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Therapeutic and Nutritional Potential of Spirulina in Combating COVID-19 Infection
Get PDFHuman history has witnessed various pandemics throughout, and these cause disastrous effects on human health and country’s economy. Once again, after SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), the world is observing a very tough time fighting an invisible enemy, the novel COVID-19 coronavirus. Initially observed in the Wuhan province of China, now, it has spread across 210 countries. Number of corona affected confirmed cases have reached > 3 million globally and death toll has reached to 258,481 as on 6th May,2020. Researchers are working round the clock, forming collaborative efforts and sharing their data to come up with a cure for this disease. The new coronavirus genome was quickly sequenced and clinical and epidemiological data are continuously being collected and analyzed. This data is crucial for forming better public health policies and developing antiviral drugs and vaccines. As there is no vaccine available in market against COVID-19, personal health, immunity, social distancing and basic protection measures are extremely important. It is critical to avoid the virus infection and to strengthen the immune system as the coronavirus can be fatal for those with weak immunity. This article reviews the nutritional and therapeutic potential of Spirulina, which is considered as superfood and a natural supplement to strengthen the immune system. Spirulina is highly nutritious and has hypolipidemic, hypoglycemic and antihypertensive properties. Spirulina contains several bioactive compounds, such as phenols, phycobiliproteins and sulphated polysaccharides and many more with proven antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and immunostimulant/ immunomodulatory effects
An Explication of Pandemic Public Health Emergency, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): A Review
Get PDFIn December 2019 a series of acute atypical respiratory disease occurred in Wuhan, China. The first clusters of cases were identified in association with the South China Seafood Market. In subsequent investigations it was found to be a novel coronavirus. It is suggested to have zoonotic origin. On December 31st 2019, China notified the outbreak to the World Health Organization. During the New Year, the massive migration of Chinese fuelled the epidemic. Cases in other provinces of China and other countries (South Korea, Thailand and Japan in quick succession) were reported in people who were returning from Wuhan. On 11 February, on the basis of existing rules on taxonomy the virus was names as SARS-CoV-2. SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the family of coronaviruses. It is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA (+ssRNA) virus. It has a single linear RNA segment. On the same day WHO announced the new name for the disease i.e. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say it is primarily spread directly due to close contact between people through small droplets produced during coughing, sneezing or talking within a range of about 1-3 meters. It may even transmit through indirect contact via fomites. While there are concerns it may spread by feces, this risk is believed to be low. Soon, the number of cases started increasing exponentially and on March 12, 2020 WHO announced COVID-19 a pandemic. COVID-19 has been impacting a large number of people worldwide, being reported in approximately 200 countries and territories. It was identified that Angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) act as a functional receptor for SARS-CoV-2. The pathophysiology of COVID-19 follows sex differences, age differences, race differences in as well as underlying disease conditions i.e. comorbidities aggravated the severity of this disease. The most common symptoms being reported are fever, dry cough or chest tightness, and dyspnoea. It is now widely recognized that respiratory symptoms of COVID-19 are extremely heterogeneous, ranging from minimal symptoms to significant hypoxia with ARDS. Diagnosis is done with the help of history, clinical signs and serological testing. Real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) is considered the standard method of testing. Several have been tested in clinical trials but none of them have been proven to be a definite therapy yet. The evolution of the current outbreak has seen extraordinary measures put in place to control transmission, including the ‘shut-down’ and ‘quarantine’. Researchers are trying to develop a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 but at present, no vaccine is available. One should strictly follow all the preventive measures as directed by WHO and CDC and along with this, one should boost up its natural immunity to lessen the chances of getting infection
The Role of Stigmatization and Infodemics in India During COVID-19 Crisis
Get PDFCOVID-19, a virulent disease with an unknown source of origin that has its roots in Wuhan, CHINA unfold speedily to quite two hundred countries within the world making panic and creating stigmatization within the general public. In the second-most inhabited country like the Republic of India, the concern and stigmatization are terribly high that makes it tough to contain and manage the transmission of the disease. This article very well describes the spread of misinformation and the ways to combat it and it also throws light into few incidents in Bharat that resulted from stigmatization and concern
Knowledge and Adherence to Social Distancing Guidelines in Nigeria
Get PDFSocial distancing refers to actions or steps taken by an individual or groups of individuals with the main purpose of reducing physical and social interaction to curb the spread of infectious disease. This study sought to determine Nigerians knowledge of social distancing and why most people do not adhere to the guidelines amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Data was generated from respondents who filled an online survey form distributed on all social media platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. All respondents living in Nigeria were included in the study while those living outside at the time of the survey were excluded. Results from the survey revealed that most Nigerians are knowledgeable about social distancing guidelines but observed low or non-adherence to the rules. This non-compliance was partly attributed to poor knowledge of the guidelines due to inadequate information from the government, and majorly due to lack of basic amenities, poverty and hunger. Further research and policies on the best avenue of reaching this group of Nigerians with a substantial economic package, an improvement on information dissemination on social distancing guidelines will make a great difference. Finally, the authorities and policymakers can develop programmes to prepare citizen for the eventuality of a future pandemic
Validation Optimisation using Machine Learning Techniques
Get PDFIntegration and validation is the most vital part before releasing products to customers in Intel. The validation team qualifies the release based on multiple stages of validation on hardware and software stack. Bugs are raised after execution of test cases on each platform and so similar bugs arise which are filed by the user. There is a immediate concern on this and hence, many issues are closed as duplicates.The main objective is to find these similar bugs for each bug filed and thereby,debug efforts can be reused.Similar bugs are found by term based search using ElasticSearch ,a text search engine and neural network based search where context is considered.Using elasticsearch,scoring algorithms based on driver versions and platform hierarchy are applied to rank the similar bugs. LSTM neural networks are also incorporated to predict duplicate bugs by considering context of the sentence and thereby, increasing accuracy
COVID-19 – Role of Government Intervention
Get PDFThe ravage of COVID-19 has remained unprecedented in the history of human civilization. The pandemic has bewildered the governments across the nations amidst the twin edge blade of economic stringency or unabated growth of the disease. The study has attempted to find the efficacy of GovernmentIntervention (GI) incombating the forces of the pandemic. Ithas pooled historical data of victims of 13 most affected countries after smoothening the data with ARIMA(p,q,r) technique to formulate an exponential model for its spread. The model considers six explanatory variables including GI to understand the dynamics of the disease. The historical data of the countries pooled across continents to have six groups. While variance inflation factorused for detecting multicollinearity, multivariate regression model adopted to determine the association between the explanatory variables and COVID-19 growth. The study pivoted on finding the role of GI, looking at its association with COVID-19 spread. Comparability analysis of the coefficient of GI conducted across the models to find the intensity across the continents. The study finds GI an effective instrument in the continents of America (North), America (South) and Asia, conducive for buying time for herd immunity and invention of vaccine and/or medicine
Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on the social media usage among different age groups in Hyderabad, India: A questionnaire-based community Study
Get PDFThe emergence and rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 across the globe has caused a state of panic and chaos. Self-quarantine and lockdowns have been implemented in many countries leaving the public homebound. On one hand social media being a prime source of information, it could have a substantial contribution in causing unnecessary apprehension and fear in the public due to the speculations and misinformation, while on the other hand the unexpected event of lockdown resulted in a spurt of social media usage. The adverse effect of social media on psychological well-being, academic performance, socializing skills, interpersonal relationship and parenting were recorded by a number of studies in the past. It is imperative to be mindful of the content being watched and the time spent on social media. The study aims to understand the variation in social media usage in different age groups in the people of Hyderabad, India due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey was conducted through a questionnaire that was created using Google forms. The study shows that the social media usage has significantly increased in the people of Hyderabad, India during the COVID-19 lockdown. The data shows a correlation between the age groups and variation in social media usage. The increased social media usage is more in the younger age groups below 25 years. The study proves no impact of social media usage on productivity during the quarantin
Comparative Genomics of Receptor Binding Domains of Spike Protein and Receptor Interaction in COVID-19 Patient
Get PDFThe current outbreak of viral pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, China, was caused by a novel coronavirus designated 2019-nCoV, as determined by sequencing the viral RNA genome. Among its genome, S protein is surface-exposed and mediates entry into host cells. Currently it is one of the main targets for designing antibodies (Abs), therapeutic and vaccine. Earlier studies stated that ACE2 (angiotensin converting enzyme 2) could facilitate S protein mediated entry for this newly emerged coronavirus. Here we have taken an attempt to compare the genetic structure of receptor binding domain within S protein of highly pathogenic human coronaviruses (special reference to 2019-nCoV) with Bat coronavirus RaTG13. We have compared 2019-nCov receptor binding domain (RBD) with other pathogenic human coronaviruses (MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV) and Bat coronavirus RaTG13. We found that it is closest to RaTG13 RBD than MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV. Our study shows that 2019-nCov RBD also has significant identity with pangolin S protein RBD. We have also predicted the amino acid residues within RDB those may play important role for ACE2 receptor interaction. We identified unique signature for furin cleavage in 2019-nCov S protein but not in of other pathogenic human coronaviruses (tested here), bat coronavirus RaTG13 or pangolin
Immunoinformatics Patterns and Characteristic of Epitope-Based Peptide Vaccine candidates against COVID-19
Get PDFVaccination as defined by the WHO is “the administration of agent-specific, but safe, antigenic components that in vaccinated individuals can induce protective immunity against the corresponding infectious agent”. Regardless of their debated history, the standard vaccine approaches have been unsuccessful in providing vaccines for numerous infectious organisms. In the recent three decades, an enormous amount of immunological data was retrieved from clinical studies due to the advancement in human genome sequencing. These data are being deposited in databases and numerous scientific literature. The development of several bioinformatics tools to analyze this rapidly increasing immunological databank has given rise to the field of immunoinformatics. This approach allows the selection of immunogenic residues from the pathogen genomes. The ideal residues could be industrialized as vaccine candidates to provide protective immune responses in the hosts. This methodology will significantly decrease the time and cost needed for the vaccine development. This review focus on published articles that proposed as vaccine candidates through immunoinformatics analysis. The reviewed Published immunoinformatics studies provided vaccine peptide candidates against SARS-COV-2, which is based on functional and non functional immunogenic proteins like open reading frame , spike protein, envelope protein and membranous protein .All of which are designed by unique strategies like reverse vaccinology . Spike protein was the most common used target with different suggeststed B and T cell peptides due to the difference in methodology between the findings
Challenges to Online Education in Pakistan During COVID-19 & the Way Forward
Get PDFCOVID-19 has been a nightmare for all strata of the world's social, economic and political structures. The status quo of the current system had been enormously questioned. Education is one of the most affected areas. It resulted in more than half a year's closure of the world's education system. Though advanced countries have changed their way of education from physical to online. Third-world countries like Pakistan were the most affected as they were not equipped for online education at any stage during the COVID-19 pandemic. The acquisition of this new technology from students to teachers has faced several challenges. This study highlighted obstacles to online education in Pakistan during the COVID-19 span and offered systematic solutions on how to cope with and resolve these changes in the future in the event of a new crisis