scholarly journals Prevalence of Stress in Healthcare Professionals during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Northeast Mexico: A Remote, Fast Survey Evaluation, Using an Adapted COVID-19 Stress Scales

Author(s):  
Juan Luis Delgado-Gallegos ◽  
Rene de Jesús Montemayor-Garza ◽  
Gerardo R. Padilla-Rivas ◽  
Héctor Franco-Villareal ◽  
Jose Francisco Islas

The world is currently subjected to the worst health crisis documented in modern history: an epidemic led by the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). At the epicenter of this crisis, healthcare professionals continue working to safeguard our well-being. To the regular high levels of stress, COVID-19 adds even more so to healthcare professionals in particular, depending on their area, specialty, and type of work. Here we investigated what are the tendencies or areas most affected. Through an adaptation of the original COVID-stress scales, we developed a remote, fast test designed for healthcare professionals in the northeastern part of Mexico, an important part of the country with economic and cultural ties to the United States. Our results showed four key correlations as highly dependent: work area–xenophobia (p < 0.045), work with COVID patients–traumatic stress (p < 0.001), total number of COVID patients per day–traumatic stress (p < 0.027), and total number of COVID patients–compulsive checking and reassurance. Overall, we concluded that normal levels of stress have increased (mild–moderate). Additionally, we determine that the fear of being an asymptomatic patient (potential to spread without knowing) continues being a concern.

Author(s):  
Juan Luis Delgado-Gallegos ◽  
Rene de Jesus Montemayor-Garza ◽  
Gerardo R. Padilla-Rivas ◽  
Hector Franco-Villareal ◽  
Jose Francisco Islas

The world is currently, subjected to the worst health crisis documented in modern history; an epidemic led by the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). At the epicenter of this crisis, healthcare professionals continue working to safeguard our well-being. To the regular high levels of stress, COVID new heights even more to healthcare professionals so depending on the area, specialty, and type of work. Here we investigated what are the tendencies, or areas most affected. Through an adaptation of the original COVID-stress scale, we developed a remote, fast test designed for healthcare professionals of the Northeastern part of Mexico, an important part of the country with economic and cultural ties to the US. Our results showed 4 key correlations as highly dependent: Work area &ndash; Xenophobia (p &amp;lt; 0.045), Work with COVID patients - Traumatic stress (p &amp;lt; 0.001) and Total number of COVID patients per day &ndash; Traumatic stress (p &amp;lt; 0.027), and Total number of COVID patients - Compulsive checking and reassurance. Overall concluding that normal levels of stress have increased (mild &ndash; moderate). Additionally, we further determine that the fear of being an asymptomatic patient (potential to spread without knowing) continues being a concern.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003335492110587
Author(s):  
Andrew D. Redd ◽  
Lauren S. Peetluk ◽  
Brooke A. Jarrett ◽  
Colleen Hanrahan ◽  
Sheree Schwartz ◽  
...  

The public health crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a deluge of scientific research aimed at informing the public health and medical response to the pandemic. However, early in the pandemic, those working in frontline public health and clinical care had insufficient time to parse the rapidly evolving evidence and use it for decision-making. Academics in public health and medicine were well-placed to translate the evidence for use by frontline clinicians and public health practitioners. The Novel Coronavirus Research Compendium (NCRC), a group of >60 faculty and trainees across the United States, formed in March 2020 with the goal to quickly triage and review the large volume of preprints and peer-reviewed publications on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 and summarize the most important, novel evidence to inform pandemic response. From April 6 through December 31, 2020, NCRC teams screened 54 192 peer-reviewed articles and preprints, of which 527 were selected for review and uploaded to the NCRC website for public consumption. Most articles were peer-reviewed publications (n = 395, 75.0%), published in 102 journals; 25.1% (n = 132) of articles reviewed were preprints. The NCRC is a successful model of how academics translate scientific knowledge for practitioners and help build capacity for this work among students. This approach could be used for health problems beyond COVID-19, but the effort is resource intensive and may not be sustainable in the long term.


Author(s):  
Catherine A. LaBrenz ◽  
Philip Baiden ◽  
Erin Findley ◽  
Patrick S. Tennant ◽  
Sreyashi Chakravarty

Since March 2020, families across the United States have faced challenges due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and its subsequent restrictions. Although some experts have voiced concern over the impact of COVID-19 on family well-being, few studies have been conducted thus far. This study utilized n = 250 responses from an online survey that was administered between May and June 2020 to gauge family stress and resilience among mothers of children ages 0 to 5 during the pandemic. Adverse childhood experiences were negatively associated with parental resilience among this sample. Furthermore, frequency of child care was positively linked to protective factors and resilience. Implications for practice, policy, and research are discussed, with a particular focus on the role of child care and school openings during the pandemic.


Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 268
Author(s):  
Christy L. Hoffman

In Spring of 2020, the novel coronavirus (SAR-CoV-2) prompted an unprecedented number of individuals across the United States to begin working from home. Prior research has identified both positive and negative impacts of teleworking on employee well-being, and this study built on that research to explore perceptions regarding how companion animals factor into the teleworking experience. Individuals who had experience working from home and from their employer’s office completed an online survey about those experiences. Participants reported spending more quality time with their companion animals and family members when they worked from home. Furthermore, when working from home, individuals with dogs were more likely than those without dogs to report they socialized with other people, got a healthy amount of physical activity, and took at least one 15-min walk during the workday. Some participants, particularly those in households containing both dogs and cats, indicated that their pets created distractions during the workday. Future studies can build on this research by investigating whether the findings persist once the novel coronavirus is no longer a threat, and by paying close attention to the characteristics of pets, owners, and household dynamics that may influence the effects of pet ownership on the teleworking experience.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 462-468
Author(s):  
Latika kothari ◽  
Sanskruti Wadatkar ◽  
Roshni Taori ◽  
Pavan Bajaj ◽  
Diksha Agrawal

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a communicable infection caused by the novel coronavirus resulting in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV). It was recognized to be a health crisis for the general population of international concern on 30th January 2020 and conceded as a pandemic on 11th March 2020. India is taking various measures to fight this invisible enemy by adopting different strategies and policies. To stop the COVID-19 from spreading, the Home Affairs Ministry and the health ministry, of India, has issued the nCoV 19 guidelines on travel. Screening for COVID-19 by asking questions about any symptoms, recent travel history, and exposure. India has been trying to get testing kits available. The government of India has enforced various laws like the social distancing, Janata curfew, strict lockdowns, screening door to door to control the spread of novel coronavirus. In this pandemic, innovative medical treatments are being explored, and a proper vaccine is being hunted to deal with the situation. Infection control measures are necessary to prevent the virus from further spreading and to help control the current situation. Thus, this review illustrates and explains the criteria provided by the government of India to the awareness of the public to prevent the spread of COVID-19.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-115
Author(s):  
Kate Fischer ◽  
Malika Rakhmonova ◽  
Mike Tran

Abstract Since the spring of 2020 SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus, has upended lives and caused a rethinking of nearly all social behaviors in the United States. This paper examines the ways in which the pandemic, shutdown, and gradual move towards “normal” have laid bare and obfuscated societal pressures regarding running out of time as it pertains to the residential university experience. Promised by movies, television, and older siblings and friends as a limited-time offer, the “typical” college experience is baked into the U.S. imaginary, reinforcing a host of notions of who “belongs” on campus along lines of race, class, and age. Fed a vision of what their whole lives “should be”, students who enter a residential four-year college are already imbued with a nostalgia for what is yet to come, hailed, in Althusser’s (2006[1977]) sense, as university subjects even before their first class. The upheaval of that subjecthood during the pandemic has raised important questions about the purpose of the college experience as well as how to belong to a place that is no longer there.


Open Medicine ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 749-753
Author(s):  
Wenyuan Li ◽  
Beibei Huang ◽  
Qiang Shen ◽  
Shouwei Jiang ◽  
Kun Jin ◽  
...  

Abstract In recent months, the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has become a major public health crisis with takeover more than 1 million lives worldwide. The long-lasting existence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has not yet been reported. Herein, we report a case of SARS-CoV-2 infection with intermittent viral polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-positive for >4 months after clinical rehabilitation. A 35-year-old male was diagnosed with COVID-19 pneumonia with fever but without other specific symptoms. The treatment with lopinavir-ritonavir, oxygen inhalation, and other symptomatic supportive treatment facilitated recovery, and the patient was discharged. However, his viral PCR test was continually positive in oropharyngeal swabs for >4 months after that. At the end of June 2020, he was still under quarantine and observation. The contribution of current antivirus therapy might be limited. The prognosis of COVID-19 patients might be irrelevant to the virus status. Thus, further investigation to evaluate the contagiousness of convalescent patients and the mechanism underlying the persistent existence of SARS-CoV-2 after recovery is essential. A new strategy of disease control, especially extending the follow-up period for recovered COVID-19 patients, is necessary to adapt to the current situation of pandemic.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hechem Ajmi ◽  
Nadia Arfaoui ◽  
Karima Saci

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the volatility transmission across stocks, gold and crude oil markets before and during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. Design/methodology/approach A multivariate vector autoregression (VAR)-Baba, Engle, Kraft and Kroner generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model (BEKK-GARCH) is used to assess volatility transmission across the examined markets. The sample is divided as follows. The first period ranging from 02/01/2019 to 10/03/2020 defines the pre-COVID-19 crisis. The second period is from 11/03/2020 to 05/10/2020, representing the COVID-19 crisis period. Then, a robustness test is used using exponential GARCH models after including an exogenous variable capturing the growth of COVID-19 confirmed death cases worldwide with the aim to test the accuracy of the VAR-BEKK-GARCH estimated results. Findings Results indicate that the interconnectedness among the examined market has been intensified during the COVID-19 crisis, proving the lack of hedging opportunities. It is also found that stocks and Gold markets lead the crude oil market especially during the COVID-19 crisis, which explains the freefall of the crude oil price during the health crisis. Similarly, results show that Gold is most likely to act as a diversifier rather than a hedging tool during the current health crisis. Originality/value Although the recent studies in the field focused on analyzing the relationships between different markets during the first quarter of 2020, this study considers a larger data set with the aim to assess the volatility transmission across the examined international markets Amid the COVID-19 crisis, while it shows the most significant impact on various financial markets compared to other diseases.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 1496
Author(s):  
Eun-Hee Lee ◽  
Yunsoo Chang ◽  
Seung-Woo Lee

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a general health crisis and has irreversible impacts on human societies. Globally, all people are at risk of being exposed to the novel coronavirus through transmission of airborne bioaerosols. Public health actions, such as wearing a mask, are highly recommended to reduce the transmission of infectious diseases. The appropriate use of masks is necessary for effectively preventing the transmission of airborne bioaerosols. The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests washing fabric masks or throwing away disposable masks after they are used. However, people often use masks more than once without washing or disposing them. The prolonged use of a single mask might—as a result of the user habitually touching the mask—promote the spread of pathogens from airborne bioaerosols that have accumulated on the mask. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate how long the living components of bioaerosols can be viable on the masks. Here, we evaluated the viability of airborne Bacillus subtilis (B. subtilis) in bioaerosols filtered on woven and anti-droplet (non-woven) face masks. As a simulation of being simultaneously exposed to sand dust and bioaerosols, the viability rates of bioaerosols that had accumulated on masks were also tested against fine dust and airborne droplets containing bacteria. The bioaerosols survived on the masks immediately after the masks were used to filter the bioaerosols, and the bacteria significantly proliferated after one day of storage. Thereafter, the number of viable cells in the filtered bioaerosols gradually decreased over time, and the viability of B. subtilis in bioaerosols on the masks varied, depending on the mask material used (woven or non-woven). Despite the reduction in viability, bioaerosols containing living components were still found in both woven and anti-droplet masks even after six days of storage and it took nine days not to have found them on masks. The number of viable cells in bioaerosols on masks significantly decreased upon exposure of the masks to fine dust. The results of this study should provide useful information on how to appropriately use masks to increase their duration of effectiveness against bioaerosols.


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