Articles: coronavirus.
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Risk factors associated with disease aggravation among 126 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in different places in China: A retrospective observational study.
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has rapidly spread on a global scale. Therefore, it is urgent to identify risk factors that could be associated with severe type of COVID-19 from common type. For this retrospective study, we recruited patients with COVID-19 in Wuhan and Zhoukou. ⋯ Additionally, severe COVID-19 was associated with increased neutrophil counts (P < .001), C-reactive protein (P < .001), procalcitonin (P = .024) and decreased lymphocyte counts (P = .001), hemoglobin (P < .001), total protein (TP) (P < .001), and albumin (ALB) (P < .001). Based on logistic regression analysis, dyspnea (P < .001), TP (P = .042), and ALB (P = .003) were independent risk factors for severe disease. Patients with lower TP, ALB, and dyspnea should be carefully monitored, and early intervention should be implemented to prevent the development of severe disease.
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The 2019 novel coronavirus was detected in self-collected throat washings. The positive testing rate of throat washing was much higher than that of nasopharyngeal swabs. Throat washing is a promising candidate for 2019-nCoV screening and monitoring due to its noninvasiveness and reliability.
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Background Social media is a crucial part of our daily life. Facebook, being the biggest social media platform, plays a significant role in the spread of information influencing the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Health care agencies like the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) use social media as a platform to impart information regarding COVID-19; simultaneously, there is a spread of misinformation on social media, masking the credible sources of information. ⋯ In total, 22.3% included misinformation, 19.6% were unverifiable, and 27.5% included correct information verifiable by the WHO or CDC. Conclusions Misinformation/unverifiable information related to the COVID-19 crisis is spreading at a distressing rate on social media. We quantified the misinformation and tested Facebook's "fact-check policy." We advise strict initiatives to control this infodemic and advise future researches to evaluate the accuracy of content being circulated on other social media platforms.
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Nov 2020
Telemedicine Usage Among Urologists During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-Sectional Study.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, urology was one of the specialties with the lowest rates of telemedicine and videoconferencing use. Common barriers to the implementation of telemedicine included a lack of technological literacy, concerns with reimbursement, and resistance to changes in the workplace. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic declared in March 2020, the delivery of urological services globally has quickly shifted to telemedicine to account for the mass clinical, procedural, and operative cancellations, inadequate personal protective equipment, and shortage of personnel. ⋯ This is the first study to quantify the use, usability, and pervading interest in telemedicine among urologists during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the face of this pandemic, urologists' usage of telemedicine nearly tripled, demonstrating their ability to adopt and adapt telemedicine into their practices, but barriers involving the technology itself are still preventing many from utilizing it despite increasing interest.