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Background: A worldwide vaccination program is the chosen strategy against the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccine hesitancy however, forms a threat because vaccine uptake is voluntary in most countries. Care-professionals of people with intellectual disabilities are exposed to greater risks than other healthcare workers due to the vulnerable group they attend to and the assisted-living facilities in which they often work. Little is still known of the reasons for vaccine hesitancy in this specific group in contrast to those of other healthcare workers. Objective: To provide insight in the intentions and attitudes on COVID-vaccination of healthcare workers, including those who care for people with intellectual disabilities, by means of a scoping review. Methods: The databases that were searched for papers are CINAHL, APA PsycArticles, APA PsycInfo, Web of Science, Semantic Scolar, Prospero, Outbreak Science, Cochrane and Scopus. The search was broadened to healthcare workers in general because only two papers were found on those caring for people with intellectual disabilities. A total of 26 papers were identified concerning the vaccine intentions of 43,199 healthcare workers worldwide. Data were gathered both quantitively and qualitatively. The papers were analysed for all themes regarding vaccine willingness and vaccine hesitancy. Results: The themes that came to light included: percentages of vaccine willingness, predictors of willingness differentiated by 11 sub-themes (mainly profession, age, gender and past vaccine behaviour), attitudes of willingness and hesitancy differentiated by 19 sub-themes (perceived COVID treat and protecting others for willingness, concerns on vaccine safety and efficacy for hesitancy), sources of vaccination information, contextual factors and changes in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance over time and finally, future strategies for interventions. Conclusions: There was overlap in the percentages of vaccination, predictors of vaccine willingness and the attitudes of vaccine willingness and hesitancy between healthcare workers and those caring for people with intellectual disabilities. Vaccine safety and efficacy are the most prominent concerns with regard to vaccine hesitancy. Therefore, future strategies for interventions should address vaccine safety and efficacy. Furthermore, interventions are recommended to be interactive in order to facilitate exchange. Discussion groups that are able to address specific concerns and personal experiences, show to be effective in addressing vaccine hesitancy. Accurate information can also be made more accessible to target groups by promoting video’s on social media platforms. Hence, further research is necessary to specify more precisely the attitudes of healthcare workers caring for people with intellectual disabilities and in more countries worldwide.

Persistent ill health after acute COVID-19—referred to as long COVID, the post-acute COVID-19 syndrome, or the post-COVID-19 condition—has emerged as a major concern. We undertook an international consensus exercise to identify research priorities with the aim of understanding the long-term effects of acute COVID-19, with a focus on people with pre-existing airways disease and the occurrence of new-onset airways disease and associated symptoms. 202 international experts were invited to submit a minimum of three research ideas. After a two-phase internal review process, a final list of 98 research topics was scored by 48 experts. Patients with pre-existing or post-COVID-19 airways disease contributed to the exercise by weighting selected criteria. The highest-ranked research idea focused on investigation of the relationship between prognostic scores at hospital admission and morbidity at 3 months and 12 months after hospital discharge in patients with and without pre-existing airways disease. High priority was also assigned to comparisons of the prevalence and severity of post-COVID-19 fatigue, sarcopenia, anxiety, depression, and risk of future cardiovascular complications in patients with and without pre-existing airways disease. Our approach has enabled development of a set of priorities that could inform future research studies and funding decisions. This prioritisation process could also be adapted to other, non-respiratory aspects of long COVID.

A global cross-discipline effort is ongoing to characterize the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 virus and generate reliable epidemiological models of its diffusion. To this end, phylogenomic approaches leverage accumulating genomic mutations as barcodes to track the evolutionary history of the virus and can benefit from the surge of sequences deposited in public databases. Yet, such methods typically rely on consensus sequences representing the dominant virus lineage, whereas a complex sublineage architecture is often observed within single hosts. Furthermore, most approaches do not account for variants accumulation processes and might produce inaccurate results in condition of limited sampling, as witnessed in most countries currently affected by the epidemics. We here introduce a new framework for the characterization of viral (sub)lineage evolution and transmission of SARS-CoV-2, which considers both clonal and intra-host minor variants and exploits the achievements of cancer evolution research to account for mutation accumulation and uncertainty in the data. The application of our approach to 18 SARS-CoV-2 samples for which raw sequencing data are available reveals a high-resolution phylogenomic model, which confirms and improves recent findings on viral types and highlights the existence of patterns of co-occurrence of minor variants, uncovering likely infection paths among hosts harboring the same viral lineage. Our findings confirm a significant increase of genomic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 in time, which is reflected in minor variants, and show that standard methods may struggle when handling datasets with important sampling limitations. Importantly, our framework allows to pinpoint minor variants that might be positively selected across distinct lineages and regions of the viral genome under purifying selection, thus driving the design of treatments and vaccines. In particular, minor variant g.29039A>U, detected in multiple viral lineages and validated on an independent dataset, shows that SARS-CoV-2 can lose its main Nucleocapsid immunogenic epitopes, raising concerns about the effectiveness of vaccines targeting the C-terminus of this protein. To conclude, we advocate the use of our framework in combination with data-driven epidemiological models, to deliver a high-precision platform for pathogen detection, surveillance and analysis.

This repository contains the Python and R codes used for the paper titled: Uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis of COVID-19 exit strategies in an individual-based transmission model.

This paper aimed to provide insight into the concept of socially responsible business and its impact as part of the public relations strategy on image building with reference to the banking sector. The theoretical framework of the paper defined the concept of public relations, image, and socially responsible business, the specifics of banking sector activities, their scope of social responsibilities, and an overview of banks' involvement in corporate social responsibility. As an example of the companies on which the topic was addressed, the five largest banks in Croatia were taken into account according to the data for credit institutions of the Croatian National Bank as of March 31, 2020. In the empirical part of the paper, a quantitative analysis of the content was carried out with publications on selected online portals (vecernji.hr, jutarnji.hr, 24sata.hr, index.hr, dnevnik.hr and tportal.hr) and official websites and social networks of banks as sources about their practices of socially responsible activities carried out in the image building strategy during the ten months of 2020 (from the beginning of March to the end of December). The content analysis aimed to examine which socially responsible activities banks carried out during the coronavirus pandemic to gain a clearer insight into how banks build recognition and if the market position of banks is correlated with the number of announcements about socially responsible activities. The content analysis showed that there is a distinct interdependence in the market share of individual banks, which consequently also means the financial income of the banks, their social engagement and the public release of information about it. Although there are certain deviations, more profitable banks publish more information about their social engagement, and the reason for this could be gaining a comparative advantage with clients and diverting society's attention from the negative publications to which banks are often exposed. Rad daje uvid u koncept društveno odgovornog poslovanja i njegovog utjecaja kao dijela strategije odnosa s javnošću na izgradnju imidža s osvrtom na bankarski sektor. U teorijskom okviru rada se određuje pojam odnosa s javnošću, imidža i društveno odgovornog poslovanja, specifičnosti djelatnosti bankarskog sektora, njihova obuhvata društvene odgovornosti i pregleda uključenosti banaka u društveno odgovorno poslovanje. Kao primjer tvrtki na kojima se obrađivala tema rada u obzir je uzeto pet najvećih banaka u Hrvatskoj prema podacima za kreditne institucije Hrvatske narodne banke na dan 31. ožujka 2020. U empirijskom dijelu rada se provela kvantitativna analiza sadržaja, a izvor su bile objave na odabranim internetskim informativnim portalima (vecernji.hr, jutarnji.hr, 24sata.hr, indeks.hr, dnevnik.hr i tportal.hr) te službene internetske stranice i društvene mreže banaka o njihovim praksama društveno odgovornih aktivnosti koje su provele u strategiji izgradnje imidža tijekom deset mjeseci 2020. godine (od početka ožujka do kraja prosinca). Analizom sadržaja željelo se ispitati koje društveno odgovorne aktivnosti su banke provele tijekom trajanja pandemije koronavirusa, kako bi se dobio jasniji uvid u način na koji banke grade prepoznatljivost i pozitivan imidž odnosima s javnošću te je tržišni položaj banaka u korelaciji s brojem objava o društveno odgovornim aktivnostima. Analiza sadržaja je pokazala kako postoji izrazita međuovisnost u tržišnom udjelu pojedinih banaka, što posljedično znači i financijskim postignućima banaka, njihovoj društvenoj angažiranosti i javnoj objavi informacija o tome. Iako postoje određena odstupanja, ipak profitabilnije banke objavljuju više informacija o svojoj društvenoj angažiranosti, a razlog za to mogao bi biti stjecanje komparativne prednosti kod klijenata i skretanje pozornosti društva s negativnih objava kojima su banke često izložene.

The EU is facing a severe mental health crisis worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, with insufficient treatment options exacerbating the situation. Access to mental health services is inadequate in many EU countries, contributing to high levels of neuropsychiatric problems. It is therefore crucial to prioritize mental health by investing in comprehensive accessible and cost-effective healthcare. Prioritizing the wellbeing of EU citizens is essential for building resilience and a healthier future, thus respecting the principles of dignity, equality, and the right to health.