Search

Long COVID, a long-lasting disorder following an acute infection of COVID-19, represents a significant public health burden at present. In this paper, we propose a new mechanistic model based on differential equations to investigate the population dynamics of long COVID. By connecting long COVID with acute infection at the population level, our modeling framework emphasizes the interplay between COVID-19 transmission, vaccination, and long COVID dynamics. We conducted a detailed mathematical analysis of the model. We also validated the model using numerical simulation with real data from the US state of Tennessee and the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in widescale changes to how UK puppy buyers purchased their puppies. Many of these changes threatened canine welfare by increasing the likelihood of buyers purchasing a puppy from a low-welfare source, e.g., collecting a puppy away from its place of birth or without seeing their mother, both of which are currently illegal in the UK. However, whether these puppy-purchasing changes were limited only to the 2020 'peak pandemic' phase and had returned to their pre-pandemic baseline afterwards or had persisted into the later phases of the pandemic in 2021 was not known. This study explored how and why puppies were purchased in 2021 and then compared this to the same date-periods in 2020 and 2019. Valid responses were analysed from the owners of 1148 "2019 puppies", 4369 "2020 Pandemic Puppies", and 2080 "2021 puppies". Although some of the peak pandemic changes had returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2021, some worrying trends still persisted, including 2021 puppies being less likely to be viewed in-person pre-purchase or to be collected from inside their breeders' property, compared to 2019 puppies. Furthermore, concerning year-on-year increases were documented between 2019 and 2021 in the number of puppies being sold with a passport indicating importation to the UK, often under the minimum legal age for import. The issues identified in this paper require further monitoring and intervention to protect canine welfare in the future. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in acquisitions of puppies in the UK, dubbed the "Pandemic Puppy" phenomenon. In addition to an increased demand for puppies, widespread changes to both why and how puppies were purchased during this period compared to pre-pandemic 2019 purchases were documented, many of which threatened canine welfare (e.g., puppies being collected away from their place of birth, without seeing their mother). This study aimed to explore which changes to the pre-purchase and purchase motivations and behaviours of UK owners who purchased a puppy aged <16 weeks in the 2020 phase of the COVID-19 pandemic had persisted into 2021 or had returned to pre-pandemic 2019 levels. An online survey was conducted during February to April 2022 from which 2080 valid responses were analysed ("2021 puppies") and compared with previously collected data from comparable cohorts in 2019 (n = 1148, "2019 puppies") and 2020 (n = 4369, "Pandemic Puppies"). While the majority of the peak pandemic changes documented in 2020 had returned to their 2019 pre-pandemic baseline, others persisted into 2021. Multinomial logistic regression models revealed that the shifts during 2020 towards owners viewing their puppy pre-purchase over video calls or via video recordings/photos rather than in-person and towards collecting their puppy from outside of their breeders' property rather than inside had persisted into 2021 and had not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Year-on-year significant rises in the number of puppies sold with a passport were documented between 2019 and 2021, with over 1 in 10 2021 puppies having been sold with a passport, the figure more than doubling since 2019. An increasing number of these puppies sold with a passport were under the minimum legal age for import at sale. Going forward, these concerning changes require further monitoring and human behaviour change interventions to tackle, including increased buyer awareness but also legislative approaches to prevent the greatest harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last three years, numerous research papers have been reported which use social media data to explore several issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bibliometric methods in this work are used to analyze 1427 peer-reviewed documents from the last three years extracted from the Web of Science database. The results of this study show that there was high growth in publications in open access journals with an annual rate reaching 19.3% and they also identify the top cited journals and research papers. The thematic analysis of papers shows that research topics related to social media for surveillance and monitoring of public attitudes and perceptions, mental health, misinformation, and fake news are important and well-developed, whereas topics related to distance-learning education with social media are emerging. The results also show that the USA, China, and the UK have published many papers and received a high number of citations because of their strong international collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Fur farming has become increasingly controversial in the western world. Fur-farmed species such as mink contracting and transmitting COVID-19 have put a further spotlight on the industry. The United Kingdom (UK) and other nations have banned fur farming due to welfare concerns. Despite this, due to European Union (EU) membership, the UK has continued to import and sell fur from two million animals each year. The UK left the EU in 2020 and the British government is now considering a ban on the import and sale of fur. This paper reviews public polls on British attitudes to the fur industry conducted between 1997 and 2021. The polls reveal consistently high majority opposition to the fur industry. The paper then reports the results of a new questionnaire to explore in further depth the views of UK residents on the fur industry and attitudes to a ban. A large majority (86%) believed fur-farmed animals do not experience a good life. A similar majority (83%) believed it was unacceptable for the UK government to ban fur farming and continue to import and sell fur from producers overseas. Over three quarters (78%) supported a legal ban on the import and sale of fur in the UK. Around 100 million animals are killed annually for the global fur trade, with 85% reared on fur farms and 15% trapped in the wild. Fur farming is banned across the United Kingdom (UK) under the Fur Farming (Prohibition) Act 2000 in England and Wales and parallel legislation in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Despite the farming bans, the import and sale of fur products to the UK have continued, largely due to European Union (EU) membership. The UK left the EU in 2020 and the British government is exploring a potential ban on the import and sale of fur post-Brexit. This paper reviews public surveys on attitudes to fur farming in the UK from 1997 to 2021. It then reports the results of an online questionnaire to investigate in greater depth the beliefs of UK residents (n = 326) about the welfare of animals used in fur production, knowledge of the legal context of the fur trade and attitudes toward a ban on the import and sale of fur in the UK. A large majority (86%) of respondents believed that fur-farmed animals do not experience a good life. Over four-fifths (83%) disagreed that it is morally acceptable for the UK government to ban fur farming and yet continue to import and sell fur from producers overseas, with over three-quarters (78%) supporting a legal ban on the import and sale of fur in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of electricity markets determines the technologies, services and modes of operation that can access value, consequently shaping current and future electricity landscapes. This paper highlights that the efficacy of Great Britain's electricity market design in facilitating net zero is inadequate and must be reconfigured. The rules of the current electricity market design are remnants of an electricity sector dominated by large-scale, centralised, fossil fuel technologies. Therefore, routes to market for the provision of necessary services to support net zero, not least flexibility, are largely inaccessible for distributed energy resources and, despite their benefits to the system, are thus undervalued. Based upon a review and consolidation of 30 proposed electricity market designs from liberalised electricity sectors, this paper proposes a new electricity market design for Great Britain. This design is presented alongside a new institutional framework to aid in the efficient operation of the market. Specifically, this paper proposes a new local balancing and coordinating market located at each grid supply point (the transmission and distribution interface). This is realised through the implementation of a distributed locational marginal pricing structure which is governed by the evolution of the current distributed network operator, known as the distributed service provider (DSP). The DSP also operates a local balancing and ancillary market for their geographical area. The wholesale market is reconfigured to coordinate with these new local markets and to harmonise the actors across the distribution and transmission network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic, each country has adopted different control measures to contrast the epidemic's diffusion. Restrictions to mobility, public transport, and social life in general have been actuated to contain the spread of the pandemic. In this paper, we consider the deterministic SIRD model with delays proposed by Calleri et al., which is improved by adding the vaccinated compartment V (SIRDV model) and considering a time-dependent contact frequency. The three delays take into account the incubation time of the disease, the healing time, and the death time. The aim of this work is to study the effect of the vaccination campaigns in Great Britain (GBR) and Israel (ISR) during the pandemic period. The different restriction periods are included by fitting the contact frequency on real datasets as a piecewise constant function. As expected, the vaccination campaign reduces the amount of deaths and infected people. Furthermore, for the different levels of restriction policy, we find specific values of the contact frequency that can be used to predict the trend of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No routine laboratory biomarkers perform well enough in diagnosing COVID-19 in isolation for them to be used as a standalone diagnostic test or to help clinicians prioritize patients for treatment. Instead, other diagnostic tests are needed. The aim of this work was to statistically summarise routine laboratory biomarker measurements in COVID-19-positive and -negative patients to inform future work. A systematic literature review and meta-analysis were performed. The search included names of commonly used, routine laboratory tests in the UK NHS, and focused on research papers reporting laboratory results of patients diagnosed with COVID-19. A random effects meta-analysis of the standardized mean difference between COVID-19-positive and -negative groups was conducted for each biomarker. When comparing reported laboratory biomarker results, we identified decreased white blood cell, neutrophil, lymphocyte, eosinophil, and platelet counts; while lactate dehydrogenase, aspartate aminotransferase, and alanine aminotransferase were elevated in COVID-19-positive compared to COVID-19-negative patients. Differences were identified across a number of routine laboratory biomarkers between COVID-19-positive and -negative patients. Further research is required to identify whether routine laboratory biomarkers can be used in the development of a clinical scoring system to aid with triage of patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to find a statistical model for the COVID-19 spread in the United Kingdom and Canada. We used an efficient and superior model for fitting the COVID 19 mortality rates in these countries by specifying an optimal statistical model. A new lifetime distribution with two-parameter is introduced by a combination of inverted Topp-Leone distribution and modified Kies family to produce the modified Kies inverted Topp-Leone (MKITL) distribution, which covers a lot of application that both the traditional inverted Topp-Leone and the modified Kies provide poor fitting for them. This new distribution has many valuable properties as simple linear representation, hazard rate function, and moment function. We made several methods of estimations as maximum likelihood estimation, least squares estimators, weighted least-squares estimators, maximum product spacing, Cram e ´ r-von Mises estimators, and Anderson-Darling estimators methods are applied to estimate the unknown parameters of MKITL distribution. A numerical result of the Monte Carlo simulation is obtained to assess the use of estimation methods. also, we applied different data sets to the new distribution to assess its performance in modeling data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]