ABSTRACT
PurposeThere have been large geographical differences in the infection and death rates of COVID-19. Foods and beverages containing high amounts of phytochemicals with bioactive properties were suggested to prevent contracting, to limit the severity of, and to facilitate recovery from COVID-19. The goal of our study was to determine the correlation of the type of foods/beverages people consumed and the risk reduction of contracting COVID-19 and the recovery from COVID-19. MethodsWe developed an online survey that asked the participants whether they contracted COVID-19, their symptoms, time to recover, and their frequency of eating various types of foods/beverages. The survey was first developed in English and then translated into 10 different languages. ResultsThe participants who did not contract COVID-19 consumed vegetables, herbs/spices, and fermented foods/beverages significantly more than the participants who contracted COVID-19 and those who were not tested but became sick most likely from COVID-19. The geographic location of participants corresponded with the language of the survey, except for the English version, thus, nine out of the 10 language versions represented a country. Among the six countries (India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain) with over one hundred participants, we found that in India and Japan the people who contracted COVID-19 showed significantly shorter recovery time, and greater daily intake of vegetables, herbs/spices, and fermented foods/beverages was associated with faster recovery. ConclusionOur results suggest that phytochemical compounds included in the vegetables may have contributed in not only preventing contraction of COVID-19, but also accelerating their recovery. (249 words; EJN limit is 250 words)
Subject(s)
COVID-19ABSTRACT
Background: The health-care system has encountered exceptional circumstances, experiencing unique challenges, and manifesting as acute challenges in health-care services due to the spread of COVID-19. Aims and Objectives: The present study aimed to report the difficulties faced by the anesthetists while performing a cesarean section under the subarachnoid block (SAB) in COVID-19 patients at a dedicated COVID Level 3 hospital. Materials and Methods: Twenty healthy anesthetists (six consultants and 14 postgraduate) aged 20-40 years performed 60 elective or emergency cesarean sections of known COVID-19-positive gravida patients aged 20-35 years with no comorbidity and no spine abnormality under the SAB. Anesthetist;s responses to the challenges faced while performing procedures wearing the Level 3 personal protective equipment were recorded using a pre-structure self-administered questionnaire. To quantify the intensity of these problems, all the physical and psychological difficulties were graded as mild, moderate, and severe. Results: In the present study, 75% experienced moderate-to-severe sweating, and 60% experienced moderate-to-severe headaches. A total of 45% experienced moderate-to-severe breathlessness. Though there was little difficulty in communication among doctors and staff, almost 75% of anesthetists faced it. The fear of contracting the disease and spreading it to the family members was expressed by 75-80% of anesthetists. Conclusion: The present scenario has increased physical stress and other psychological problems among health workers. Therefore, hospital support with regular psychological counseling sessions is needed for healthcare workers to cope with the current situation.
ABSTRACT
Many people envisioned the year 2020 as significant. In the past, there was anticipation for VISION 2020, the agrarian target, sustainability goals, and much more. However, as 2020 came to an end, the only accomplishment anyone could claim is their own survival. The economy, financial goals, and marketing initiatives have all been destroyed. It was a unique period of experience. People were utterly disorganized. Nobody was so certain until the start of these actions. The anticipated marketing effects were completely gone. Therefore, it became important to evaluate how our proud marketing and consumer behaviour theories held up in the turbulent year. The popularity of the Engel-BlackwellMiniard Model of Consumer Behavior has been put to the test by researchers.
ABSTRACT
The health-care system has encountered exceptional circumstances, experiencing unique challenges, and manifesting as acute challenges in health-care services due to the spread of COVID-19. Aims and Objectives: The present study aimed to report the difficulties faced by the anesthetists while performing a cesarean section under the subarachnoid block (SAB) in COVID-19 patients at a dedicated COVID Level 3 hospital. Materials and Methods: Twenty healthy anesthetists (six consultants and 14 postgraduate) aged 20–40 years performed 60 elective or emergency cesarean sections of known COVID-19-positive gravida patients aged 20–35 years with no comorbidity and no spine abnormality under the SAB. Anesthetist;s responses to the challenges faced while performing procedures wearing the Level 3 personal protective equipment were recorded using a pre-structure self-administered questionnaire. To quantify the intensity of these problems, all the physical and psychological difficulties were graded as mild, moderate, and severe. Results: In the present study, 75% experienced moderate-to-severe sweating, and 60% experienced moderate-to-severe headaches. A total of 45% experienced moderate-to-severe breathlessness. Though there was little difficulty in communication among doctors and staff, almost 75% of anesthetists faced it. The fear of contracting the disease and spreading it to the family members was expressed by 75–80% of anesthetists. Conclusion: The present scenario has increased physical stress and other psychological problems among health workers. Therefore, hospital support with regular psychological counseling sessions is needed for healthcare workers to cope with the current situation. [ FROM AUTHOR]
ABSTRACT
In this paper we discuss an in-progress work on the development of a speech corpus for four low-resource Indo-Aryan languages -- Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj and Magahi using the field methods of linguistic data collection. The total size of the corpus currently stands at approximately 18 hours (approx. 4-5 hours each language) and it is transcribed and annotated with grammatical information such as part-of-speech tags, morphological features and Universal dependency relationships. We discuss our methodology for data collection in these languages, most of which was done in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, with one of the aims being to generate some additional income for low-income groups speaking these languages. In the paper, we also discuss the results of the baseline experiments for automatic speech recognition system in these languages.
Subject(s)
COVID-19ABSTRACT
India's complete lockdown has caused unnecessary disruptions in the food supply chain, with the scarcity of labour making it even worse. A sharp decline in demand is imminent with the financial sector being in a freeze and incomes having shrunk for everyone, except for the small salaried class. Consumer sentiment and business outlook on recovery are bleak. While ensuring the free movement of essential goods and availability and safety of labour can mitigate the immediate disruptions in the supply chain, unclogging the financial sector and restoring optimism in the market will take time and heroic efforts from the government.
ABSTRACT
It has been established that smell and taste loss are frequent symptoms during COVID-19 onset. Most evidence stems from medical exams or self-reports. The latter is particularly confounded by the common confusion of smell and taste. Here, we tested whether practical smelling and tasting with household items can be used to assess smell and taste loss. We conducted an online survey and asked participants to use common household items to perform a smell and taste test. We also acquired generic information on demographics, health issues including COVID-19 diagnosis, and current symptoms. We developed several machine learning models to predict COVID-19 diagnosis. We found that the random forest classifier consistently performed better than other models like support vector machines or logistic regression. The smell and taste perception of self-administered household items were statistically different for COVID-19 positive and negative participants. The most frequently selected items that also discriminated between COVID-19 positive and negative participants were clove, coriander seeds, and coffee for smell and salt, lemon juice, and chillies for taste. Our study shows that the results of smelling and tasting household items can be used to predict COVID-19 illness and highlight the potential of a simple home-test to help identify the infection and prevent the spread.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Taste Disorders , ConfusionABSTRACT
Probiotics have been suggested as one solution to counter detrimental health effects by SARS-CoV-2, however, data so far is scarce. We tested the effect of two probiotic consortia, OL-1 and OL-2, against SARS-CoV-2 in ferrets and assessed their effect on cytokine production and transcriptome in a human monocyte-derived macrophage (Mf) and dendritic cell (DC) model. The results showed that the consortia significantly reduced the viral load, modulated immune response, and regulated viral receptor expression in ferrets compared to placebo. In human Mf and DC model, OL-1 and OL-2 induced cytokine production and genes related to SARS-CoV-2 anti-viral immunity. The study results indicate that probiotic stimulation of the ferret immune system leads to improved anti-viral immunity against SARS-COV-2 and that critical genes and cytokines for anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunity are stimulated in human immune cells in vitro. The effect of the consortia against SARS-CoV-2 warrants further investigations in human clinical trials.
ABSTRACT
This study examines the spillover role of the implied volatilities of oil, gold, and the stock market with US equity sectors. Using time and frequency-based spillover methods, we find that the market’s expectation of oil price volatility (OVX) spillovers less strongly on the US sectoral returns than the market’s expectation of US stock market volatility (VIX), which exhibits the dominant spillover role. The market’s expectation of gold price volatility (GVZ) has a zero range spillover effect on the sectoral returns and is the most weakly affected by them, suggesting that gold can be used to hedge downside risk in all 10 US equity sectors considered. We also find that the US equity sectors’ spillovers on the VIX and OVX strengthen because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
ABSTRACT
Background During COVID-19 pandemic, Indian nationals were evacuated from foreign countries to various quarantine facilities in India. Individuals arriving from Iran on 14 March 2020 were quarantined at Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. All individuals were tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection after completing 14 days of quarantine. Those testing positive were isolated at AIIMS Jodhpur, India. We attempt to describe the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV2 in this cohort.Methods Basic SEIR compartmental model was developed using daily stepwise approach in Microsoft Excel. Advanced model using standard differential equations in Python software version 3.6 was used to estimate R0 based on model fit to actual data.Results Forty-eight SARS-CoV-2 infections were found among the 474 evacuees. Out of them 44 (92%) were asymptomatic. R0 for the overall duration was found to be 2.29 (95% CI 1.84–2.78). Male gender and age greater than 60 years were associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection (RR = 4.33, 95% CI 2.07–9.05 and 5.32, 95% CI 3.13–9.04, respectively). Isolation of infected individuals and stricter quarantine of remaining individuals reduced the R0 from 2.41 initially to 1.17 subsequently.Conclusion R0 value was found comparable to the earlier studies indicating similar transmission dynamics among quarantined individuals in India. Further, universal testing and prompt isolation of infected individuals was found effecting in interrupting the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Role of asymptomatic individuals in transmission appears to be strong in the context of quarantine of evacuees.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Severe Acute Respiratory SyndromeABSTRACT
Recent anecdotal and scientific reports have provided evidence of a link between COVID-19 and chemosensory impairments such as anosmia. However, these reports have downplayed or failed to distinguish potential effects on taste, ignored chemesthesis, generally lacked quantitative measurements, were mostly restricted to data from single countries. Here, we report the development, implementation and initial results of a multi-lingual, international questionnaire to assess self-reported quantity and quality of perception in three distinct chemosensory modalities (smell, taste, and chemesthesis) before and during COVID-19. In the first 11 days after questionnaire launch, 4039 participants (2913 women, 1118 men, 8 other, ages 19-79) reported a COVID-19 diagnosis either via laboratory tests or clinical assessment. Importantly, smell, taste and chemesthetic function were each significantly reduced compared to their status before the disease. Difference scores (maximum possible change+/-100) revealed a mean reduction of smell (-79.7+/- 28.7, mean+/- SD), taste (-69.0+/- 32.6), and chemesthetic (-37.3+/- 36.2) function during COVID-19. Qualitative changes in olfactory ability (parosmia and phantosmia) were relatively rare and correlated with smell loss. Importantly, perceived nasal obstruction did not account for smell loss. Furthermore, chemosensory impairments were similar between participants in the laboratory test and clinical assessment groups. These results show that COVID-19-associated chemosensory impairment is not limited to smell, but also affects taste and chemesthesis. The multimodal impact of COVID-19 and lack of perceived nasal obstruction suggest that SARS-CoV-2 infection may disrupt sensory-neural mechanisms.