Summary

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, and the disease now affects nearly every country and region. Caused by SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 continues nearly 18 months later to present significant challenges to health systems and public health in both hemispheres, as well as the economies of every country. The morbidity and mortality of the infection caused by SARS-CoV-2 has been significant, and various waves of disease outbreaks initially overwhelmed many hospitals and clinics and continue to do so in many countries. This influences everyone, and public health countermeasures have been dramatic in terms of their impact on employment, social systems, and mental health. This entry collection aims to gather diverse fields about COVID-19, including in epidemiology, public health, medicine, genetics, systems biology, informatics, data science, engineering, sociology, anthropology, nursing, environmental studies, statistics, and psychology.

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Entries
Topic Review
Healthcare Sustainability: Hospitalization Rate Forecasting
Monitoring and forecasting hospitalization rates are of essential significance to public health systems in understanding and managing overall healthcare deliveries and strategizing long-term sustainability. Early-stage prediction of hospitalization rates is crucial to meet the medical needs of numerous patients during emerging epidemic diseases such as COVID-19. Nevertheless, this is a challenging task due to insufficient data and experience. In addition, relevant existing work neglects or fails to exploit the extensive contribution of external factors such as news, policies, and geolocations. Herein, researchers demonstrate the significant relationship between hospitalization rates and COVID-19 infection cases. A transfer learning architecture with dynamic location-aware sentiment and semantic analysis (TLSS) is adapted to a new application scenario: hospitalization rate prediction during COVID-19. This architecture learns and transfers general transmission patterns of existing epidemic diseases to predict hospitalization rates during COVID-19. Researchers combine the learned knowledge with time series features and news sentiment and semantic features in a dynamic propagation process. Extensive experiments are conducted to compare the proposed approach with several state-of-the-art machine learning methods with different lead times of ground truth. The results show that TLSS exhibits outstanding predictive performance for hospitalization rates. Thus, it provides advanced artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for supporting decision-making in healthcare sustainability.
  • 503
  • 24 Nov 2023
Topic Review
Consequence of Alveolar Hyperoxia and Systemic Hyperoxaemia
Acute hypoxic respiratory failure (AHRF) is a prominent feature of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) critical illness. The need for a high FiO2 to normalise arterial hypoxemia and tissue hypoxia can result in alveolar hyperoxia. This in turn can lead to local alveolar oxidative stress with associated inflammation, alveolar epithelial cell apoptosis, surfactant dysfunction, pulmonary vascular abnormalities, resorption atelectasis, and impairment of innate immunity predisposing to secondary bacterial infections. While oxygen is a life-saving treatment, alveolar hyperoxia may exacerbate pre-existing lung injury.
  • 590
  • 20 Nov 2023
Topic Review
Influence of Media Information Sources on Vaccine Uptake
Vaccine hesitancy is a significant public health concern, with numerous studies demonstrating its negative impact on immunization rates. One factor that can influence vaccine hesitancy is media coverage of vaccination. The media is a significant source of immunization information and can significantly shape people’s attitudes and behaviors toward vaccine uptake. Media influences vaccination positively or negatively. Accurate coverage of the benefits and effectiveness of vaccination can encourage uptake, while coverage of safety concerns or misinformation may increase hesitancy.
  • 789
  • 15 Nov 2023
Topic Review
Social Connectedness
Poor social connectedness has long been recognised as a significant threat to both physical and mental health, particularly for older people. Numerous studies examining the health impacts of loneliness and isolation have demonstrated an association with negative outcomes such as increased mortality, cognitive decline, anxiety and depression and cardiovascular disease. However, with the rapid onset of the SARS-CoV-2 (otherwise known as COVID-19) virus in early 2020 came an additional threat to those already vulnerable to loneliness—enforced physical isolation. Confinement to the home was particularly important for the health of those in older age due to the increased mortality risk from the virus for that section of the population.
  • 508
  • 13 Nov 2023
Topic Review
Double J Stents and Reno–Ureteral Lithiasis during COVID-19
Urolithiasis, or kidney stone disease, is a common urological condition that often necessitates emergency medical attention. During the COVID-19 epidemic, significant shifts occurred in the available options for treating urinary stones. Obstructed reno–ureteral stones or infected ones should be treated as an emergency by decompression. Ureteral stents were a safe, efficient, and cost-effective procedure for urolithiasis during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, they reduce the risk of infection and hospital visits. Therefore, it was a valuable option in urolithiasis treatment during the pandemic.
  • 391
  • 10 Nov 2023
Topic Review
Graphene Field-Effect Transistor Biosensors in COVID-19 Detection Technology
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a disease caused by the infectious agent of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Graphene field-effect transistor (GFET) biosensors have become the most promising diagnostic technology for detecting SARS-CoV-2 due to their advantages of high sensitivity, fast-detection speed, label-free operation, and low detection limit.
  • 504
  • 06 Nov 2023
Topic Review
SARS-CoV-2 Variant-Specific Gastrointestinal Symptoms of COVID-19
The gastrointestinal (GI) tract may be a significant entrance or interaction site for SARS-CoV-2; therefore, the gut mucosal immune system participates in virus interaction as a first-line physical and immunological defense, leading to GI involvement and symptoms. The pattern of symptoms changed during the virus evolution, since the data provided a current and thorough picture of the symptoms experienced by SARS-CoV-2 infected people, and variations in symptom patterns occurred as the Alpha, Delta, and Omicron variants have spread. Since the beginning of the pandemic, GI symptoms have been linked to SARS-CoV-2 infections, even though most infected people do not report them. 
  • 452
  • 06 Nov 2023
Topic Review
Thrombotic Disorders and COVID-19 Vaccines
The COVID-19 pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has affected hundreds of millions worldwide, leading to nearly 7 million deaths globally, although now declared not a worldwide concern anymore. Strenuous research and analysis of various vaccine advances led to the development of multiple COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year from the pandemic’s beginning. Different types of vaccines, such as mRNA vaccines, DNA vaccines, viral vector vaccines, and inactivated virus vaccines have been approved and have shown a high degree of efficacy with variable protective levels of up to 95% (70–95% range) in vaccinated individuals against COVID-19.
  • 565
  • 01 Nov 2023
Topic Review
Drug Remedies and Host Cell Responses for COVID-19
In light of the COVID-19 global pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2, ongoing research has centered on minimizing viral spread either by stopping viral entry or inhibiting viral replication. Repurposing antiviral drugs, typically nucleoside analogs, has proven successful at inhibiting virus replication. 
  • 553
  • 20 Oct 2023
Topic Review
Accessible Higher-Education: A Framework for Continuous Improvement
The SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) forced educational institutions to move their programs to the virtual world, revealing needs such as the lack of accessibility of online resources and content. In this context, the Erasmus+ project "Technological Assistance to Accessibility in Virtual Higher Education (EduTech)”, proposed tools and knowledge focused on improving accessibility in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). In this article, a framework that integrates all the findings of the EduTech project is presented. The proposed framework is aimed at facilitating the adoption of good practices related to technological accessibility in HEI. The framework considers the limitations and needs of the institutions in terms of governance and resources for improving accessibility. The framework was adopted by four Latin American HEIs to establish a continuous improvement strategy according to their needs and current level of accessibility focus. This research also shows the results and suggests that the proposal is adaptable to the needs of HEIs, allowing its implementation regardless of their organizational structure and their current level of attention to accessibility.
  • 842
  • 16 Oct 2023
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