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Background IL-6 receptor antagonist tocilizumab (TCZ) has been used in several reported studies in the treatment of COVID-19 pneumonia and pieces of evidence are still emerging. Methods All patients with COVID-19 pneumonia showing features of hyperinflammatory syndrome receiving TCZ at a tertiary care center in India were included in the study and a retrospective descriptive analysis was done. Results Between May 2020 to August 2020, 21 patients received TCZ out of which 13 survived and 8 died. All non-survivors had longer duration (median 12 days, minimum 9, maximum 15 days compared to median 6 days, minimum 3 and maximum 14 days in survivors) of symptoms and severe disease requiring mechanical ventilation at the time of TCZ administration. Among survivors, 8 patients had severe disease, 3 had moderate disease, and 2 patients had mild disease. Six out of 8 (75%) among non-survivors and 8 out of 13 (62%) among survivors had preexisting medical comorbidities. The non-survivors had higher baseline neutrophil-to-leukocyte ratio (10.5 vs 8.8), serum ferritin (960 ng/ml vs 611 ng/ml), lactate dehydrogenase (795 IU/L vs 954 IU/L), and D-dimer (5900 μg/ml vs 1485 mg/ml) levels. No drug-related serious adverse effect was noted among the patients. Conclusion In a scenario of emerging evidence for the role of TCZ in the management of severe COVID-19, our study provides useful data on its use in the Indian scenario. Deliberate patient selection and timing initiation of TCZ at a crucial stage of the disease may be beneficial in COVID-19 pneumonia with good safety returns.

The source separation of low level ground borne vibration signals and its FPGA implementation is an exigent problem. This can be viewed as a complex version of the classical source separation problem, the ‘cocktail party problem’. An extension of the basic Independent Component Analysis (ICA), a Blind Source Separation method is proposed in this particular case, as the damping of the ground borne vibration signals is significant. The separation of a set of signals from a set of observed signal mixtures, without the information about the source signals or the mixing process is known as Blind Source Separation (BSS). Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) are increasingly used various fields from audio to wireless communication. A suggested model for source separation of ground borne vibration on FPGA is discussed in this paper.