Query: origin covid-19

title: Asian Origin Approved COVID 19 Vaccines and Current Status of COVID 19 Vaccination Program in Asia: A Critical Analysis
abstract: COVID 19 vaccination has started throughout the globe. The vaccination program has also begun in most Asian countries. This paper analyzed the Asian origin COVID 19 vaccines and vaccination program status in Asia till March 2021 under three sections. In the first section, we mapped the approved vaccines that originated from Asia, their technological platforms, collaborations during vaccine development, and regulatory approval from other countries. We found that a total of eight Asian COVID 19 vaccines originated and got approval from three countries: China, India, and Russia. In the second section, we critically evaluated the recent progress of COVID 19 vaccination programs. We analyzed the overall vaccination status across the Asian region. We also calculated the cumulative COVID 19 vaccine doses administered in different Asian countries, vaccine rolling in 7 day average in various Asian countries, and COVID 19 vaccine per day doses administrated in several Asian countries. We found that China and India vaccinated the maximum number of people. Finally, we evaluated the factors affecting the COVID 19 vaccination program in Asia, such as vaccine hesitancy, basic reproduction numbers (R0) and vaccination campaigns, and the cost of the vaccines. Our analysis will assist the implementation of the COVID 19 vaccination program successfully in Asia.

title: Artificial Intelligence Augmentation of Radiologist Performance in Distinguishing COVID 19 from Pneumonia of Other Origin at Chest CT.
abstract: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19) and pneumonia of other diseases share similar CT characteristics, which contributes to the challenges in differentiating them with high accuracy.  To establish and evaluate an artificial intelligence (AI) system for differentiating COVID 19 and other pneumonia at chest CT and assessing radiologist performance without and with AI assistance.  A total of 521 patients with positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction results for COVID 19 and abnormal chest CT findings were retrospectively identified from 10 hospitals from January 2020 to April 2020. A total of 665 patients with non COVID 19 pneumonia and definite evidence of pneumonia at chest CT were retrospectively selected from three hospitals between 2017 and 2019. To classify COVID 19 versus other pneumonia for each patient, abnormal CT slices were input into the EfficientNet B4 deep neural network architecture after lung segmentation, followed by a two layer fully connected neural network to pool slices together. The final cohort of 1186 patients (132 583 CT slices) was divided into training, validation, and test sets in a 7:2:1 and equal ratio. Independent testing was performed by evaluating model performance in separate hospitals. Studies were blindly reviewed by six radiologists without and then with AI assistance.  The final model achieved a test accuracy of 96% (95% confidence interval [CI] 90% 98% a sensitivity of 95% (95% CI: 83% 100% and a specificity of 96% (95% CI: 88% 99% with area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.95 and area under the precision recall curve of 0.90. On independent testing, this model achieved an accuracy of 87% (95% CI: 82% 90% a sensitivity of 89% (95% CI: 81% 94% and a specificity of 86% (95% CI: 80% 90% with area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.90 and area under the precision recall curve of 0.87. Assisted by the probabilities of the model, the radiologists achieved a higher average test accuracy (90% vs 85% #916; 5, P .001) sensitivity (88% vs 79% #916; 9, P .001) and specificity (91% vs 88% #916; 3, P .001)  Artificial intelligence assistance improved radiologists' performance in distinguishing coronavirus disease 2019 pneumonia from non coronavirus disease 2019 pneumonia at chest CT. (c) RSNA, 2020 Online supplemental material is available for this article.

title: Should we discount the laboratory origin of COVID 19?
abstract: Abbreviations ACE2 Angiotensin converting enzyme 2 FCS Furin cleavage site GBD Ganglioside binding domain HS Heparan sulphate MERS CoV Middle East respiratory syndrome related coronavirus NTD N terminal domain RBD Receptor binding domain RBM Receptor binding motif SARS CoV Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus SARS CoV 2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 SARS r CoV SARS related coronavirus TMPRSS Transmembrane serine protease WIV Wuhan Institute of Virology

title: Understanding the origin of COVID 19 requires to change the paradigm on zoonotic emergence from the spillover to the circulation model
abstract: While the COVID 19 pandemic continues to spread with currently more than 117 million cumulated cases and 2.6 million deaths worldwide as per March 2021, its origin is still debated. Although several hypotheses have been proposed, there is still no clear explanation about how its causative agent, SARS CoV 2, emerged in human populations. Today, scientifically valid facts that deserve to be debated still coexist with unverified statements blurring thus the knowledge on the origin of COVID 19. Our retrospective analysis of scientific data supports the hypothesis that SARS CoV 2 is indeed a naturally occurring virus. However, the spillover model considered today as the main explanation to zoonotic emergence does not match the virus dynamics and somehow misguided the way researches were conducted. We conclude this review by proposing a change of paradigm and model and introduce the circulation model for explaining the various aspects of the dynamic of SARS CoV 2 emergence in humans.

title: Misinformation on COVID 19 origin and its relationship with perception and knowledge about social distancing: A cross sectional study
abstract: Despite the vast scientific evidence obtained from the genomic sequencing of COVID 19, controversy regarding its origin has been created in the mass media. This could potentially have a long term influence on the behavior among individuals, such as failure to comply with proposed social distancing measures, leading to a consequent rise in the morbidity and mortality rates from COVID 19 infection. Several studies have collected information about knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding COVID 19; however, very little is known about the relationship of the perceptions of the individuals regarding the origin of the virus with the knowledge and perception about social distancing. This study aimed at ascertaining this relationship. For such purpose, a web based cross sectional study was conducted among a sample population from five provinces of the Dominican Republic from June to July of 2020. The data collection instrument exploited in the study was a self designed questionnaire distributed throughout different social media platforms. A purposive sampling strategy was implemented and a total of 1195 respondents completed the questionnaire. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS. Descriptive statistics, stepwise multiple linear regression, and one way multivariate analysis were implemented to test the hypotheses. The level of education was significantly associated (P .017) with individuals' perception about the origin of COVID 19, whilst only age (P .032) and education level (P .001) statistically significantly predicted 'knowledge about social distancing' Perception of COVID 19 origin was statistically significant associated (P .001) with the measures of the dependent variables (knowledge and perception on social distancing) The present study has established a possible link between the 'perception of COVID 19 origin' and 'the perception and knowledge about social distancing'

title: COVID 19 Under Origin and Transmission: A Data Driven Analysis for India and Bangladesh
abstract: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19) is an exceptionally contagious and pathogenic viral disease brought about by the SARS CoV 2 infection that was first detailed at Wuhan, China, and later it spreads everywhere throughout the world. It was a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) like virus, and the primary host of this virus is bats, revealed through genome analysis. The intermediate medium between human and bats is still unknown, and it is quite contagious, resulting in rapid spreading of this disease. All things considered, there are no clinically endorsed medications or antibodies for this sickness, yet a few precautions and staying away from close contacts are suggested. The number of COVD 19 confirmed cases is rapidly increasing with higher mortality rates, more than other epidemics that occurred in the last century although it still fluctuates. We will analyze the COVID 19 outbreak situation considering confirmed cases, recoveries, mortality rate percentages, etc. India and Bangladesh are two geographically important countries, and we will also analyze the COVID 19 situation for these two countries either with similarities or differences.

title: Different SARS CoV 2 haplotypes associate with geographic origin and case fatality rates of COVID 19 patients
abstract: The current pandemic of COVID 19 is caused by the SARS CoV 2 virus for which many variants at the Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) level have now been identified. We show here that different allelic variants among 692 SARS CoV 2 genome sequences display a statistically significant association with geographic origin (p 0.000001) and COVID 19 case severity (p 0.016) Geographic variation in itself is associated with both case severity and allelic variation especially in strains from Indian origin (p 0.000001) Using an new alternative bioinformatics approach we were able to confirm that the presence of the D614G mutation correlates with increased case severity in a sample of 127 sequences from a shared geographic origin in the US (p 0.018) While leaving open the question on the pathogenesis mechanism involved, this suggests that in specific geographic locales certain genotypes of the virus are more pathogenic than others. We here show that viral genome polymorphisms may have an effect on case severity when other factors are controlled for, but that this effect is swamped out by these other factors when comparing cases across different geographic regions.

title: Cell free DNA tissues of origin by methylation profiling reveals significant cell, tissue, and organ specific injury related to COVID 19 severity
abstract: COVID 19 primarily affects the lungs, but evidence of systemic disease with multi organ involvement is emerging. Here, we developed a blood test to broadly quantify cell, tissue, and organ specific injury due to COVID 19.  Our test leverages genome wide methylation profiling of circulating cell free DNA in plasma. We assessed the utility of this test to identify subjects with severe disease in two independent, longitudinal cohorts of hospitalized patients. Cell free DNA profiling was performed on 104 plasma samples from 33 COVID 19 patients and compared to samples from patients with other viral infections and healthy controls.  We found evidence of injury to the lung and liver and involvement of red blood cell progenitors associated with severe COVID 19. The concentration of cell free DNA correlated with the WHO ordinal scale for disease progression and was significantly increased in patients requiring intubation.  This study points to the utility of cell free DNA as an analyte to monitor and study COVID 19.

title: Insights into the COVID 19 pandemic: Origin, pathogenesis, diagnosis, and therapeutic interventions.
abstract: Coronavirus disease (COVID 19) is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS CoV 2) a member of the human coronavirus (HCoV) family that targets the lower part of the respiratory tract and causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) In a short span of time, this infection has led to a global pandemic and has become a significant threat to the existence of present human society. Currently, there are no treatments for this infection and the measures established across various countries such as social distancing, usage of mask to prevent entry of the virus into the respiratory tract, quarantine, and containment together have reduced the prevalence of this disease and mortality in highly susceptible individuals. Here, we examine the structure, replication cycle, phylogeny and genomic organization of this virus and discuss the role of spike (S) protein of the virus, an important structure that interacts with the host ACE2 receptor facilitating viral entry. Further, we explore the epidemiology, symptoms of the disease, describe the reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT PCR) that establishes the diagnosis of the disease and also review its unique diagnostic features in the chest CT Scan. Finally, we review the current approaches to develop therapies and vaccines as a measure for disease prevention and control.

title: Myocardial injury in severe COVID 19 is similar to pneumonias of other origin: results from a multicentre study
abstract: COVID 19, a respiratory viral disease causing severe pneumonia, also affects the heart and other organs. Whether its cardiac involvement is a specific feature consisting of myocarditis, or simply due to microvascular injury and systemic inflammation, is yet unclear and presently debated. Because myocardial injury is also common in other kinds of pneumonias, we investigated and compared such occurrence in severe pneumonias due to COVID 19 and other causes.