INDIA - Grieving universities in shock over loss of professors [University World News, May 2021]

Title:

Grieving universities in shock over loss of professors 

 

Authors:

Karuna Narayan & Yojana Sharma  

 

Published:

University World News, 13 May 2021 

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210513094607390

 

From the article:

Universities in states hit hard by India’s catastrophic latest COVID-19 wave are reporting dozens of deaths of professors and staff, with deaths so high and such a pall of shock and loss hanging over some campuses that faculty members say it is hard to see how university teaching can return to normal.  

 

Delhi University teachers said the university has so far lost 30 professors and teaching staff, and other officials including the university’s joint registrar Sudhir Sharma.

 

Also see

 

INDIA - Delhi universities battle to fight COVID-19 campus surge

By Yojana Sharma

University World News, 5 May 2021

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=2021050508443127

 

Characteristics, outcomes, and mortality amongst 133,589 patients with prevalent autoimmune diseases diagnosed with, and 48,418 hospitalised for COVID-19: a multinational distributed network cohort analysis [medRxiv, 27 November 2020 - preprint]

Title:

Characteristics, outcomes, and mortality amongst 133,589 patients with prevalent autoimmune diseases diagnosed with, and 48,418 hospitalised for COVID-19: a multinational distributed network cohort analysis 

 

Authors:

Eng Hooi Tan, Anthony G. Sena, Albert Prats-Uribe, Seng Chan You, Waheed-Ul-Rahman Ahmed, Kristin Kostka, Christian Reich, Scott L. Duvall, Kristine E. Lynch, Michael E. Matheny, Talita Duarte-Salles, Sergio Fernandez Bertolin, George Hripcsak, Karthik Natarajan, Thomas Falconer, Matthew Spotnitz, Anna Ostropolets, Clair Blacketer, Thamir M Alshammari, Heba Alghoul, Osaid Alser, Jennifer C.E. Lane, Dalia M Dawoud, Karishma Shah, Yue Yang, Lin Zhang, Carlos Areia, Asieh Golozar, Martina Recalde, Paula Casajust, Jitendra Jonnagaddala, Vignesh Subbian, David Vizcaya, Lana YH Lai, Fredrik Nyberg, Daniel R. Morales, Jose D. Posada, Nigam H. Shah, Mengchun Gong, Arani Vivekanantham, Aaron Abend, Evan P Minty, Marc A. Suchard, Peter Rijnbeek, Patrick B Ryan & Daniel Prieto-Alhambra

 

Published:

medRxiv, 27 November 2020

[Keep in mind that this article is a preprint and not yet peer reviewed.]

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.24.20236802v1

 

Abstract:

Objective: Patients with autoimmune diseases were advised to shield to avoid COVID-19, but information on their prognosis is lacking. We characterised 30-day outcomes and mortality after hospitalisation with COVID-19 among patients with prevalent autoimmune diseases, and compared outcomes after hospital admissions among similar patients with seasonal influenza. 

 

Design: Multinational network cohort study Setting: Electronic health records data from Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) (NYC, United States [US]), Optum [US], Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) (US), Information System for Research in Primary Care-Hospitalisation Linked Data (SIDIAP-H) (Spain), and claims data from IQVIA Open Claims (US) and Health Insurance and Review Assessment (HIRA) (South Korea). 

 

Participants: All patients with prevalent autoimmune diseases, diagnosed and/or hospitalised between January and June 2020 with COVID-19, and similar patients hospitalised with influenza in 2017-2018 were included. Main outcome measures: 30-day complications during hospitalisation and death 

 

Results: We studied 133,589 patients diagnosed and 48,418 hospitalised with COVID-19 with prevalent autoimmune diseases. The majority of participants were female (60.5% to 65.9%) and aged ≥50 years. The most prevalent autoimmune conditions were psoriasis (3.5 to 32.5%), rheumatoid arthritis (3.9 to 18.9%), and vasculitis (3.3 to 17.6%). Amongst hospitalised patients, Type 1 diabetes was the most common autoimmune condition (4.8% to 7.5%) in US databases, rheumatoid arthritis in HIRA (18.9%), and psoriasis in SIDIAP-H (26.4%). Compared to 70,660 hospitalised with influenza, those admitted with COVID-19 had more respiratory complications including pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome, and higher 30-day mortality (2.2% to 4.3% versus 6.3% to 24.6%). 

 

Conclusions: Patients with autoimmune diseases had high rates of respiratory complications and 30-day mortality following a hospitalization with COVID-19. Compared to influenza, COVID-19 is a more severe disease, leading to more complications and higher mortality. Future studies should investigate predictors of poor outcomes in COVID-19 patients with autoimmune diseases.  

medRxiv, 24 August 2020 (preprint) - Impact of population density on Covid 19 infected and mortality rate in India

Title:
 Impact of population density on Covid 19 infected and mortality rate in India
 
Authors:
Arunava Bhadra, Arindam Mukherjee & Kabita Sarkar
 
Published:
medRxiv, 24 August 2020
Keep in mind that this is a preprint. In other words, this article is not yet peer reviewed.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.21.20179416v1
 
Abstract:
The residents living in areas with high population density, such as big or metropolitan cities have higher probability to come into close contact with others and consequently any contagious disease are expected to spread rapidly in dense areas. However, recently after analyzing Covid-19 cases in US researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, London school of economics and IZA Institute of Labor Economics conclude that spread of Covid-19 is not linked with population density. Here we investigate the influence of population density on Covid-19 spread and related mortality in the context of India. We find some correlation between Covid-19 spread and population density which becomes more pronounced as statistics improves.

HIV Does Not Appear to Worsen COVID-19 Outcomes (based on a scholarly article titled People with HIV Infection: Outcomes for Hospitalized Patients in New York City)

Title:
HIV Does Not Appear to Worsen COVID-19 Outcomes

Author:
Heather Boerner

Published:
Medscape, 2 July 2020
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/933340?src=soc_fb_200706_mscpedt_news_mdscp_hiv&faf=1

From the article:
People living with HIV who are admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 are no more likely to die than those without HIV, an analysis conducted in New York City shows. This is despite the fact that comorbidities associated with worse COVID-19 outcomes were more common in the HIV group.

"We don't see any signs that people with HIV should take extra precautions" to protect themselves from COVID-19, said Keith Sigel, MD, associate professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and the lead researcher on the study, published online June 28 in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Title of scholarly article:
People with HIV Infection: Outcomes for Hospitalized Patients in New York City

Authors:
Keith Sigel, MD, PhD, Talia Swartz, MD, PhD, Eddye Golden, MPH, Ishan Paranjpe, Sulaiman Somani, Felix Richter, PhD, Jessica K De Freitas, Riccardo Miotto, PhD, Shan Zhao, MD, Paz Polak, PhD, Tinaye Mutetwa, MS, Stephanie Factor, MD, MPH, Saurabh Mehandru, MD, Michael Mullen, MD, Francesca Cossarini, MD, Erwin Bottinger, MD, Zahi Fayad, PhD, Miriam Merad, PhD, Sacha Gnjatic, PhD, Judith Aberg, MD, Alexander Charney, MD, PhD, Girish Nadkarni, MD, MPH, CPH, Benjamin S Glicksberg, PhD,

Published:
Clinical Infectious Diseases, 28 June 2020, ciaa880, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa880

South Africa - Why is the Covid-19 mortality rate so high in the Western Cape? Altitude plays a role, as do UV radiation levels and the weather

Title:
Why is the Covid-19 mortality rate so high in the Western Cape?

Author:
Daniel Uys & Schalk van der Merwe

Published:
BusinessDay, 2 July 2020
https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2020-07-02-why-is-the-covid-19-mortality-rate-so-high-in-the-western-cape/

Two quotes from the article:

* Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic at the end of 2019 there has been much speculation about whether the impact of the coronavirus varies at different altitudes. Currently, the mortality per million people in the Western Cape is 279.5. This is 19 times higher than the mortality per million people in Gauteng.

* However, more than 60% of the population in the Western Cape live in the City of Cape Town, meaning a large number of people in this province live at sea level. Does this low altitude contribute to the high mortality rate in the province?

An epidemiological analysis of the Covid-19 pandemic by Arias-Reyes et al (2020) showed a decrease of prevalence and impact of the virus in populations living at altitudes higher than 2,500m. Their study analysed the occurrence of Covid-19 in China, Bolivia and Ecuador, and concluded that the Covid-19 mortality rate per capita decreases as altitude increases.