Since December 2019, more than 79,000 people have been diagnosed with infection of the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). A large number of medical staff was sent to Wuhan city and Hubei province to aid COVID-19 control. Psychological stress, especially vicarious traumatization caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, should not be ignored. To address this concern, the study employed a total of 214 general public and 526 nurses (i.e., 234 front-line nurses and 292 non-front-line nurses) to evaluate vicarious traumatization scores via a mobile app-based questionnaire. Front-line nurses are engaged in the process of providing care for patients with COVID-19. The results showed that the vicarious traumatization scores for front-line nurses including scores for physiological and psychological responses, were significantly lower than those of non-front-line nurses (P   0.05). Therefore, increased attention should be paid to the psychological problems of the medical staff, especially non-front-line nurses, and general public under the situation of the spread and control of COVID-19. Early strategies that aim to prevent and treat vicarious traumatization in medical staff and general public are extremely necessary.

Vicarious traumatization in the general public, members, and non-members of medical teams aiding in COVID-19 control

Since December 2019, more than 79,000 people have been diagnosed with infection of the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). A large number of medical staff were dispersed for Wuhan city and Hubei province to aid COVID-19 control. Psychological stress, especially vicarious traumatization (VT) caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, should not be ignored. To address this concern, the study employed a total of 214 general public (GP) and 526 nurses to evaluate VT scores via a mobile app-based questionnaire. Results showed that the VT scores slightly increased across periods of aiding COVID-19 control, although no statistical difference was noted (P = 0.083). However, the study found lower scores for VT in nurses [median = 69; interquartile range (IQR) = 56–85] than those of the GP (median = 75.5; IQR = 62–88.3) (P = 0.017). In addition, the VT scores for front-line nurses (FLNs; median = 64; IQR = 52–75), including scores for physiological and psychological responses, were significantly lower than those of non-front-line nurses (nFLNs; median = 75.5; IQR = 63–92) (P 0.05). Importantly, nFLNs are more likely to suffer from VT, which might be related to two factors, namely, gender [odds ratio (OR) = 3.1717; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 4.247–18.808; P = 0.002] and fertility [OR = 2.072; 95%CI = 0.626–24.533; P = 0.039]. Therefore, increased attention should be paid to the psychological problems of the medical staff, especially nFLNs, and GP under the situation of the spread and control of COVID-19. Early strategies that aim to prevent and treat VT in medical staff and GP are extremely necessary.

https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.29.20029322v1.full.pdf

The infant cry. A spectrographic and auditory analysis

To date, the psychological impact of COVID-19 epidemic among family members of health care workers (HCWs) in China has been neglected. This cross-sectional study investigates the mental health status and related factors in families of HCWs employed in designated hospitals in Ningbo, China. Family members of HCWs in five designated hospitals in Ningbo, China, were recruited in February, 2020 for this study. Demographic variables, COVID-19-related events in the lives of the participants, knowledge of COVID-19, and the working status of family members (that is, HCWs) were collected using online self-administered questionnaires. Mental health status was assessed using the Chinese versions of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). Multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed to identify the main factors associated with the mental health conditions. In total, 845 participants completed the questionnaires correctly (95.80% response rate). The prevalence of anxiety and depression symptoms were respectively 33.73% (95% CI: 30.53–36.92%) and 29.35% (95% CI: 26.27–32.43%) when a cut-off score of 5 was used for GAD-7 and PHQ-9. Risk factors for anxiety symptoms included more time (hours) spent thinking about the COVID-19, and whether or not family members (that is, HCWs) had direct contact with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients while high participants’ self-reported safety scores for HCW’s protective equipment was a protective factor. More time (hours) spent thinking about COVID-19, longer average working time per week worked by family members (that is, HCWs), and being parents and other next of kin of HCWs were risk factors for depressive symptoms. Compared to participants who were HCWs, participants who were private sector workers were more likely to develop depressive symptoms, while government or institutional employees were less likely to suffer from depressive symptoms. Psychological responses to COVID-19 have been dramatic among family members of HCWs during the rising phase of the outbreak. Our findings provide strong evidence to examine and attend to the mental health of this population during the COVID-19 epidemic.

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Mental health status among family members of health care workers in Ningbo, China, during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak: a cross-sectional study.

China Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) developed the China Infectious Disease Automated Alert and Response System (CIDARS) in 2005. The CIDARS was used to strengthen infectious disease surveillance and aid in the early warning of outbreak. The CIDARS has been integrated into the routine outbreak monitoring efforts of the CDC at all levels in China. Early warning threshold is crucial for outbreak detection in the CIDARS, but CDCs at all level are currently using thresholds recommended by the China CDC, and these recommended thresholds have recognized limitations. Our study therefore seeks to explore an operational method to select the proper early warning threshold according to the epidemic features of local infectious diseases. The data used in this study were extracted from the web-based Nationwide Notifiable Infectious Diseases Reporting Information System (NIDRIS), and data for infectious disease cases were organized by calendar week (1–52) and year (2009–2015) in Excel format; Px was calculated using a percentile-based moving window (moving window [5 week*5 year], x), where x represents one of 12 centiles (0.40, 0.45, 0.50….0.95). Outbreak signals for the 12 Px were calculated using the moving percentile method (MPM) based on data from the CIDARS. When the outbreak signals generated by the ‘mean + 2SD’ gold standard were in line with a Px generated outbreak signal for each week during the year of 2014, this Px was then defined as the proper threshold for the infectious disease. Finally, the performance of new selected thresholds for each infectious disease was evaluated by simulated outbreak signals based on 2015 data. Six infectious diseases were selected in this study (chickenpox, mumps, hand foot and mouth diseases (HFMD), scarlet fever, influenza and rubella). Proper thresholds for chickenpox (P75), mumps (P80), influenza (P75), rubella (P45), HFMD (P75), and scarlet fever (P80) were identified. The selected proper thresholds for these 6 infectious diseases could detect almost all simulated outbreaks within a shorter time period compared to thresholds recommended by the China CDC. It is beneficial to select the proper early warning threshold to detect infectious disease aberrations based on characteristics and epidemic features of local diseases in the CIDARS.

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How to select a proper early warning threshold to detect infectious disease outbreaks based on the China infectious disease automated alert and response system (CIDARS)

Due to the extensive social influence, public health emergency has attracted great attention in today's society. The booming social network is becoming a main information dissemination platform of those events and caused high concerns in emergency management, among which a good prediction of information dissemination in social networks is necessary for estimating the event's social impacts and making a proper strategy. However, information dissemination is largely affected by complex interactive activities and group behaviors in social network; the existing methods and models are limited to achieve a satisfactory prediction result due to the open changeable social connections and uncertain information processing behaviors. ACP (artificial societies, computational experiments, and parallel execution) provides an effective way to simulate the real situation. In order to obtain better information dissemination prediction in social networks, this paper proposes an intelligent computation method under the framework of TDF (Theory-Data-Feedback) based on ACP simulation system which was successfully applied to the analysis of A (H1N1) Flu emergency.

/pdf/information-dissemination-of-public-health-emergency-on-14g8ssje1m.pdf

Information dissemination of public health emergency on social networks and intelligent computation

Due to the intensely increasing individualized and rapidly changing demand in global market, customer oriented design has been the top priority for modern enterprises to quickly respond to the volatile personalized requirements. This leads to the great change of mass customization in supply chain management, in which the agility, efficiency and cost have become the main impediment to improve supply chain’s performance. In this paper, we first propose a new method of adaptive clustering for the orientation and analysis of target customers that is originally inspired from the swarm intelligence of ant colony, then the recommendation system for the design of LCD-TV is illustrated that applied by this method to test the validity of the algorithm. After that, we present a supply chain management based on mobile agents to satisfy the customization, especially, detailed description of the agent-based supply chain process is also expounded. Finally, an integrated intelligent system to support the customer oriented design as well as its supply chain management is discussed.

Intelligent System for Customer Oriented Design and Supply Chain Management

Speech is not only a way for infants under one year of age to communicate with the outside world, but also the important information source to reflect their emotions and needs, as well as health status and mental level. In order to explore the intelligent machine technology for understanding infant's emotions and needs from speech signals, and therefore help parents in child rearing, this paper studied the signal processing and feature extraction of the above speeches. It seems that a high accuracy and reliable result couldn't be reached from the infant's speech signals only in dealing with multi kinds of emotions and needs. So an effective recognition approach considering the combined features of acoustic characteristics and rearing behaviors was proposed based on the self-adapting algorithm. Experiment results showed that most common emotions and needs of infants, such as happy, hungry, and sleepy states which reflect their typically physiological and psychological status in daily life, can be recognized correctly at a relatively high accuracy.

Recognition of infant's emotions and needs from speech signals

When the public medical services are provided through a market-based apporach, doctor's prescription behavior is the important basis and key link which affects various medical relations, such as the control of medical costs, utilization of medical resources, management on medical services as well as the adjustment of economic interests among doctors, the hospital and patients. To reveal the significant factors that dominate the doctor's prescription behavior in china, this paper systematically summarized various related factors and presented a structure chart of the influencing factors. Based on the analysis of those factors by questionnaire surveys, in-depth interviews and regression modelling, this paper suggested to establish appropriate guidance and regulations of doctor's prescription behavior in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness in public medical services.

Huajuan Mao

Papers

Information dissemination of public health emergency on social networks and intelligent computation

Intelligent System for Customer Oriented Design and Supply Chain Management

Recognition of infant's emotions and needs from speech signals

Analysis of influencing factors on doctor's prescription behavior in China