Search results for "pandemic"
showing 10 items of 1097 documents
Lead Discovery of SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease Inhibitors through Covalent Docking-Based Virtual Screening
2021
During almost all 2020, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has constituted the major risk for the worldwide health and economy, propelling unprecedented efforts to discover drugs for its prevention and cure. At the end of the year, these efforts have culminated with the approval of vaccines by the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) giving new hope for the future. On the other hand, clinical data underscore the urgent need for effective drugs to treat COVID-19 patients. In this work, we embarked on a virtual screening campaign against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Mpro chymotrypsin-like cysteine pro…
Impacts of COVID-19 and pandemic control measures on public transport ridership in European urban areas – The cases of Vienna, Innsbruck, Oslo, and A…
2021
The study uses the case of two regions with small and medium sized cities (Agder in Norway and the greater Innsbruck area in Austria) and two European capitals, Vienna and Oslo, to showcase the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public transport ridership in northern and central Europe. The comprehensive timeline of actions taken by governments and public transport providers in Austria and Norway, and their impact on public transport ridership in the first and second waves of the pandemic form the basis of a descriptive study. Comparing the data, a strong negative impact on the public transport patronage in the first wave of the pandemic was found, despite a comparable low number of cases p…
Physical Activity Levels and Related Energy Expenditure during COVID-19 Quarantine among the Sicilian Active Population: A Cross-Sectional Online Sur…
2020
Background: During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the Italian government has adopted containment measures to control the virus’s spread, including limitations to the practice of physical activity (PA). The aim of this study was to estimate the levels of PA, expressed as energy expenditure (MET–minute/week), among the physically active Sicilian population before and during the last seven days of the COVID-19 quarantine. Furthermore, the relation between this parameter and specific demographic and anthropometric variables was analyzed. Methods: 802 Sicilian physically active participants (mean age: 32.27 ± 12.81 years; BMI: 23.44 ± 3.33 kg/m2) were included in the study and…
Introduction to Special Issue: Brand Equity, Satisfaction, and Word of Mouth
2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has generated an incredible change in the global economy that will likely have long-term consequences on consumer behavior, markets, business models, market regulation, and public policies, among others [1,2]. We are only at the beginning of seeing these effects, and this new scenario offers opportunities to articulate research in the area of marketing aligned with the urgency of recovering customer trust and reactivating sales [3]. The five contributions presented in this Special Issue, “Brand Equity, Satisfaction, and Word of Mouth”, aim at being incorporated into the dynamics of methodological and thematic innovation in marketing, in reply to some of the research pr…
Europe’s War against COVID-19: A Map of Countries’ Disease Vulnerability Using Mortality Indicators
2020
Specific and older age-associated comorbidities increase mortality risk in severe forms of coronavirus disease (COVID-19). We matched COVID-19 comorbidities with causes of death in 28 EU countries for the total population and for the population above 65 years and applied a machine-learning-based tree clustering algorithm on shares of death for COVID-19 comorbidities and for influenza and on their growth rates between 2011 and 2016. We distributed EU countries in clusters and drew a map of the EU populations&rsquo
Covid-19 Pandemic: What Changes for Dentists and Oral Medicine Experts? A Narrative Review and Novel Approaches to Infection Containment
2020
The authors performed a narrative review on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome- CoronaVirus-2 ( SARS-CoV-2) and all infectious agents with the primary endpoints to illustrate the most accepted models of safety protocols in dentistry and oral medicine, and to propose an easy view of the problem and a comparison (pre- vs post-COVID19) for the most common dental procedures. The outcome is forecast to help dentists to individuate for a given procedure the differences in terms of safety protocols to avoid infectious contagion (by SARS-CoV-2 and others dangerous agents). An investigation was performed on the online databases Pubmed and Scopus using a combination of free words and Medical Subject H…
Understanding the effects of Covid-19 through a life course lens
2020
Available online 22 July 2020. Other co-authors: ANTONUCCI, T. C., DYKSTRA, P. A., HECKHAUSEN, J., KUH, D., MAYER, K. U., MOEN, P., MORTIMER, J. T., MULDER, C. H., SMEEDING, T. M., VAN DER LIPPE, T., HAGESTAD, G. O., KOHLI, Martin, LEVY, R., SCHOON, I., & THOMSON, E. The Covid-19 pandemic is shaking fundamental assumptions about the human life course in societies around the world. In this essay, we draw on our collective expertise to illustrate how a life course perspective can make critical contributions to understanding the pandemic’s effects on individuals, families, and populations. We explore the pandemic’s implications for the organization and experience of life transitions and trajec…
Personal protective equipment use by healthcare workers in intensive care unit during the early phase of COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: a secondary anal…
2021
Background: Italy was the first Western country to be heavily affected by COVID-19. Healthcare workers (HCWs) were exposed to a high risk of occupational infection, partially due to insufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies. This study aimed to describe the practices, availability, training, confidence in PPE use and the adverse effects due to extended PPE use, as reported by HCWs in Italy. We also aimed to provide a comparison between Italian data and those from other countries. Methods: This study was a secondary analysis of a previously published international study, the PPE-SAFE Survey, conducted in April 2020. Data were analysed from the original study database. Results…
Artificial Intelligence for Hospital Health Care:Application Cases and Answers to Challenges in European Hospitals
2021
The development and implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in health care contexts is a concurrent research and management question. Especially for hospitals, the expectations regarding improved efficiency and effectiveness by the introduction of novel AI applications are huge. However, experiences with real-life AI use cases are still scarce. As a first step towards structuring and comparing such experiences, this paper is presenting a comparative approach from nine European hospitals and eleven different use cases with possible application areas and benefits of hospital AI technologies. This is structured as a current review and opinion article from a diverse range of…
A Novel Heuristic Global Algorithm to Predict the COVID-19 Pandemic Trend
2020
SummaryMathematical models are useful tools to predict the course of an epidemic. A heuristic global Gaussian-function-based algorithm for predicting the COVID-19 pandemic trend is proposed for estimating how the temporal evolution of the pandemic develops by predicting daily COVID-19 deaths, for up to 10 days, starting with the day the prediction is made. The validity of the proposed heuristic global algorithm was tested in the case of China (at different temporal stages of the pandemic). The algorithm was used to obtain predictions in six different locations: California, New York, Iran, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the entire United States, and in all cases the prediction was confirmed…