Covid-19 Archives - Page 6 of 22 - Dr Amin Azhari

COVID-19-Related Parenting Stress Impacted Eating Habits of Children

The incredible stress parents experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative effect on the eating habits of their children, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Houston College of Education.

When stay-at-home mandates were ordered and school went virtual at the onset of the pandemic, many parents suddenly had to juggle multiple roles such as caregiver, employee and educator. Leslie Frankel, associate professor of human development and family studies, said all those responsibilities took a toll on parents’ mental health, and in turn, what and how much their children were consuming.

Previous research has shown that stress in general is known to have a negative impact on parent-child feeding interactions, but new findings published in the journal Current Psychology reveal COVID-19 only magnified the problem.

Release date: 12 October 2021
Source: University of Houston

When Breezy, Wear Masks Outdoors to Prevent Coronavirus Exposure

As the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus continues to spread across the United States, guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend even the vaccinated wear masks indoors to prevent exposure and transmission. However, it is less clear what people should do when outside.

In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay found when a person coughs outdoors, wind flowing in the same direction can propagate the virus faster over longer distances than in calm conditions.

Other guidelines, such as coughing in an elbow or turning the face away while coughing, should be followed to reduce transmission when socializing outdoors.

Most studies model cough flow using puffs of air or a simple pulsating profile. But a real cough is more complicated, exhibiting turbulent flow with prominent vortical structures swirling like mini whirlpools.

To investigate these vortices, the researchers used a large eddy simulation, a numerical model in computational fluid dynamics that simulates turbulence. They modeled cough jets in breezy conditions and in calm conditions representing a typical indoor environment.

These simulations show even a light breeze of about 5 mph extends effective social distancing by around 20%, from 3-6 feet to 3.6-7.2 feet, depending on cough strength. At 9-11 mph, spreading of the virus increases in distance and duration.

The researchers found the vortices enable bigger droplets to persist in the air longer than has been typically assumed, increasing the time it takes to adequately dilute the viral load in fresh air. As the cough jet evolves and spreads, it interacts with the wind flowing in the same direction, and the bigger infected droplets become trapped in the jet’s vortices instead of falling relatively quickly to the ground under gravity.

Release date: 12 October 2021
Source: American Institute of Physics

Neurologic disorders

Alzheimer’s and Covid-19 share a genetic risk factor

An anti-viral gene that impacts the risk of both Alzheimer’s disease and severe Covid-19 has been identified by a UCL-led research team.

The researchers estimate that one genetic variant of the OAS1 gene increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by about 3-6% in the population as a whole, while related variants on the same gene increase the likelihood of severe Covid-19 outcomes.

The findings, published in Brain, could open the door for new targets for drug development or tracking disease progression in either disease, and suggest that treatments developed could be used for both conditions. The findings also have potential benefits for other related infectious conditions and dementias.

Release date: 08 October 2021
Source: University College London

COVID-19: Coughing without masks, distancing alone is not enough

To prevent the spread of COVID-19 indoors, the two metres physical distancing guideline is not enough without masks, according to researchers from Quebec, Illinois, and Texas. However, wearing a mask indoors can reduce the contamination range of airborne particles by about 67 percent.

“Mask mandates and good ventilation are critically important to curb the spread of more contagious strains of COVID-19, especially during the flu season and winter months as more people socialize indoors,” says Saad Akhtar, a former doctoral student under the supervision of Professor Agus Sasmito at McGill University.

While most public health guidelines recommend physical distancing of two metres for people from different households, the researchers say distancing alone is not enough to prevent the spread of COVID-19. In a study published in Building and Environment, the researchers found that when people are unmasked, more than 70 percent of airborne particles pass the two metres threshold within the 30 seconds. By contrast, less than 1 percent of particles cross the two-metre mark if masks are worn.

Release date: 05 October 2021
Source: McGill University

Those under 40 more likely than older adults to recover COVID-related smell and taste loss

Ongoing survey tracking smell and taste recovery of COVID-19 survivors shows 4 out of every 5 recover senses within 6 months.

RICHMOND, Va. (October 5, 2021) — Sense of smell or taste returns within six months for 4 out of every 5 COVID-19 survivors who have lost these senses, and those under 40 are more likely to recover these senses than older adults, an ongoing Virginia Commonwealth University study found.

Among 798 respondents to the ongoing COVID-19 smell and taste loss survey who had tested positive for COVID-19 and reported a loss of smell or taste, participants who were younger than 40 recovered their sense of smell at a higher rate than those older than 40, according to study results published in the American Journal of Otolaryngology last month. The VCU study requires survey participants to be 18 years or older.

What symptoms COVID-19 survivors experienced and what pre-existing conditions they had also offered insights into their recovery. Those with a history of head injury were less likely to recover their sense of smell. Recovery was also less likely for those who had shortness of breath during COVID-19. However, those with nasal congestion had a higher likelihood of smell recovery.

Release date: 05 October 2021
Source: Virginia Commonwealth University

COVID-19 has caused the biggest decrease in life expectancy since World War II

The research team assembled an unprecedented dataset on mortality from 29 countries, spanning most of Europe, the US and Chile – countries for which official death registrations for 2020 had been published. They found that 27 of the 29 countries saw reductions in life expectancy in 2020, and at a scale which wiped out years of progress on mortality, according to the paper published today in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

Women in 15 countries and men in 10 countries were found to have a lower expectancy at birth in 2020 than in 2015, a year in which life expectancy was already negatively affected by a significant flu season.

According to the study’s co-lead author Dr José Manuel Aburto, ‘For Western European countries such as Spain, England and Wales, Italy, Belgium, among others, the last time such large magnitudes of declines in life expectancy at birth were observed in a single year was during WW-II.

But, he says, the scale of the life expectancy losses was stark across most countries studied, ‘Twenty two countries included in our study experienced larger losses than half a year in 2020. Females in eight countries and males in 11 countries experienced losses larger than a year. To contextualize, it took on average 5.6 years for these countries to achieve a one-year increase in life expectancy recently: progress wiped out over the course of 2020 by COVID-19.’

Release date: 27 September 2021
Source: University of Oxford

Poorly Circulated Room Air Raises Potential Exposure to Contaminants by up to 6 Times

Berkeley Lab experiments quantify the effects of overhead heating on room air mixing with implications for COVID-safe meetings and classrooms. Having good room ventilation to dilute and disperse indoor air pollutants has long been recognized, and with the COVID-19 pandemic its importance has become all the more heightened. But new experiments by indoor air researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) show that certain circumstances will result in poor mixing of room air, meaning airborne contaminants may not be effectively dispersed and removed by building level ventilation.

Using CO2 as a tracer to track small respiratory aerosols that travel with air currents in a room, the Berkeley Lab team found that when overhead vents (or diffusers) are supplying heated air, it created thermally stratified conditions that block the flow of clean air down to the “breathing zone” in the middle height of the room. As a result, even when people are sitting more than 6 feet from each other, some occupants may be exposed to respiratory aerosols from others at a rate 5 to 6 times higher than if the same room were well mixed.

Their study, “Measured influence of overhead HVAC on exposure to airborne contaminants from simulated speaking in a meeting and a classroom,” was published recently in the journal Indoor Air.

Release date: 22 September 2021
Source: DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Public Health

COVID-19 Nasal Vaccine Candidate Effective At Preventing Disease Transmission

IN THROUGH THE NOSE…

Breathe in, breathe out. That’s how easy it is for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to enter your nose. And though remarkable progress has been made in developing intramuscular vaccines against SARS-CoV- 2, such as the readily available Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, nothing yet – like a nasal vaccine – has been approved to provide mucosal immunity in the nose, the first barrier against the virus before it travels down to the lungs. But now, we’re one step closer.

Navin Varadarajan, M.D. Anderson Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Cullen College of Engineering, and his colleagues are reporting in iScience the development of an intranasal subunit vaccine that provides durable local immunity against inhaled pathogens.

Release date: 15 September 2021
Source: University of Houston

COVID-19 antibodies persist, reduce reinfection risk for up to six months

The antibodies’ ability to neutralize COVID-19 did not differ significantly over the six-month period.

A Michigan Medicine study found that most patients with mild COVID-19 infections produce antibodies that persist and protect them from reinfection for up to six months.

Researchers analyzed nearly 130 subjects with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 illness between three and six months after initial infection. Three patients were hospitalized while the rest were treated as outpatients and experienced mild infection, with symptoms including headaches, chills and loss of taste or smell.

The results, published in Microbiology Spectrum.

Release date: 14 September 2021
Source: Michigan Medicine – University of Michigan

Covid-19, Covid-19, Covid-19, Covid-19, Covid-19, Covid-19, Covid-19, Covid-19, Covid-19, Covid-19

Physical distance may not be enough to prevent viral aerosol exposure indoors

Eighteen months ago, stickers began to dot the floors of most shops, spaced about six feet apart, indicating the physical distance required to avoid the COVID-19 virus an infected person may shed when breathing or speaking. But is the distance enough to help avoid infectious aerosols?

Not indoors, say researchers in the Penn State Department of Architectural Engineering. The team found that indoor distances of two meters — about six and a half feet — may not be enough to sufficiently prevent transmission of airborne aerosols. Their results were made available online print edition of Sustainable Cities and Society.

The researchers examined three factors: the amount and rate of air ventilated through a space, the indoor airflow pattern associated with different ventilation strategies and the aerosol emission mode of breathing versus talking. They also compared transport of tracer gas, typically employed to test leaks in air-tight systems, and human respiratory aerosols ranging in size from one to 10 micrometers. Aerosols in this range can carry SARS-CoV-2.

Release date: 16 September 2021
Source: Penn State