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The purpose of this study was to examine how data from the World Health Organization, United States Environmental Protection Agency and Center for Disease Control have evolved with relation to engineering controls for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems to mitigate the spread of spread of aerosols (specifically related to the COVID-19 pandemic) in occupied buildings.

A document analysis of the pandemic-focused position documents from the aforementioned public health agencies and national HVAC authorities was performed. This review targeted a range of evidence from recommendations, best practices, codes and regulations and peer-reviewed publications and evaluated how they cumulatively evolved over time. Data was compared between 2020 and 2021.

This research found that core information provided early in the pandemic (i.e. early 2020) for engineering controls in building HVAC systems did not vary greatly as knowledge of the pandemic evolved (i.e. in June of 2021). This indicates that regulating agencies had a good, early understanding of how airborne viruses spread through building ventilation systems. The largest evolution in knowledge came from the broader acceptance of building ventilation as a transmission route and the increase in publications and ease of access to the information for the general public over time.

The promotion of the proposed controls for ventilation in buildings, as outlined in this paper, is another step toward reducing the spread of COVID-19 and future aerosol spread viruses by means of ventilation.

In this paper, the authors present insights and findings drawn from the authors’ experiences of containing a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak in a large prison in northern Italy.Within penitentiaries, close-quarter living is ripe terrain for outbreaks of disease among detainees and staff. If left unchecked, these outbreaks can easily spill over the prison walls to threaten the general public. Moreover, these risks are heightened by preexisting environmental conditions, especially overcrowding. It is thus paramount to establish effective protocols for prevention, early detection and outbreak management. The purpose of this article is to document a strategy that been at least partially successful in reducing the damage that could potentially be caused by a sustained SARS-CoV-2 outbreak within a correctional facility.

The authors conducted a retrospective analysis on patients’ and health-care workers’ medical records to obtain demographic and clinical information. Descriptive data analysis was then carried out.

In total, the authors tested 453 people with oropharyngeal swabs from March 15, 2020, to June 30, 2020. Of these people, 58 were positive and 395 were negative, with a prevalence of 12.8%.Of the 453 patients, 60 were health workers: 24 tested positive for SARS-CoV2 ribonucleic acid (RNA); 18 developed symptoms; and three needed hospitalization.Among patients in detention, 34 resulted positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Two were hospitalized and later died. Both had severe preexisting conditions; they were aged 76 and 59 years old, respectively.

In this study, the authors describe the design and effective implementation of prevention and containment measures against SARS-CoV-2 within the walls of a correctional facility. The authors describe how they rapidly created clean confinement sections to isolate cases in an environment designed for security at the expense of virus containment and how educational efforts have played a vital role in their strategy.

This chapter asks: How do COVID-19 conspiracy theories about Bill Gates work? In order to provide an answer, it analyses social media artefacts that make conspiratorial claims about Bill Gates such as the ones that he manufactured the virus, makes money from COVID-19 vaccines, plans to dominate the world and erect a dictatorship, and implants surveillance microchips into humans via COVID-19 vaccinations. The focus is on artefacts that have massively spread and have reached high visibility on social media and the Internet. A critical discourse analysis was conducted of this material.

The findings show that and how COVID-19 conspiracy theories construct the existence of a secret elite that dominates the world, use ideological strategies such as the personalisation of domination, the friend/enemy scheme, rational irrationality and logical determinism. COVID-19 conspiracy theories are a necrophilic ideology, an ideology of death that advances death and increases the number of deaths. This pandemic ideology tries to convince humans that vaccines are harmful and that COVID-19 is a hoax, whereby human misery is advanced. COVID-19 conspiracy theories are to a large degree a right-wing ideology.

The present study aims to measure the global research landscape on coronavirus indexed in the Web of Science from 1989 to 2020. The study examines growth rates, authorship trends, institutional productivity, collaborative networks and prominent authors, institutions and countries.

The research literature on coronavirus published globally and indexed in the Web of Science core collection was retrieved using the term “Coronavirus” and its related and synonymous terms (e.g. COVID-19, SARS-COV, SARS-COV-2 and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus) as per the Medical List of Subject Headings. A total of 5,625 publications were retrieved; however, the study was restricted to articles only (i.e. 4,471), and other document types were excluded. Quantitative and visualization techniques were used for data analysis and interpretation. VOSViewer software was employed to map collaborative networks of authors, institutions and countries.

A total of 4,471 articles have been published on coronavirus by 99 countries of the world with the maximum contribution from the USA, followed by the People's Republic of China. The United States, China, Canada, Netherlands and Germany are the front runners in the collaborative network and form strong sub-networks with other countries as well. More than 1,000 institutions collaborate in the field of coronavirus research among 99 contributing countries. The authorship pattern shows that 97.5% of publications are contributed by authors in collaboration in which 77.5% of publications are contributed by four or more than four authors. The range between degree of collaboration (DC) varies from 0.89 in 1993 to 1 in 2000 with an average of 0.96 from 1989 to 2020. The results confirm that the coronavirus research is carried out in teamwork at the individual, institutional and global levels with high magnitude and density of collaboration. The relative growth of the literature has shown inconsistency as a decreasing trend has been observed from 2007 onwards, thereby increasing the doubling time from 4.2 in the first ten years to 17.3 in the last ten years.

The study is limited to the publications indexed in the Web of Science; the findings cannot be generalized across other databases.

The results of the study may help medical scientists to identify the progress in COVID-19 research. Besdies, it will help to identify the prolific authors, institutions and countries in the development of research.

The current COVID-19 pandemic poses urgent and prolonged threats to the health and well-being of the population worldwide. It has not only attacked the health of the people but the economy of nations as well. Therefore, it is feasible to know the research landscape of the disease to conquer the problem.

The current COVID-19 pandemic poses urgent and prolonged threats to the health and well-being of the population worldwide. It has not only attacked the health of the people but also the economy of nations as well. Therefore, it is feasible to know the research landscape of the disease to conquer the problem.

This research aims to figure out whether the pool testing method of SARS-CoV-2 for COVID-19 is effective and the optimal sample size is in one bunch. Additionally, since the infection rate was unknown at the beginning, this research aims to propose a multiple sampling approach that enables the pool testing method to be utilized successfully.

The authors verify that the pool testing method of SARS-CoV-2 for COVID-19 is effective under the situation of the shortage of nucleic acid detection kits based on probabilistic modeling. In this method, the testing is performed on several samples of the cases together as a bunch. If the test result of the bunch is negative, then it is shown that none of the cases in the bunch has been infected with the novel coronavirus. On the contrary, if the test result of the bunch is positive, then the samples are tested one by one to confirm which cases are infected.

If the infection rate is extremely low, while the same number of detection kits is used, the expected number of cases that can be tested by the pool testing method is far more than that by the one-by-one testing method. The pool testing method is effective only when the infection rate is less than 0.3078. The higher the infection rate, the smaller the optimal sample size in one bunch. If N samples are tested by the pool testing method, while the sample size in one bunch is G, the number of detection kits required is in the interval (N/G, N).

This research proves that the pool testing method is not only suitable for the situation of the shortage of detection kits but also the situation of the overall or sampling detection for a large population. More importantly, it calculates the optimal sample size in one bunch corresponding to different infection rates. Additionally, a multiple sampling approach is proposed. In this approach, the whole testing process is divided into several rounds in which the sample sizes in one bunch are different. The actual infection rate is estimated gradually precisely by sampling inspection in each round.

This study aims to investigate the association between vitamin D measured in serum 25 hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] and outcomes of COVID-19 patients in Bahrain. This paper hypothesized that lower serum 25(OH)D concentration in COVID 19 patients is associated with longer viral clearance time (VCT) and higher risk of admission to the intensive care unit (ICU).

This study used a retrospective cohort design of patients admitted to Salmaniya Medical Complex, Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain, from February to June 2020. This study included patients with positive, confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis made using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), World Health Organization diagnosis manual and local diagnostic guidelines. Primary outcome measures were: VCT measured as the time in days between the first positive RT-PCR test result and the first of two consecutive negative RT-PCR results on recovery and admission need to ICU.

A total of 450 patients were analyzed; mean age was 46.4 ± 12.4 years and 349 (78%) were men. Mean 25(OH)D concentration was 41.7 ± 23.7 nmol/L for the entire sample. Severe vitamin D deficiency (<25 nmol/L) was present in 20%, mild-to-moderate deficiency (25–50 nmol/L) in 55%, insufficiency (50 to <75 nmol/L) in 18% and sufficiency (=75 nmol/L) in 7%. The mean VCT was 12.9 ± 8.2 days. Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that severe vitamin D deficiency was associated with longer VCT, with an average of three extra days after correction for age and sex (β = 3.1; p = 0.001). Multinomial regression analysis showed that vitamin D deficiency was associated with an 83% increased risk of admission to ICU after correction for age and sex (odds ratio = 1.8; p = 0.03).

The results showed that severe vitamin D deficiency was associated with longer recovery time from COVID-19. Low serum 25(OH)D is associated with increased need for critical care in an ICU. Large-scale randomized controlled trials are necessary to further investigate the complex association between vitamin D and COVID-19 infection.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of civil liberties, global health security, median age and population size on the spread of COVID-19 across the globe.

This study was done by taking data from 166 different countries from the Economist Intelligence Unit, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, World Bank, Johns Hopkins University and United Nations Population Division (UNPD). After conducting all the necessary standard econometric tests, the study was analyzed using the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression.

The finding of the study indicated that COVID-19 tests per million people (LTT/PM), Population Size (LPOP), Civil Liberty Index (CLI) are statistically significant and positively affect the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases; on the other hand, the Health Security Index (HSI) negatively affects the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.

In emergency circumstances, the government ought to have a special responsibility to align civil rights with the protection of public health cautiously. However, measures to restrict civil liberties must be proportionate.

Besides other variables, the study included and considered civil liberties as a significant factor to affect the spread of COVID-19, which is a new contribution to the existing body of knowledge in the field.

This chapter presents a methodological and strategic proposal for the application of the design thinking methodology to support the implementation of the work and action plan for the economic reactivation of start-ups in Mexico. The objective is to create a quick reference guide to accelerate start-up resilience. Documentary research is considered on the guidelines and implementation requirements, as well as the measures established by the Mexican Ministry of Health, to mitigate the epidemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the COVID-19 disease and to carry out an orderly, gradual, and cautious reopening in order to continue caring for people’s health in the working environment and at the same time reactivate the start-ups’ economy. This chapter provides an alternative guide to direct and propose a structured option for the labour and economic reactivation of start-ups that were considered non-core and that require the completion of regulatory procedures and processes required to obtain the necessary Quick Response code, granted by the entities that regulate the guidelines for the safe reopening of companies. Based on the size of these economic entities, it is considered that they can have between 1 and 10 employees, or no hired personnel at all, which is not considered a priority in the current economic reactivation programmes. A methodological strategy is proposed and implemented to support companies of this size in their immediate process of labour and economic reactivation for a case study of a service company that applied the proposed methodology.

This paper aims to present a review of the current COVID-19 pandemic with particular emphasis on developing countries in Africa. It aims to demonstrate how facilities management (FM) services delivery in public hospitals can be improved for the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper embraces a review of current literature on COVID-19 and FM together with credible media updates. The paper critically synthesizes knowledge on the pandemic to position a technical view on how FM can be improved in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents unprecedented challenges and realities to the health-care system of most African countries. Despite the significant efforts being made by various governments, there appears to be a lack of a coherent and strategic FM plan to fight the pandemic. To create the necessary antivirus built environment, actionable and timely FM interventions are needed.

The report herein is case guarded, based on the prevailing data and information as at the time of writing the paper. Nevertheless, the recommendations from the paper are useful for a worse future trajectory of the pandemic.

Knowledge of the proposed interventions will inform and assist health-care facilities managers in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper presents the first step towards encapsulating knowledge on FM and the COVID-19 pandemic. It sets forth recommendations that are useful for most developing countries’ public hospitals’ FM practices in the fight against this global pandemic. The authors intend to follow-up with future empirical studies for more objective assessments of FM and the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study aimed to investigate Jordanian university students' interaction, Internet self-efficacy, self-regulation and satisfaction regarding online education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A correlational cross-sectional design was utilized using convenience sampling to include 702 undergraduate students from Jordanian universities using an online self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, T-tests, one-way ANOVA and multiple regression analyses were used to analyze the data.

The mean score of students' satisfaction was low (m = 45.14, SD = 25.62). Regarding student's interaction, learner-instructor interaction had the highest total mean score (m = 58.53, SD = 24.51), followed by learner-learner interaction (m = 47.50, SD = 22.64). Learner-content interaction had the lowest total mean score (m = 45.80, SD = 24.60). Significant differences in students' satisfaction were identified according to the level of education, university type and marital status. Significant predictors of students' satisfaction with online education were self-regulated learning, Internet self-efficacy, learner-content interaction, learner-learner interaction and the number of e-learning theoretical courses.

Online education is not well-established in developing countries. This study contributed to the limited knowledge of university students’ preparedness and satisfaction with online education during the early stage of COVID-19 pandemic.