this goal.


Open Synthesis and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020


title: Biorisk assessment for infrastructure & biosafety requirements for the laboratories providing coronavirus SARS-CoV-2/(COVID-19) diagnosis

text: Novel coronavirus infection [coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)] has spread to more than 203 countries of various regions including Africa, America, Europe, South East Asia and Western Pacific. The WHO had declared COVID-19 as the global public health emergency and subsequently as pandemic because of its worldwide spread. It is now one of the top-priority pathogens to be dealt with, because of high transmissibility, severe illness and associated mortality, wide geographical spread, lack of control measures with knowledge gaps in veterinary and human epidemiology, immunity and pathogenesis. The quick detection of cases and isolating them has become critical to contain it. To meet the increasing demand of the diagnostic services, it is necessary to enhance and expand laboratory capabilities since existing laboratories cannot meet the emerging demand. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a BSL-2 (Biosafety Level 2) agent and needs to be handled in biosafety cabinet using standard precautions. This review highlights minimum requirements for the diagnostic laboratories opting testing of material for the diagnosis of COVID-19 and associated biorisk to the individuals and to the community.


title: Influence of COVID-19 confinement in students performance in higher education

text: This study explores the effects of COVID-19 confinement in the students performance in higher education. Using a field experiment of 458 students from three different subjects in Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain), we study the differences in assessments by dividing students into two groups. The first group (control) corresponds to academic years 2017/2018 and 2018/2019. The second group (experimental) corresponds to students from 2019/2020, which is the group of students that interrupted their face-to-face activities because of the confinement. The results show that there is a significant positive effect of the COVID-19 confinement on students performance. This effect is also significative in activities that did not change their format when performed after the confinement. We find that this effect is significative both in subjects that increased the number of assessment activities and subjects that did not change the workload of students. Additionally, an analysis of students learning strategies before confinement shows that students did not study in a continuous basis. Based on these results, we conclude that COVID-19 confinement changed students learning strategies to a more continuous habit, improving their efficiency. For these reasons, better scores in students assessment are expected due to COVID-19 confinement that can be explained by an improvement in their learning performance.


title: Clinical characteristics of 80 hospitalized frontline medical workers infected with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China

text: More than 1,000 medical workers have been infected with COVID-19 in China. The 80 hospitalized patients included 57 SARS-CoV-2 confirmed and 23 clinically diagnosed. The median age was 39 years, 49 (61.25%) were women, and one patient died. The most common symptoms at onset were fever (65, 81.25%), cough (47, 58.75%), fatigue (28, 35%), myalgia (19, 23.75%), expectoration (19, 23.75%), and diarrhea (15, 18.75%). Patients of frontline medical workers at a single-center hospital showed some unique clinical and laboratory findings compared with other patients in Wuhan and outside of Wuhan. This study provides our experience for other frontline medical workers.


Update on the neurology of COVID-19


The impact of COVID-19 on sporting events and high-performance athletes


title: COVID-19 and Headache Medicine: A Narrative Review of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug (NSAID) and Corticosteroid Use

text: OBJECTIVE: To summarize the current literature on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug and corticosteroid use during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, recognizing that these are commonly used treatments in the field of headache medicine. BACKGROUND: The use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and corticosteroids in patients during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a controversial topic within the medical community and international and national health organizations. Lay press and social media outlets have circulated opinions on this topic despite the fact that the evidence for or against the use of these medications is sparse. In the field of headache medicine, these medications are used commonly and both patients and clinicians may have questions or hesitations pertaining to their use during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: A detailed search of the scientific and popular literature was performed. RESULTS: There is limited literature pertaining to the safety of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and corticosteroids during the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, there are no clear scientific data that preclude the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in the general population who may acquire COVID-19 or in those acutely infected with the virus. Several health organizations have concluded that treatment with corticosteroids during active infection should be avoided due to concerns of prolonged viral shedding in the respiratory tract and the lack of survival benefit based on the data from past coronaviruses and influenza virus; specific exceptions exist including treatment for underlying asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, septic shock, and acute respiratory distress syndrome. CONCLUSION: Scientific information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic is constantly evolving, and limited or contradictory information can lead to confusion for both patients and clinicians. It is recommended that prior to prescribing non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and steroids for the treatment of headache, clinicians have open discussions with their patients about the potential risks and benefits of using these medications during the COVID-19 pandemic. This manuscript summarizes the currently available evidence and understanding about these risks and benefits to help clinicians navigate such discussions.


The Immunocompromised Transplant Recipient and SARS-CoV-2 Infection


Investigation of a nosocomial outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 in a paediatric ward in South Korea: successful control by early detection and extensive contact tracing with testing


title: Development Path and Urgency of further Strengthening Construction of Public Hospitals Based on Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Treatment

text: During the outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) in Wuhan, public hospitals have played an important role in intensive care, case guidance and scheme optimization. At the same time, it also faces unprecedented challenges and tests. Based on the treatment of severe patients in Wuhan, combined with the treatment practice in Tongji Hospital affiliated to Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, this paper puts forward the urgency of further strengthening the construction of public hospitals, discusses the feasible path for promoting the development of public hospitals, so as to meet the growing medical needs of the people, improve the ability to respond to major public health emergencies, and effectively guarantee the safety of people's lives and the promotion of a healthy China construction.


title: An outbreak of malignant catarrhal fever in Sambar deer (Rusa unicolor)/ Surto de febre catarral maligna em cervos Sambar (Rusa Unicolor)

text: Malignant catarrhal fever (MCF) is an infectious, pansystemic and highly fatal disease with wide geographic distribution. The species that are clinically prone to it include cattle, deer and bison. In Brazil, the disease in ruminants and deer is associated with the contact with sheep, especially during labor, when the fetal remains that are eliminated contain the ovine herpesvirus 2 (OvHV-2). The outbreak took place in a conservationist property in the city of Casimiro de Abreu/RJ, which hosted 23 Sambar deer, and, of these, 19 died, showing neurological signs. The deer lived in a location together with 15 male and female meat sheep. A female specimen of the Sambar deer (Rusa unicolor), aged approximately three years, which had presented with neurological clinical signs was referred to necropsy in the Setor de Anatomia Patológica at Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (SAP/UFRRJ). During necropsy, cerebrospinal fluid was sampled for analysis; fragments of several organs were fixated in 10% buffered formalin and processed for histopathological analysis. Fragments of occipital lobe, cerebellum and bulb were collected to perform the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The diagnosis of this outbreak was based on epidemiological, clinical and pathological findings, and on the amplification of the OvHV-2 DNA through PCR. The histological changes were the base to confirm the MCF case and were characterized by degeneration of vascular endothelial cells, fibrinoid vasculitis, hyperplasia and necrosis of lymphoid organs. However, PCR was an important tool to confirm the diagnosis. MCF as an important disease with nervous symptomatology in deer.(AU)


The Dilemma of Coronavirus Disease 2019, Aging, and Cardiovascular Disease: Insights From Cardiovascular Aging Science