Premature mortality attributable to COVID-19: potential years of life lost in 17 countries around the world, January–August 2020

Background Understanding the impact of the burden of COVID-19 is key to successfully navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of a larger investigation on COVID-19 mortality impact, this study aims to estimate the Potential Years of Life Lost (PYLL) in 17 countries and territories across the world (Australia, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cyprus, France, Georgia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Peru, Norway, England & Wales, Scotland, Slovenia, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United States [USA]). Methods Age- and sex-specific COVID-19 death numbers from primary national sources were collected by an international research consortium. The study period was established based on the availability of data from the inception of the pandemic to the end of August 2020. The PYLL for each country were computed using 80 years as the maximum life expectancy. Results As of August 2020, 442,677 (range: 18–185,083) deaths attributed to COVID-19 were recorded in 17 countries which translated to 4,210,654 (range: 112–1,554,225) PYLL. The average PYLL per death was 8.7 years, with substantial variation ranging from 2.7 years in Australia to 19.3 PYLL in Ukraine. North and South American countries as well as England & Wales, Scotland and Sweden experienced the highest PYLL per 100,000 population; whereas Australia, Slovenia and Georgia experienced the lowest. Overall, males experienced higher PYLL rate and higher PYLL per death than females. In most countries, most of the PYLL were observed for people aged over 60 or 65 years, irrespective of sex. Yet, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Israel, Peru, Scotland, Ukraine, and the USA concentrated most PYLL in younger age groups. Conclusions Our results highlight the role of PYLL as a tool to understand the impact of COVID-19 on demographic groups within and across countries, guiding preventive measures to protect these groups under the ongoing pandemic. Continuous monitoring of PYLL is therefore needed to better understand the burden of COVID-19 in terms of premature mortality.

Evaluasi Manfaat Penerapan Telemedicine di Negara Kepulauan: Systematic Literature Review

Telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another through electronic communication to improve the clinical health status of patients. Telemedicine can be one of the solution options to overcome the limitations of health workers. This study aims to describe the benefits of implementing Telemedicine in archipelagic countries. This type of research is a Systematic Literature Review with literature sourced from Elsevier, Garuda, IEEE Xplore, NCBI, PubMed, ProQuest, ResearchGate, Science Direct, and Springer. Literature selection using PRISMA, obtained 257 scientific articles consisting of duplicate data 15, did not enter the topic 73, did not meet the inclusion & exclusion criteria 154, did not meet the minimum standard of SRQR 4 and only 10 were used. The results of the analysis obtained are 5 of the 19 archipelagic countries that are related, namely Cape Verde, the Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Sao Tome & Principe. Furthermore, improving access to care in the form of eliminating trips that are burdensome for patients, making it easier for patients to access health services through patient devices. The nearest Telemedicine satellite device. Then the timeliness in treatment is to facilitate the diagnosis of patients and patient health care. Then the increase in patient satisfaction and involvement of patient satisfaction and patient involvement. Meanwhile, the increase in demand and cost-effectiveness is obtained in the form of efficient services, increasing patient expectations. The benefits of implementing Telemedicine are mostly in Cape Verde and the least in Papua New Guinea. Keywords: telemedicine, telemedicine application, archipelago country AbstrakTelemedicine sebagai penggunaan informasi medis yang dipertukarkan dari satu situs ke situs lain melalui komunikasi elektronik untuk meningkatkan status kesehatan klinis pasien. Telemedicine bisa menjadi salah satu opsi solusi mengatasi keterbatasan tenaga kesehatan. Penelitian ini bertujuan mendeskripsikan manfaat penerapan Telemedicine di negara kepulauan. Jenis penelitian Sytematic Literature Review dengan literatur bersumber dari Elsevier, Garuda, IEEE Xplore, NCBI, PubMed, ProQuest, ResearchGate, Science Direct, dan Springer. Seleksi literatur menggunakan PRISMA, diperoleh 257 artikel ilmiah terdiri dari duplikasi data 15, tidak masuk topik 73, tidak masuk kriteria inklusi & eksklusi 154, tidak masuk standar minimal SRQR 4 dan hanya 10 yang digunakan. Hasil analisis yang diperoleh ada 5 dari 19 negara kepulauan yang terkait yakni Cape Verde, Filipina, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, dan Sao Tome & Principe.Selanjutnya pada peningkatan akses perawatan berupa menghilangkan perjalanan yang memberatkan pasien, memudahkan pasien mengakses layanan kesehatan melalui perangkat pasien/perangkat satelit Telemedicine terdekat. Lalu ketepatan waktu dalam perawatan yakni memudahkan penegakan diagnosis pasien dan perawatan kesehatan pasien. Kemudian peningkatan kepuasan dan keterlibatan pasien adanya kepuasan pasien dan keterlibatan pasien. Sedangkan pada peningkatan permintaan dan hemat biaya diperoleh berupa layanan yang efisien, meningkatnya ekspektasi pasien. Adapun manfaat penerapan Telemedicine paling banyak di negara Cape Verde dan paling sedikit di Papua New Guinea.Kata Kunci: telemedicine, penerapan telemedicine, negara kepulauan

The Main Patterns in the Trend Change of Stomach Cancer Incidence amongst Selected African Countries

Aim. The current study aimed to investigate the trend changes of stomach cancer incidence amongst African countries and identify the main patterns. Methods. The annual reports of stomach cancer incidence rate (per 100,000 people) for males and females in 53 African countries from 1990 to 2016 were maintained from the World Health Organization archive. The growth mixture model was used for fitting the models in Mplus 7.4. The estimated linear trend in each pattern was characterized by intercept (the rate at 1990) and slope (the observed biennial trend changes), and finally, each country was grouped into a cluster with the most similar pattern. Results. Three main patterns for males and two main patterns for females were determined. For males, the first cluster, containing Cape Verde, Central African Republic, and Mauritius, showed a sharp fall, while countries in the second pattern including Algeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Gambia, Libya, Malawi, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, and Tunisia were categorized in a pattern with a slight decrease, and other 43 countries were in the third pattern with a moderate falling trend. For females, 19 countries including Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Congo Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Mauritius, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe were categorized in the moderate-to-high falling pattern, but the other 34 countries had a gentle downward pattern. Conclusion. Although most of the observed trends of stomach cancer were falling, only a few countries had experienced a favorable decreasing trend (three countries in male incidence and nineteen countries in female incidence). Therefore, taking effective actions to accelerate the observed falling trends seems necessary.

Seasonal flux patterns and carbon transport from low-oxygen eddies at the Cape Verde Ocean Observatory: lessons learned from a time series sediment trap study (2009–2016)

Mesoscale eddies are abundant in the eastern tropical North Atlantic and act as oases for phytoplankton growth due to local enrichment of nutrients in otherwise oligotrophic waters. It is not clear whether these eddies can efficiently transfer organic carbon and other flux components to depth and if they are important for the marine carbon budget. Due to their transient and regionally restricted nature, measurements of eddies' contribution to bathypelagic particle flux are difficult to obtain. Rare observations of export flux associated with low-oxygen eddies have suggested efficient export from the surface to the deep ocean, indicating that organic carbon flux attenuation might be low. Here we report on particle flux dynamics north of the Cabo Verde islands at the oligotrophic Cape Verde Ocean Observatory (CVOO; approx. 17∘35′ N, 24∘15′ W). The CVOO site is located in the preferred pathways of highly productive eddies that ultimately originate from the Mauritanian upwelling region. Between 2009 and 2016, we collected biogenic and lithogenic particle fluxes with sediment traps moored at ca. 1 and 3 km water depths at the CVOO site. From concurrent hydrography and oxygen observations, we confirm earlier findings that highly productive eddies are characterized by colder and less saline waters and a low-oxygen signal as well. Overall, we observed quite consistent seasonal flux patterns during the passage of highly productive eddies in the winters of 2010, 2012 and 2016. We found flux increases at 3 km depth during October–November when the eddies approached CVOO and distinct flux peaks during February–March, clearly exceeding low oligotrophic background fluxes during winter 2011 and showing an enhanced particle flux seasonality. During spring, we observed a stepwise flux decrease leading to summer flux minima. The flux pattern of biogenic silicate (BSi) showed a stronger seasonality compared to organic carbon. Additionally, the deep fluxes of total mass showed an unusually higher seasonality compared to the 1 km traps. We assume that BSi and organic carbon/lithogenic material had different sources within the eddies. BSi-rich particles may originate at the eddy boundaries where large diatom aggregates are formed due to strong shear and turbulence, resulting in gravitational settling and, additionally, in an active local downward transport. Organic carbon associated with lithogenic material is assumed to originate from the interior of eddies or from mixed sources, both constituting smaller, dust-ballasted particles. Our findings suggest that the regularly passing highly productive eddies at CVOO repeatedly release characteristic flux signals to the bathypelagic zone during winter–spring seasons that are far above the oligotrophic background fluxes and sequester higher organic carbon than during oligotrophic settings. However, the reasons for a lower carbon flux attenuation below eddies remain elusive.

(Post)colonial Chronopolitics and Mapping the Depth of Local Time(s) in Global Literary Studies: an Itinerary to Guinea-Bissau

This article is an attempt at deconstructing the chronopolitics inherent to the (post)colonial way of thinking about the world. As it is argued, what should replace it is a vision of multiple, overlying temporalities and forms of time awareness, reaching deeper than a literary history reduced to the cycle of colonisation – decolonisation – postcolonial becoming, originating from just a single maritime event: the European exploration and conquest of the world. The essay brings forth a choice of interwoven examples illustrating the variability of local time depths, associated with a plurality of origins, narrations, forms of awareness and cultivation of cultural belonging. It shows the lack of coincidence between the dominant and non-dominant perceptions of the past in such places as the archipelagos of São Tomé and Príncipe, Maldives, the Gambia, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. Their ways of living the global time, as well as embodying significant texts (rather than simply preserving them) stretch far beyond the frameworks created by competing colonial empires, such as the Portuguese or the British one.

Is the ocean surface a source of nitrous acid (HONO) in the marine boundary layer?

Nitrous acid, HONO, is a key net photolytic precursor to OH radicals in the atmospheric boundary layer. As OH is the dominant atmospheric oxidant, driving the removal of many primary pollutants and the formation of secondary species, a quantitative understanding of HONO sources is important to predict atmospheric oxidising capacity. While a number of HONO formation mechanisms have been identified, recent work has ascribed significant importance to the dark, ocean-surface-mediated conversion of NO2 to HONO in the coastal marine boundary layer. In order to evaluate the role of this mechanism, here we analyse measurements of HONO and related species obtained at two contrasting coastal locations – Cabo Verde (Atlantic Ocean, denoted Cape Verde herein), representative of the clean remote tropical marine boundary layer, and Weybourne (United Kingdom), representative of semi-polluted northern European coastal waters. As expected, higher average concentrations of HONO (70 ppt) were observed in marine air for the more anthropogenically influenced Weybourne location compared to Cape Verde (HONO < 5 ppt). At both sites, the approximately constant HONO/NO2 ratio at night pointed to a low importance for the dark, ocean-surface-mediated conversion of NO2 into HONO, whereas the midday maximum in the HONO/NO2 ratios indicated significant contributions from photo-enhanced HONO formation mechanisms (or other sources). We obtained an upper limit to the rate coefficient of dark, ocean-surface HONO-to-NO2 conversion of CHONO = 0.0011 ppb h−1 from the Cape Verde observations; this is a factor of 5 lower than the slowest rate reported previously. These results point to significant geographical variation in the predominant HONO formation mechanisms in marine environments and indicate that caution is required when extrapolating the importance of such mechanisms from individual study locations to assess regional and/or global impacts on oxidising capacity. As a significant fraction of atmospheric processing occurs in the marine boundary layer, particularly in the tropics, better constraint of the possible ocean surface source of HONO is important for a quantitative understanding of chemical processing of primary trace gases in the global atmospheric boundary layer and associated impacts upon air pollution and climate.