Changes in Clinical Practice amongst Nepalese Otolaryngologists during COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background COVID-19 pandemic changed clinical practices more so for otolaryngologists due to inevitable risk of exposure. Objective To assess the changes in the clinical practice among Nepalese otolaryngologists during this pandemic. Method It was an observational study conducted as an online survey in the first two weeks of December 2020. A questionnaire pertaining to changes in clinical practice was mailed to 190 registered otolaryngologists working in various provinces of Nepal. Data were entered in Microsoft Excel 2007 and analysed in percentages. Result Out of the 77 (40.5%) who responded, nearly 50% resumed clinical practice after a month of national lockdown restarting everyday consultation by 64.9% mostly in hospital setting (81.8%) after screening patients via fever clinic by 87%. Modifications in clinical examinations was mostly done for neck (85.7%), oral cavity (44.2%) and nose (29.8%) examination with least with for ear examination (3.9%) Regular endoscopic evaluation was avoided by 19.4%. Only around 57% used adequate personal protective equipment. There was 93.5% reduction in elective operations. Mandatory COVID test was done by 89.6% mostly with reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (95.9%) prior to semi-urgent case. Conclusion Changes in clinical practice were adapted to mitigate viral transmission. The changes were evident in the outpatient department where most patients were screened for fever and modifications made in the clinical examinations. Personal protective equipments were worn when available. Operative lists were limited to semi-urgent and urgent cases with covid testing customarily done for semi-urgent cases.

Changes in Clinical Practice amongst Nepalese Otolaryngologists during COVID-19 Pandemic

Background COVID-19 pandemic changed clinical practices more so for otolaryngologists due to inevitable risk of exposure. Objective To assess the changes in the clinical practice among Nepalese otolaryngologists during this pandemic. Method It was an observational study conducted as an online survey in the first two weeks of December 2020. A questionnaire pertaining to changes in clinical practice was mailed to 190 registered otolaryngologists working in various provinces of Nepal. Data were entered in Microsoft Excel 2007 and analysed in percentages. Result Out of the 77 (40.5%) who responded, nearly 50% resumed clinical practice after a month of national lockdown restarting everyday consultation by 64.9% mostly in hospital setting (81.8%) after screening patients via fever clinic by 87%. Modifications in clinical examinations was mostly done for neck (85.7%), oral cavity (44.2%) and nose (29.8%) examination with least with for ear examination (3.9%) Regular endoscopic evaluation was avoided by 19.4%. Only around 57% used adequate personal protective equipment. There was 93.5% reduction in elective operations. Mandatory COVID test was done by 89.6% mostly with reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (95.9%) prior to semi-urgent case. Conclusion Changes in clinical practice were adapted to mitigate viral transmission. The changes were evident in the outpatient department where most patients were screened for fever and modifications made in the clinical examinations. Personal protective equipments were worn when available. Operative lists were limited to semi-urgent and urgent cases with covid testing customarily done for semi-urgent cases. Copyright © 2022, Kathmandu University. All rights reserved.

Advisories on Fish Farming in Tripura for Coping with COVID 19: An Outlook

The usage of mobile-based agro-advisories and its utilization pattern was unclear, especially in the case of fisheries and aquaculture in Tripura, coming under the North-Eastern region of India, where 1.87 lakh population was primarily identified as fish farmers. Similar to other parts of the country, the COVID-19 outbreak hampered fishery and aquaculture in Tripura, and farmers were physically barred from accessing support systems and technical facilities of different organizations. In view of that, the present study was performed to identify all such mobile-based advisories related to fish farming, which were actively circulated in the state during the COVID-19 outbreak. The accessibility, perceived level of satisfaction, and utility of those mobile-based advisories were studied. It was found that out of 120 respondents, 102 actively sought/accessed some of these advisory services. The advisory on fish farming, released by the Department of Fisheries (DoF), Tripura, was accessed by more than half of the respondents (54.17 %), followed by 'Mobile Based Agro-Advisory' system (20.83 %) under the 'Matsya Varta' project of College of Fisheries, Central Agricultural University (COF-CAU), Tripura. Other advisories from KVKs were also accessed by the respondents (9.16 %) indicating a significant rate of accessibility and utility. The findings suggest the existence of adequate advisory services in the state during COVID-19 outbreak.

Machine Learning based model for predicting Stress Level in Online Education Due to Coronavirus Pandemic: A Case Study of Bangladeshi Students

During the pre-pandemic era online education in Bangladesh was not popular and certificates achieved from online education were often discouraged by organizations. However, the scenario has changed a lot within the last one and half years. The covid-19 pandemic force almost all the countries to adapt to new norms in almost every aspect of life and that happened in Bangladesh also, especially in the education sector. Undoubtedly this caused psychological stress to almost every stakeholder of this system. Our paper aims to predict this stress level of students in the context of Bangladesh using machine learning techniques. To conduct the research primary data were collected using google form and after preprocessing the data several prominent supervised classifiers were applied to predict the stress levels of students due to online education. Among these classifiers, the proximity of the Random Forest algorithm was found to play the greatest role in predicting the stress level detection in online classes and the accuracy was 73.91%. © 2021 IEEE.

A Computational Study of COVID-19 Detection using Colorimetric Plasmonic Sensors

Traditional molecular techniques for COVID-19 viral detection are time-consuming and can exhibit a high probability of false negatives. In this work, we present a computational study of COVID-19 detection using plasmonic gold nanoparticles. The resonance wavelength of a COVID-19 virion was recently estimated to be in the near-infrared region. By engineering gold nanospheres to bind with the outer surface of the COVID-19 virus specifically, the resonance frequency can be shifted to the visible range (380 nm-700 nm). Moreover, we show that broadband absorption will emerge in the visible spectrum when the virus is partially covered with gold nanoparticles at a certain percentage. This broadband absorption can be used to guide the development of an efficient and accurate colorimetric plasmon sensor for COVID-19 detection. © 2021 IEEE.

Sero-prevalence of sars cov-2 specific antibody among general population of tripura, india: A baseline observation

Background: Spectrum of COVID-19 disease ranges from asymptomatic or mild symptomatic to life threatening cases. Population based sero-epidemiological studies are useful for assessing the magnitude of COVID-19 infection in a geographic area and it is helpful for planning control measures. Objectives: To estimate the sero-prevalence of SARS CoV-2 antibody in the general population of Tripura and to study the factors associated with it. Methodology: This community based cross-sectional study was conducted from 15th October to 14th November 2020 among 4800 subjects selected from the whole state of Tripura, India by probability proportionate to size sampling technique using 30 clusters. Electrochemiluminescence (eCLIA) based assay was used to test the serum samples for SARS-CoV-2 specific antibody. Data entry and analysis was performed using SPSS-25 for windows and sero-prevalence was expressed in percentages. Binary logistic regression model was used for predicting sero-positivity by including the significant factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection as found out by univariate analysis. Result: Sero-prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibody was found to be 34% among the general population of Tripura and it varied from 42.4% to 19.7% across different districts. Logistic regression model has identified, urban residency (OR: 1.21, 95% CI: 1.03-1.42), ethnic community (OR: 0.55, 95% CI: 0.48-0.64) and literacy (OR: 1.41, 95% CI: 1.13-1.77) as the independent risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 sero-positivity (p<0.05). Conclusion: Approximately one out of three residents of Tripura has already acquired the novel SARS CoV-2 infection. As the threshold required for achieving herd immunity against COVID-19 is not yet known, control measures need to be continued for preventing further spread of disease in the community. © 2021, Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine. All rights reserved.

Robust classification-based molecular modelling of diverse chemical entities as potential SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro inhibitors: theoretical justification in light of experimental evidences.

COVID-19 is the most unanticipated incidence of 2020 affecting the human population worldwide. Currently, it is utmost important to produce novel small molecule anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs urgently that can save human lives globally. Based on the earlier SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV infection along with the general characters of coronaviral replication, a number of drug molecules have been proposed. However, one of the major limitations is the lack of experimental observations with different drug molecules. In this article, 70 diverse chemicals having experimental SARS-CoV-2 3CLproinhibitory activity were accounted for robust classification-based QSAR analysis statistically validated with 4 different methodologies to recognize the crucial structural features responsible for imparting the activity. Results obtained from all these methodologies supported and validated each other. Important observations obtained from these analyses were also justified with the ligand-bound crystal structure of SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro enzyme. Our results suggest that molecules should contain a 2-oxopyrrolidine scaffold as well as a methylene (hydroxy) sulphonic acid warhead in proper orientation to achieve higher inhibitory potency against SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro. Outcomes of our study may be able to design and discover highly effective SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro inhibitors as potential anticoronaviral therapy to crusade against COVID-19.

COVID-19- An epidemiological puzzle

A cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown aetiology was reported from Wuhan, Hubei province of China on 31st December, 2019. The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30th January, 2020. Thereafter, it was spread throughout China and reached the level of a pandemic expanding to 210 countries with 9,653,048 confirmed cases and 491,128 deaths as per Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Situation Report issued by WHO based on data received up to 27th June, 2020. A number of questions remain unanswered regarding pathogen associated variables for amplification dynamics, host environment and agent interaction. This short communication makes an effort to compile the information gathered from published articles of renowned journals and newsletters to explore the epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19. Hereby, in this article, authors have tried to assemble the epidemiological lacunae created by the novel characteristics of the SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus-2) which presently pose a rather puzzling transmission dynamics of COVID-19 that still remain unanswered.