Requirements for the containment of COVID-19 disease outbreaks through periodic testing, isolation, and quarantine

We employ individual-based Monte Carlo computer simulations of a stochastic SEIR model variant on a two-dimensional Newman-Watts small-world network to investigate the control of epidemic outbreaks through periodic testing and isolation of infectious individuals, and subsequent quarantine of their immediate contacts. Using disease parameters informed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we investigate the effects of various crucial mitigation features on the epidemic spreading: fraction of the infectious population that is identifiable through the tests; testing frequency; time delay between testing and isolation of positively tested individuals; and the further time delay until quarantining their contacts as well as the quarantine duration. We thus determine the required ranges for these intervention parameters to yield effective control of the disease through both considerable delaying the epidemic peak and massively reducing the total number of sustained infections.

Some aspects of police use of extreme coercive measure – firearms

Formation and development of the modern law enforcement system of Ukraine presupposes carrying out of the integral and consistent complex of the actions directed on construction of the effective mechanism of protection of the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of citizens. Like any legal act, the Law of Ukraine “On the National Police” requires some time to fully implement its provisions in practice, to make additional changes to existing regulations. This Law introduced into scientific circulation the concept of «police measures», which are divided into preventive and coercive, defined the legal basis and restrictions on their use. Extreme among coercive measures to stop illegal actions is the use of firearms. It is the misuse of firearms by workers that leads to high-profile high-profile events in a society that negatively affects the trust of ordinary citizens in the police. In order to exercise the powers granted by law, a police officer must not only have an appropriate level of professional training, high responsibility, but also must undergo special training and subsequently undergo annual periodic testing for the ability to take action related to the application of these measures. In this regard, there is a need to conduct a scientific analysis, during which to reveal the grounds and procedure for the application of extreme coercive measures by the National Police, to identify gaps in legislation on these issues, the powers of the police during the application of this measure and responsibility for exceeding these powers.

Forecasting COVID-19 Vaccination Trends in Indonesia using Machine Learning

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic requires much research to deal with this problem. Medical treatment has resulted in vaccine findings that work as an immune system to block the COVID-19 reaction process. However, many of these developments are still undergoing improvement and periodic testing to found better results for humans. Therefore, forecasting trends of the COVID-19 vaccine in Indonesia is carried out to regularly predict vaccines' effectiveness by adjusting conditions. This forecasting uses the time-series forecasting method by prioritizing a machine learning process in predicting probably future forecasts. Based on the highest vaccine used, we propose ARIMA and Facebook Prophet as machine learning models to predict vaccine trends in each country. The Prophet model results achieved an RMSE score of 0.176, which these results contained vaccines distributed in Indonesia. Besides that, the ARIMA model achieved an RMSE score of 0.453 using the same dataset. The results obtained from this method can be considered a policy for the government to deal with the effective use of vaccines according to future needs. As a further development, this research can be reviewed by paying attention to external aspects such as social and economic factors affecting the COVID-19 vaccination. The results obtained are more comprehensive and representative than this research based on conditions that provide policies for handling COVID-19.

Transparent Memory Tests Based on the Double Address Sequences

An important achievement in the functional diagnostics of memory devices is the development and application of so-called transparent testing methods. This is especially important for modern computer systems, such as embedded systems, systems and networks on chips, on-board computer applications, network servers, and automated control systems that require periodic testing of their components. This article analyzes the effectiveness of existing transparent tests based on the use of the properties of data stored in the memory, such as changing data and their symmetry. As a new approach for constructing transparent tests, we propose to use modified address sequences with duplicate addresses to reduce the time complexity of tests and increase their diagnostic abilities.

THE PLACE OF SOCIAL ENGINEERING IN THE PROBLEM OF DATA LEAKS AND ORGANIZATIONAL ASPECTS OF CORPORATE ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION AGAINST FISHING E-MAIL ATTACKS

As the number and percentage of phishing attacks on company employees and regular users have tended to increase rapidly over the last two years, it is necessary to cover the issue of protection against this type of social engineering attacks. Throughout the pandemic, intruders are finding more and more new ways to cheat, so even experienced Internet users can become a victim to their scams. Due to the fact that e-mail is used in almost all companies, most fishing attacks use e-mail to send malicious messages. The article discusses the main methods used by attackers to conduct phishing attacks using e-mail, signs that the user has become a victim to social engineers, and provides recommendations how to increase the resilience of the corporate environment to such attacks using organizational methods. Because the user is the target of phishing attacks, and the tools built into the browser and email clients in most cases do not provide reliable protection against phishing, it is the user who poses the greatest danger to the company, because he, having become a victim of a fishing attack, can cause significant damage to the company due to his lack of competence and experience. That is why it is necessary to conduct training and periodic testing of personnel to provide resistance to targeted phishing attacks. Company employees should be familiar with the signs of phishing, examples of such attacks, the principles of working with corporate data and their responsibility. The company's management must create and communicate to the staff regulations and instructions that describe storage, processing, dissemination and transfer processes of information to third parties. Employees should also report suspicious emails, messages, calls, or people who have tried to find out valuable information to the company's security service. Raising general awareness through hands-on training will reduce the number of information security incidents caused by phishing attacks.

Requirements for the containment of COVID-19 disease outbreaks through periodic testing, isolation, and quarantine

We employ individual-based Monte Carlo computer simulations of a stochastic SEIR model variant on a two-dimensional Newman–Watts small-world network to investigate the control of epidemic outbreaks through periodic testing and isolation of infectious individuals, and subsequent quarantine of their immediate contacts. Using disease parameters informed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we investigate the effects of various crucial mitigation features on the epidemic spreading: fraction of the infectious population that is identifiable through the tests; testing frequency; time delay between testing and isolation of positively tested individuals; and the further time delay until quarantining their contacts as well as the quarantine duration. We thus determine the required ranges for these intervention parameters to yield effective control of the disease through both considerable delaying the epidemic peak and massively reducing the total number of sustained infections.

Modelling the transmission of infectious diseases inside hospital bays: implications for Covid-19

Healthcare associated transmission of viral infections is a major problem that has significant economic costs and can lead to loss of life. Infections with the highly contagious SARS-CoV-2 virus have been shown to have a high prevalence in hospitals around the world. The spread of this virus might be impacted by the density of patients inside hospital bays. To investigate this aspect, in this study we consider a mathematical modelling and computational approach to describe the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among hospitalised patients. We focus on 4-bed bays and 6-bed bays, which are commonly used to accommodate various non-Covid-19 patients in many hospitals across UK. We use this mathematical model to investigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infections among patients in non-Covid bays, in the context of various scenarios: changes in the number of contacts with infected patients and staff, having symptomatic vs. asymptomatic patients, removing infected individuals from these hospital bays once they are known to be infected, and the role of periodic testing of hospitalised patients. Our results show that 4-bed bays reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2 compared to 6-bed bays. Moreover, we show that the position of a new (not infected) patient in specific beds in a 6-bed bay might also slow the spread of the disease. Finally, we propose that regular SARS-CoV-2 testing of hospitalised patients would allow appropriate placement of infected patients in specific (Covid-only) hospital bays.

The impact of testing and infection prevention and control strategies on within-hospital transmission dynamics of COVID-19 in English hospitals

Nosocomial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is a key concern and evaluating the effect of testing and infection prevention control strategies is essential for guiding policy in this area. Using a within-hospital SEIR transition model of SARS-CoV-2 in a typical UK hospital, we predict that approximately 20% of infections in inpatients, and 89% of infections in HCWs were due to nosocomial transmission. Placing suspected COVID-19 patients in single rooms or bays has the potential to reduce hospital-acquired infections in patients by up to 80%. Periodic testing of HCWs has a smaller effect on the patient-burden of COVID-19 but would considerably reduce infection in HCWs by as much as 64% and result in only a small proportion of staff absences (approximately 1% per day). This is considerably fewer than currently observed due to suspected COVID-19 and self-isolation.