Articles: coronavirus.
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The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has increased unemployment and food insecurity in the United States (US). Prior to the pandemic, college students exhibited higher rates of food insecurity than nonstudent households. The objectives of this study were to assess the prevalence and determinants of food insecurity among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. ⋯ Overall, 34.5% of respondents were classified as food insecure within the last 30 days. The strongest predictors of food insecurity were change in current living arrangement (OR = 2.70, 95% CI: 2.47, 2.95), being furloughed (OR = 3.22, 95% CI: 2.86, 3.64), laid off (OR = 4.07, 95% CI: 3.55, 4.66), or losing part-time work (OR = 5.73, 95% CI: 5.09, 6.46) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings highlight the high prevalence of food insecurity among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic, with students who experienced housing insecurity and/or loss of income due to the pandemic being impacted the most.
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Aug 2020
Influence of Social Media Platforms on Public Health Protection Against the COVID-19 Pandemic via the Mediating Effects of Public Health Awareness and Behavioral Changes: Integrated Model.
Despite the growing body of literature examining social media in health contexts, including public health communication, promotion, and surveillance, limited insight has been provided into how the utility of social media may vary depending on the particular public health objectives governing an intervention. For example, the extent to which social media platforms contribute to enhancing public health awareness and prevention during epidemic disease transmission is currently unknown. Doubtlessly, coronavirus disease (COVID-19) represents a great challenge at the global level, aggressively affecting large cities and public gatherings and thereby having substantial impacts on many health care systems worldwide as a result of its rapid spread. Each country has its capacity and reacts according to its perception of threat, economy, health care policy, and the health care system structure. Furthermore, we noted a lack of research focusing on the role of social media campaigns in public health awareness and public protection against the COVID-19 pandemic in Jordan as a developing country. ⋯ Our findings suggest that the use of social media platforms can positively influence awareness of public health behavioral changes and public protection against COVID-19. Public health authorities may use social media platforms as an effective tool to increase public health awareness through dissemination of brief messages to targeted populations. However, more research is needed to validate how social media channels can be used to improve health knowledge and adoption of healthy behaviors in a cross-cultural context.
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Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been established as a cause of severe alveolar damage and pneumonia in patients with advanced Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The consolidation of lung parenchyma precipitates the alterations in blood gases in COVID-19 patients that are known to complicate and cause hypoxemic respiratory failure. With SARS-CoV-2 damaging multiple organs in COVID-19, including the central nervous system that regulates the breathing process, it is a daunting task to compute the extent to which the failure of the central regulation of the breathing process contributes to the mortality of COVID-19 affected patients. ⋯ Though a complex metabolic and respiratory dysregulation also occurs with infections caused by SARS-CoV-1 and MERS that are known to contribute toward deaths of the patients in the past, we highlight here the role of systemic dysregulation and the CNS respiratory regulation mechanisms in the causation of mortalities seen in COVID-19. The invasion of the CNS by SARS-CoV-2, as shown recently in areas like the brainstem that control the normal breathing process with nuclei like the pre-Bötzinger complex (pre-BÖTC), may explain why some of the patients with COVID-19, who have been reported to have recovered from pneumonia, could not be weaned from invasive mechanical ventilation and the occurrences of acute respiratory arrests seen in COVID-19. This debate is important for many reasons, one of which is the fact that permanent damage to the medullary respiratory centers by SARS-CoV-2 would not benefit from mechanical ventilators, as is possibly occurring during the management of COVID-19 patients.
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Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has rapidly spread throughout the world causing significant mortality in high risk patients with severe manifestations. To date, Remdesivir has been the only antiviral authorized by FDA as therapy for emergency use. One of the potential complications of this infection is cytokine storm, which optimal treatment remains unknown. ⋯ Our case illustrates the role of Remdesivir for the treatment of severe COVID-19 pneumonia. We also observed a possible clinical benefit of corticosteroids in the context of suspected cytokine storm. Further studies are needed to evaluate this therapeutic strategy.
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Appl. Environ. Microbiol. · Aug 2020
Persistence of Bacteriophage Phi 6 on Porous and Nonporous Surfaces and the Potential for Its Use as an Ebola Virus or Coronavirus Surrogate.
The infection of health care workers during the 2013 to 2016 Ebola outbreak raised concerns about fomite transmission. In the wake of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, investigations are ongoing to determine the role of fomites in coronavirus transmission as well. The bacteriophage phi 6 has a phospholipid envelope and is commonly used in environmental studies as a surrogate for human enveloped viruses. ⋯ IMPORTANCE Understanding the persistence of enveloped viruses helps inform infection control practices and procedures in health care facilities and community settings. These data convey to public health investigators that enveloped viruses can persist and remain infective on surfaces, thus demonstrating a potential risk for transmission. Under these laboratory-simulated Western indoor hospital conditions, we assessed the suitability of phi 6 as a surrogate for environmental persistence research related to enveloped viruses, including EBOV and coronaviruses.