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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the disease arising from the beta coronavirus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has presented a major challenge to health-care systems and societies across the world. Although previous highly pathogenic coronaviruses have emerged, namely severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 1 and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, neither had the spread nor the persistence to result in large clinical trials of drug therapy. Much of our therapeutic knowledge in these viruses was therefore informed by inference from observational, in vitro, and experimental model studies. As a result, when SARS-CoV-2 emerged with a noted high morbidity and mortality, initial therapeutic drug treatment was often empiric. There are currently over 4400 trials concerning COVID-19 registered on the World Health Organization international clinical trials registry, and while not all these are interventional therapeutic trials, this illustrates the desire of the international clinical-scientific community to develop systematic and evidence-based approaches for the management of this major threat. This chapter discusses the broad strategies of therapeutic pharmacological approaches suggested, namely antiviral therapy, antiinflammatories, and immunomodulatory. Nonpharmacological approaches are also to be discussed. Then, it reviews the approaches to trials and trial design, the development and use of core outcome sets, and regulation of trials in pandemic settings. It reviews the publication and preprint availability of completed trials before discussing the ethics of empiric treatment outside the context of trials.

As a reflection of shifting and fluid experiences in time and space, live streaming can reduce losses in the tourism industry associated with travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Compared with the use of live streaming activities in entertainment, shopping, sport, e-sport, religious, educational, and academic settings, the tourism context has yet to be explored. This study takes China as a case to examine tourism practices related to live streaming. Specifically, 48,114 social media posts were subjected to systematic content analysis. The dataset contained live streaming content related to 147 countries and 34 Chinese provincial administrative regions between 2010 and 2021. Findings revealed the following: (1) the development of tourism live streaming in China can be classified into germination, exploration, and opportunity stages and (4) live streaming tools and attractions constituted the core of the identified semantic network and had the strongest regulation capabilities in tourism live streaming activities. Findings shed light on latent cultural meanings in social media communications, where tourism live streaming features high-frequency linguistic signs. (3) users’ perceptions of tourism live streaming content involved institutions, live streaming tools, live streaming attractions, the live streaming economy, people, facilities and information, time, and regions (2) live content mainly evoked positive emotions, whereas negative sentiment resulted from illegal or boring content

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), are two of the most formidable pathogens in human history. Accordingly, novel vaccine strategies for respiratory infections such as COVID-19 and TB are desperately needed. Mucosal vaccine delivery is a promising approach but understanding of the early immune responses to pulmonary vaccines remains incomplete. This thesis aimed to elucidate the immune response to intrapulmonary subunit vaccines in the lungs with a primary focus on the mechanism of action of delta-inulin adjuvant (AdvaxTM). A SARS-CoV-2 vaccine consisting of Advax and recombinant spike protein was evaluated when delivered using intratracheal (IT) versus intramuscular (IM) administration. Both delivery routes led to complete protection against lethal SARS-CoV-2 infection in mice, but only IT delivery generated a lung-local humoral and cellular immune response. Secondly, the efficacy and early pulmonary immune responses of IT-delivered CysVac2 antigen combined with distinct adjuvant formulations [Advax or Alum/Monophosphoryl lipid A (MPLA)] was assessed. CysVac2 with either adjuvant was protective against aerosol M. tuberculosis infection in mice and protection correlated with the presence of pulmonary multifunctional IL-17A-expressing CD4+ T cells after challenge. In addition, assessment of lung function parameters were not significantly altered after a full course of IT immunisation with CysVac2 vaccines. Furthermore, whole-lung transcriptional responses showed that CysVac2/AlumMPLA stimulated type I interferon signalling and enhanced antigen-specific T cell recruitment to the lungs that was CXCR3-dependent. Both vaccines, however, promoted local Th17 polarisation. Finally, use of lectin and glycan arrays identified C-type lectin dendritic cell-specific intercellular adhesion molecule-3-grabbing non-integrin (DC-SIGN) as a putative cellular receptor for Advax particles.

Background: This research prioritization aimed to identify major research gaps in maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (MNCAH) to help mitigate the direct and indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We adapted the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative methodology. We defined scope, domains, themes and scoring criteria. We approached diverse global experts via email to submit their research ideas in MNCAH and MNCAH-related cross-cutting/health systems area. We curated the research ideas as research questions (RQs) and sent them to the consenting experts for scoring via the online link. For each RQ, the research priority score (RPS) was calculated as an average of individual criterion scores and ranked based on RPS in each area. Results: We identified top-ranked 10 RQs in each maternal, newborn, and child and adolescent health and 5 in the cross-cutting/health systems area. In maternal health, indirect effects on care, measures to improve care, health risks and outcomes, and preventing and managing SARS-CoV-2 infection/COVID-19 disease were priority RQs. In newborn health, clinical characterization and managing SARS-CoV-2 infection/COVID-19 disease, mode of transmission and interventions to prevent transmission were the focus. For child and adolescent health, top-ranked RQs were indirect effects on care, clinical status and outcomes, interventions to protect against SARS-CoV-2 infection/COVID-19 disease, and educational institute-related RQs. The cross-cutting RQs were the effects of the pandemic on availability, access, care-seeking and utilization of MNCAH services and potential solutions. Conclusions: We call on partners, including governments, non-governmental organizations, research institutes, and donors, to address this urgent research agenda.

The prevention and control of COVID-19 in megacities is under large pressure because of tens of millions and high-density populations. The majority of epidemic prevention and control policies implemented focused on travel restrictions, which severely affected urban mobility during the epidemic. Considering the impacts of epidemic and associated control policies, this study analyzes the relationship between COVID-19, travel of residents, Point of Interest (POI), and social activities from the perspective of taxi travel. First, changes in the characteristics of taxi trips at different periods were analyzed. Next, the relationship between POIs and taxi travels was established by the Geographic Information System (GIS) method, and the spatial lag model (SLM) was introduced to explore the changes in taxi travel driving force. Then, a social activities recovery level evaluation model was proposed based on the taxi travel datasets to evaluate the recovery of social activities. The results demonstrated that the number of taxi trips dropped sharply, and the travel speed, travel time, and spatial distribution of taxi trips had been significantly influenced during the epidemic period. The spatial correlation between taxi trips was gradually weakened after the outbreak of the epidemic, and the consumption travel demand of people significantly decreased while the travel demand for community life increased dramatically. The evaluation score of social activity is increased from 8.12 to 74.43 during the post-epidemic period, which may take 3&ndash 6 months to be fully recovered as a normal period. Results and models proposed in this study may provide references for the optimization of epidemic control policies and recovery of public transport in megacities during the post-epidemic period.

This comprehensive study analyzes the role of social media, specifically Facebook, in crisis communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conducted through a longitudinal netnography approach, the research scrutinizes the communication strategies of Australian public health agencies from 2019 to 2020 and their impact on shared situational awareness (SSA). Drawing on the Seppänen et al. (2013) model for crisis communication, the study looks at three key aspects - link content (information), link type (communication), and link quality (trust) - and evaluates how they influence SSA during a crisis. The application of Chaos Theory further enhances the research's depth by identifying patterns and transformations in Facebook communications before and after the COVID-19 disruption. The study reveals that the pandemic significantly disrupted typical health communication strategies, leading to new emergent patterns, and it also underscores the critical role of secondary communication and emotional factors in the public's decision to share crisis information. Moreover, it identifies issues such as misinformation and inconsistency in messaging as significant obstacles to the public's trust in official health communications, ultimately impeding the creation of adequate SSA. The research emphasizes the need to develop consistent, clear, and reliable messaging strategies for effective crisis communication. The findings expand existing knowledge on social media utilization in crisis communication, offering valuable insights to enhance public health agencies' communication strategies, thereby aiding in the creation of trusted SSA. Unlike prior studies focusing on crisis response teams, this research concentrates on shared situational awareness among the general public, providing practical recommendations to improve social media crisis communication for more effective response and management in a health crisis.

After steep drops and then rebounds in transportation-related CO$_2$ emissions over the first half of 2020, a second wave of COVID-19 this fall has caused further -- but less substantial -- emissions reductions. Here, we use near-real-time estimates of daily emissions to explore differences in human behavior and restriction policies over the course of 2020.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has driven researchers from different spectrum to develop novel solutions that can improve detection and understanding of SARS-CoV-2 virus. In this article we propose the use of Intelligent Reflector Surface (IRS) emitting terahertz signals to detect airborne respiratory aerosol cloud that are secreted from people. Our proposed approach makes use of future IRS infrastructure to extend beyond communication functionality by adding environmental scanning for aerosol clouds. Simulations have also been conducted to analyze the accuracy of aerosol cloud detection based on a signal scanning and path optimization algorithm. Utilizing IRS for detecting respiratory aerosol cloud can lead to new added value of telecommunication infrastructures for sensor monitoring data that can be used for public health. Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures. This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication

Abstract Background A major component of rolled-out COVID-19 pandemic response and preparedness is the administration of vaccines. Globally, resistance towards vaccination programs are well known and documented. This study sought to evaluate the effects of general vaccine health perceptions and the confidence in COVID-19 vaccine safety towards uptake in Ghana. MethodsA cross sectional online survey involving 620 Ghanaians was conducted. The data was subjected to both descriptive (frequency, percentages, and chi-square tests) and inferential (nested binary logistic regression) analyses. Results The preliminary findings showed that 80.32% of participants believed that vaccines were healthy and 73.06% had confidence in a COVID-19 vaccine safety, although 81.19% of the respondents were particularly concerned about the source of the vaccine. Other evidence revealed that 78.55% and 71.45% of respondents indicated their willingness for mandatory and voluntary COVID-19 vaccine uptake or shot respectively. In all operationalized regression models, Ghanaians who believed that vaccines are healthy and those who had confidence in a COVID-19 vaccine safety were more likely to take a mandatory or voluntary COVID-19 vaccine compared to those who thought and believed otherwise. ConclusionIndividual preferences and/or intentions toward COVID-19 vaccine uptake and uptake route (i.e., mandatory, voluntary) were influenced by multifaceted determinants: biosocial (age, marital status, education), socio-cultural (religion) and contextual (geographical zone, source of vaccine as a concern) factors. To consolidate and possibly increase vaccine uptake in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana, health education and promotion programs should aim at creating awareness on the benefits of vaccine uptake while addressing the health and safety concerns on the potential side effects through evidence-based community messaging from credible sources. It is important to show specific commitment to transparency and reliable information to build public trust by decision-makers.