• Journal of Korean Critical Care Nursing
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.54-66
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• 2023

Purpose : Developing infection control capabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic was critical. This study aimed to develop a simulation program to control patients with COVID-19 in nursing students and examine the effects on COVID-19 knowledge, COVID-19 nursing intention, self-efficacy learning, and clinical performance. Methods : The study used nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design. Sixty nursing students were recruited from two different colleges using purposive sampling. For the intervention group(n=30), the pretest was administered before the simulation program, involving six sessions of online lectures and simulation practices. Immediately, the posttest was conducted following the program. Results : COVID-19 knowledge (t=9.87, p <.001), COVID-19 nursing intention (t=4.45, p <.001), learning self-efficacy (t=6.49, p <.001), and clinical performance (t=6.77, p <.001) increased significantly after the program, revealing the positive effect of the COVID-19 infection control simulation program in nursing students. Conclusion : The results of the study and the curriculum may be used as practical evidence for COVID-19 infection control in nursing schools and medical institutions.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.180-190
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• 2022

Background: Like direct infection from COVID-19, psychological concern about infection could affect health. Concern about COVID-19 infection was associated with individual habits to practice rules for preventing infection. Therefore, this study aimed to check occupational types and whether to practice tooth brushing after lunch depending on the occupation of economic workers and find correlations between concerns about infection due to COVID-19 pandemic and tooth brushing after lunch. Methods: The raw data was from the community health survey conducted in 2020. Among 229,269 adult participants aged 19 years and older, 138,970 economic workers were included in the final analysis. The chi-squared test was used to find differences in psychological concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the participants, the rate of practicing tooth brushing after lunch was based on COVID-19-related psychological concerns. Multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to check the influence of psychological concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic on the rate of practicing tooth brushing after lunch. Results: According to occupational classifications, professionals and office workers and career soldiers had 1.551- and 1.581-times higher practicing rates than managers, respectively, whereas machine operators, agricultural and fishery sector workers, and daily laborers had lower practicing rates. Regarding COVID-19-related psychological concerns, the group with a lower concern about infection had a 1.076 times higher practicing rate than that with greater concern. The group with greater concern about blame from neighbors had 1.119 times higher practicing rate than that with lower concern. Conclusion: The correlations between higher economic workers' concerns about infection and blame from neighbors and higher recognition of the necessity to prevent COVID-19 and practice tooth brushing after lunch were confirmed. It is necessary to prepare measures for practicing tooth brushing after lunch suitable to the characteristics of occupational types and work environments of economic workers.

• The Korean Journal of Pain
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.106-112
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• 2023

Background: Most international bodies recommended against musculoskeletal steroid injection during the COVID-19 pandemic, fearing that the immunosuppressive effects of the steroid could worsen COVID-19 infection, thus prolonging the suffering of patients with severe musculoskeletal disease. The authors' aim is to analyze the risk of COVID-19 infection after musculoskeletal injections. Methods: This is a retrospective study of patients who visited a sports medicine clinic and received musculoskeletal steroid injections between January 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021. The collected data was compared with the national COVID-19 registry to identify positive COVID-19 patients. The patients were only considered positive for COVID-19 following corticosteroid injection within 3 months after injection. Results: Out of 502 steroid injections; 79.7% (n = 400) received a single injection in one day, 19.1% (n = 96) received steroid injections at 2 sites in one day, and 1.2% (n = 6) received steroid injections at 3 sites in one day. Using the Fisher's exact test, there was no statistically significant association of COVID-19 infection between the steroid group and control group (relative risk, 1.44; 95% confidence interval, 0.9-23.1, P = 0.654). Only one patient contracted mild COVID-19 with no post COVID complications. Conclusions: The authors recommend the use of musculoskeletal steroid injections in clinically indicated situation without having increased risk of COVID-19.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.103-109
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• 2022

In December 2019, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in China and spread rapidly around the world, infecting millions of people. Cases of COVID-19 infection were observed to lead to viral pneumonia. Thirty-five patients admitted to the Gyeonggi Medical Center, South Korea, between November 2020 to January 2021, were found to have been infected with the influenza virus A and B, which cause symptoms similar to COVID-19. The records of these patients and those of COVID-19 patients who visited the hospital for medical examination were compared. The study patients included thirty patients with COVID-19 and/or influenza, five of those with influenza alone. A group of 121 patients without infection was used as control. Patients with COVID-19 and influenza had significantly higher lactate dehydrogenase levels than the patients with COVID-19 alone. The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) was higher in patients with COVID-19 alone than in other groups. Significant clinical outliers were observed in the COVID-19 and influenza infection group compared with the COVID-19 alone group. These results are expected to play an important role in the analysis of the hematological data of infected patients and the comparison of simultaneous and single infection data to determine clinical symptoms and other signs. These results may also assist in the development of vaccines and treatments for COVID-19.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.129-138
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• 2023

This study aimed to examine factors associated with health-related quality of life among female cancer survivors based on COVID-19 infection experience. A sample of 137 female cancer survivors was recruited from November 2022 to January 2023. The collected data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, independent t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient, and multiple regression ways using SPSS 25.0 program. As a result, age (𝛽=.20, p<.05), depressive mood (𝛽=-.29, p<.01) and anxiety (𝛽=-.39, p<.001), and social support (𝛽=.35, p<.001) were associated with health-related quality of life in the group having experience with COVID-19 infection (F=26.932, p<.001). On the contrary, the non-experienced COVID-19 infection group showed age (𝛽=.22, p<.001), anxiety (𝛽=-.54, p<.001), and prevention behaviors for COVID-19 infection (𝛽=.25, p<.001) were significant factors(F=64.937, p<.001). Tailed intervention is needed to improve health-related quality of life in female cancer survivors as a high-risk group for COVID-19, considering associated factors.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.117-123
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• 2022

Currently the number of COVID-19 cases is increasing rapidly around the world. One way to restrict the spread of COVID-19 infection is to find confirmed cases using rapid diagnosis. The previously proposed group testing problem assumed without measurement noise, but recently, false positive and false negative cases have occurred during COVID-19 testing. In this paper, we define the noisy group testing problem and analyze how much measurement noise affects the performance. In this paper, we show that the group testing system should be designed to be less susceptible to measurement noise when conducting group testing with a low positive rate of COVID-19 infection. And compared with other developed reconstruction algorithms, our proposed algorithm shows superior performance in noisy group testing.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.109-121
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• 2021

Purpose : The first case of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) disease outbreak in Korea occurred in January 2020, and the cumulative number of confirmed cases by the Central Defense Response Headquarters of the Quality Management Administration as of November 30 was 34,201. Looking at the incidence trend of domestic confirmed cases by age, the incidence rate of COVID-19 in the age group of 20-29 years, which corresponds to college students, was 27.4 %, the highest compared by age group. Considering the current status of the infection rate, universities will become the centers of new COVID-19 cases if face-to-face lectures are recommenced without preparatory measures and analysis of infection prevention (e.g., infection awareness and education for university students). Thus, this study intended to investigate the level of knowledge, educational needs, and preventive behavior performance of college students about COVID-19 and provide basic data for the development of an education program for the prevention of COVID-19 for college students. Methods : This study is a descriptive correlational study aimed to investigate the correlation between knowledge about COVID-19, educational needs, and degree of preventive behavior performance in 407 college students attending one University in Gyeonggi-do. Results : The subjects' knowledge score about COVID-19 was 12.46±1.39 points, average educational needs score was 29.16±3.14 points, and prevention behavior performance survey result was 35.50±3.61 points. Moreover, positive correlation was observed between the knowledge about COVID-19 and educational needs (r=.203, p<.001) and knowledge and preventive behavior performance (r=.140, p=.005). Further, educational needs and preventive behavior performance demonstrated a statistically significant positive relationship (r=.311, p<.001). Conclusion : Therefore, organizing an educational program to acquire accurate knowledge is necessary to make it a habit for college students to practice preventive behavior against COVID-19.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.65-77
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• 2021

COVID-19 has recently impacted the world with the large numbers of infected and deaths. The development of effective COVID-19 vaccine has not been successful. Hence, people have a high concern on the infection of this disease. The infection information from the governmantal public organizations are mainly based on simple summary statistics. Consequently, it is hard to assess the infection risks of individual person and the current location of the person. In this paper, we present a machine learning-based software system that analyzes COVID-19 infection risks and guidelines for safe activities.This paper proposes a suite of risk factors regarding COVID-19 infection and deaths and methods to quantitatively measure the individual and group risks using the proposed metrics. The proposed system utilizes a clustering algorithms and various software approaches that reflect the information and features of inviduals and their geograpical locations.

• Food Science and Industry
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.244-263
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• 2022

Coronavirus, known as one of the causes of colds including mild upper respiratory tract disease in humans, has mutated into the infectious severe disease, COVID-19 through SARS and MERS. The mortality and symptoms of COVID-19 are related to the ability to regulate innate immunity, which acts as the first barrier against microorganisms and viruses. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for food that helps to strengthen immunity is rapidly increasing. Functional foods promote general health and alleviate the risk of disease symptoms by activating multiple biological functions. A recent, there is an interest in discovering functional substances that can induce enhancement of immunity and prevent viral infection as well as relieve disease symptoms. Therefore, this article focus to understand the concept of immune response and highlights the recent status of functional foods and research trends that can help prevent and treat viral infections by inducing the enhancement of immune function.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.23.1-23.12
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• 2022

Natural infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 or vaccination induces virus-specific immunity protecting hosts from infection and severe disease. While the infection-preventing immunity gradually declines, the severity-reducing immunity is relatively well preserved. Here, based on the different longevity of these distinct immunities, we develop a mathematical model to estimate courses of endemic transition of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Our analysis demonstrates that high viral transmission unexpectedly reduces the rates of progression to severe COVID-19 during the course of endemic transition despite increased numbers of infection cases. Our study also shows that high viral transmission amongst populations with high vaccination coverages paradoxically accelerates the endemic transition of COVID-19 with reduced numbers of severe cases. These results provide critical insights for driving public health policies in the era of 'living with COVID-19.'