• COVID-19
• 2014-2023close
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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and associated containment measures dramatically affected the health care systems including the screening of human immunodeficiency virus and the management of people living with HIV around the world by making the access to preventive care services and specific medical monitoring more difficult. Objective: To study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the holistic care of people living with HIV in Liège (Belgium). Methods: In this retrospective observational study conducted in Liège University Hospital, we compared the out-patient follow-up of HIV-infected individuals as well as the number of new HIV diagnoses between 2019 and 2020 and between the different waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Results: In 2020, when compared to 2019, we observed a significant decrease in the number of new HIV diagnoses, especially during the first wave of the pandemic, and in the number of consultations undertaken by sexual health services, psychologists and specialists in infectious diseases at our HIV clinic. We also observed a decrease in the number of viral load assays and blood CD4+ T-cells count analyses performed, although we found less patients with HIV plasma viral load above 400 copies per mL in 2020. Finally, we noted a significant reduction in terms of screening of our HIV-infected patients for hepatitis C, syphilis, colorectal and anal cancers and hypercholesterolemia. Conclusions: Our experience exhibits the deleterious impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the HIV care and the need to implement new strategies to guarantee its continuum.

Twee jaar geleden dook in Wuhan het Sars-Cov-2 virus op. Het overspoelde in een mum van tijd de wereld. Half maart 2020 besliste de Belgische regering om een lockdown af te kondigen. Een begrip dat tot kort daarvoor letterlijk onvoorstelbaar was. In landen over de hele wereld werd een noodtoestand afgekondigd die overheden ongeziene slagkracht gaf om ingrijpende beslissingen te nemen. Zonder daarbij de geijkte democratische procedures te moeten volgen. Het onbekende virus en de angstaanjagende beelden die de wereld rondgingen, hielden hele bevolkingen aan het scherm gekluisterd, terwijl nieuwsuitzendingen zich beperkten tot één item: het nieuwe coronavirus en de daaraan gerelateerde cijfers, statistieken en beslissingen. Angst regeerde het land en beslissingen moesten worden genomen onder grote druk en onzekerheid. Dat het gevoerd beleid er een was van vallen en opstaan is in die omstandigheden volledig te begrijpen. Maar de onbekendheid van het virus maakte plaats voor een nooit geziene hoeveelheid wetenschappelijke publicaties – we naderen de 1 miljoen peer reviewed papers . Merkwaardig genoeg ontbreekt nu een grondige reflectie van het gevoerde beleid van de afgelopen twee jaar Two years ago, the Sars-Cov-2 virus surfaced in Wuhan. It engulfed the world in no time. In mid-March 2020, the Belgian government decided to declare a lockdown. A concept that was literally unimaginable until recently. In countries all over the world a state of emergency was declared that gave governments unprecedented power to take far-reaching decisions. Without having to follow the usual democratic procedures. The unknown virus and the terrifying images that circulated around the world kept entire populations glued to the screen, while news broadcasts were limited to one item: the new coronavirus and the related figures, statistics and decisions. Fear ruled the country and decisions had to be made under great pressure and uncertainty. That the policy pursued was one of trial and error is entirely understandable in these circumstances. But the obscurity of the virus gave way to an unprecedented number of scientific publications - we are approaching 1 million peer reviewed papers. Strangely enough, a thorough reflection of the policies pursued over the past two years is now missing.

The fast-moving economic integration and technology development has lead to the development of Crossborder E-commerce (CBEC). As its nature of more complicated interaction processes in comparison with domestic e-commerce, consumer attitudes and perceptions also changed and be affected by additional different factors. Given the increasing rapid development and extension of CBEC into emerging markets, there is lack of research attentions toward customer’s intention in these regions. Therefore, this study reviews previous studies on consumer's purchase behaviour to propose model in identifying factors influencing Vietnamese consumer's purchase intention in CBEC context. This study also discusses the challenges of CBEC in emerging markets and attempts to introduce a conceptual model in understanding the consumer's purchase intention in CBEC of the Vietnamese consumer especially during the covid-19 pandemic.

(1) Background: Many vaccines require higher, additional doses or adjuvants to provide adequate protection for people living with HIV (PLWH). Despite their potential risk of severe coronavirus disease 2019, immunological data remain sparse, and a clear consensus for the best booster strategy is lacking. (2) Methods: Using the data obtained from our previous study assessing prospective T-cell and humoral immune responses before and after administration of a third dose of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, we assessed the correlations between immune parameters reflecting humoral and cellular immune responses. We further aimed at identifying distinct clusters of patients with similar patterns of immune response evolution to determine how these relate to demographic and clinical factors. (3) Results: Among 80 PLWH and 51 healthcare workers (HCWs) enrolled in the study, cluster analysis identified four distinct patterns of evolution characterised by specific immune patterns and clinical factors. We observed that immune responses appeared to be less robust in cluster A, whose individuals were mostly PLWH who had never been infected with SARS-CoV-2. Cluster C, whose individuals showed a particularly drastic increase in markers of humoral immune response following the third dose of vaccine, was mainly composed of female participants who experienced SARS-CoV-2. Regarding the correlation study, although we observed a strong positive correlation between markers mirroring humoral immune response, markers of T-cell response following vaccination correlated only in a lesser extent with markers of humoral immunity. This suggests that neutralising antibody titers alone are not always a reliable reflection of the magnitude of the whole immune response. (4) Conclusions: Our findings show heterogeneity in immune responses among SARS-CoV-2 vaccinated PLWH. Specific subgroups could therefore benefit from distinct immunization strategies. Prior or breakthrough natural infection enhances the activity of vaccines and must be taken into account for informing global vaccine strategies among PLWH, even those with a viro-immunologically controlled infection.

Our motivating application is a real-world problem: COVID-19 classification from CT imaging, for which we present a explainable Deep Learning approach based on a semi-supervised classification pipeline that employs variational autoencoders to extract efficient feature embedding. We have optimized the architecture of two different networks for CT images: (i) a novel conditional variational autoencoder (CVAE) with a specific architecture that integrates the class labels inside the encoder layers and uses side information with shared attention layers for the encoder, which make the most of the contextual clues for representation learning, and (ii) a downstream convolutional neural network for supervised classification using the encoder structure of the CVAE. With the explainable classification results, the proposed diagnosis system is very effective for COVID-19 classification. Based on the promising results obtained qualitatively and quantitatively, we envisage a wide deployment of our developed technique in large-scale clinical studies.

L’enseignement à distance met bien plus que trois mètres hygiéniques entre les personnes. Un recours possible pour une éducation en quarantaine ?

Background: This study took place in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The present research assesses the association between lockdown conditions (such as time spent at home, living environment, proximity to contamination and social contacts), mental health (including intolerance of uncertainty, anxiety and depression) and intimate partner violence within the community. This study evaluates the indirect effect of anxiety and depression on the relationship between intolerance of uncertainty and intimate partner violence (physical assault and psychological aggression). Methods: 1532 adults (80.8% of women, Mage = 35.34) were recruited from the Belgian general population through an online self-report questionnaire completed during the lockdown (from April 17 to 1 May 2020 ). Results : The results demonstrate that the prevalence of physical assault (including both perpetration and victimization) was significantly higher in men, whereas the prevalence of psychological aggression was significantly higher in women. Men reported significantly more violence during lockdown. Women, on the other hand, were more anxious and more intolerant of uncertainty. No difference between men and women was found for depression. Anxiety and depression significantly mediated the relationship between intolerance of uncertainty and physical assault and psychological aggression. Sex did not moderate the mediation. Conclusion: Clinical implications for public health policy are highlighted