The Scenario of University Education in Latin America and the Return to the Classroom in the Context of COVID-19

The Ibero-American university has reflected inequalities in distance education, educational management and digital skills, as well as in the significant learning of students;the pandemic has exposed new challenges in inequality in distance education during COVID-19. Thus, opting for an educational strategy in which the return to face-to-face has become the main mechanism of transmission of knowledge from the teacher to the student;a representative improvement in student academic performance is expected. Through a narrative review, we seek to analyze the university transition in Ibero-America and the lived experience;with the aim of examining the contributions of education in Ibero-America based on the factors that impacted on virtuality and the transition to face-to-face. Face-to-face education, beyond this apparent state of nature, leads to the implementation of public health measures, and teachers face new challenges such as emotional states of students, limits of internet connectivity, difficulty adapting to the new normal, threatening experience or lack of motivation. In some students, in the face of uncertainty regarding the coronavirus;they are required to develop new skills and abilities to cope with it. The emergence of the so-called knowledge society is one of the other changes in the higher education landscape that will have a greater impact on the functioning of universities.

Generation of linguistic descriptions for daily noise pollution in urban areas

One of the major problems of concern to the nowadays society is pollution, which can be of many types: acoustic, environmental, thermal, etc. Among these, noise pollution causes serious problems for citizens because it is continuous for a large part of the day, due to the fact that it is mostly caused by traffic. On the other hand, large cities provide a large amount of data obtained daily thanks to the sensorisation resulting from the concept of "smart cities", which makes it possible to display information from the sensorised areas and to alert the institutions of the problems and, for citizens, to know the situation of noise pollution based on data in order to be able to make the relevant complaints and denunciations to the institutions. A universally understandable way of displaying the information contained in the captured data is the generation of linguistic descriptions that synthesise the information residing in the data. This paper presents a method for generating linguistic descriptions based on the noise pollution data captured by noise measurement stations. A method for generating descriptions of a day will be presented that considers the daily periods in which the data taken from the stations are structured (daytime, evening, night-time and full day). In order to test the proposed method, available data from the city of Madrid have been used to generate descriptions that allow the influence of Covid-19 on noise pollution to be analysed.

Experience with the use of siltuximab in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection.

OBJECTIVE: The study aims to describe characteristics and clinical outcome of patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection that received siltuximab according to a protocol that aimed to early block the activity of IL-6 to avoid the progression of the inflammatory flare. METHODS: Retrospective review of the first 31 patients with SARS-CoV-2 treated with siltuximab, in Hospital Clinic of Barcelona or Hospital Universitario Salamanca, from March to April 2020 with positive polymerase-chain reaction (PCR) from a nasopharyngeal swab. RESULTS: The cohort included 31 cases that received siltuximab with a median (IQR) age of 62 (56-71) and 71% were males. The most frequent comorbidity was hypertension (48%). The median dose of siltuximab was 800 mg ranging between 785 and 900 mg. 7 patients received siltuximab as a salvage therapy after one dose of tocilizumab. At the end of the study, a total of 26 (83.9) patients had been discharged alive and the mortality rate was 16.1% but only 1 out of 24 that received siltuximab as a first line option (4%). CONCLUSIONS: Siltuximab is a well-tolerated alternative to tocilizumab when administered as a first line option in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia within the first 10 days from symptoms onset and high C-reactive protein.

Tocilizumab reduces the risk of ICU admission and mortality in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection.

OBJECTIVE: In some patients the immune response triggered by SARS-CoV-2 is unbalanced, presenting an acute respiratory distress syndrome which in many cases requires intensive care unit (ICU) admission. The limitation of ICU beds has been one of the major burdens in the management around the world; therefore, clinical strategies to avoid ICU admission are needed. We aimed to describe the influence of tocilizumab on the need of transfer to ICU or death in non-critically ill patients. METHODS: A retrospective study of 171 patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection that did not qualify as requiring transfer to ICU during the first 24h after admission to a conventional ward, were included. The criteria to receive tocilizumab was radiological impairment, oxygen demand or an increasing of inflammatory parameters, however, the ultimate decision was left to the attending physician judgement. The primary outcome was the need of ICU admission or death whichever came first. RESULTS: A total of 77 patients received tocilizumab and 94 did not. The tocilizumab group had less ICU admissions (10.3% vs. 27.6%, P=0.005) and need of invasive ventilation (0 vs 13.8%, P=0.001). In the multivariable analysis, tocilizumab remained as a protective variable (OR: 0.03, CI 95%: 0.007-0.1, P=0.0001) of ICU admission or death. CONCLUSIONS: Tocilizumab in early stages of the inflammatory flare could reduce an important number of ICU admissions and mechanical ventilation. The mortality rate of 10.3% among patients receiving tocilizumab appears to be lower than other reports. This is a non-randomized study and the results should be interpreted with caution.