Purpose The objective of this study was to compare the strategies adopted by the United Kingdom, Italy, China, India, and Saudi Arabia to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and Methods A review of the literature was carried out to collect data on the strategies used by China, Italy, India, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The global analysis of 65 published literature references allowed observing the effectiveness and efficiency of the strategies used by these countries to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Results Both mitigation and suppression strategies were adopted by the United Kingdom, India, Italy, China, and Saudi Arabia to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was observed that China has achieved a greater success in flattening the curve compared to the other countries. In China, few new daily cases have occurred since March, and it has been the only country that has managed to keep the COVID-19 pandemic under control. On the other hand, reductions in the number of daily cases (since May 2020) were detected in the United Kingdom, Italy, and Saudi Arabia (since July 2020). Also, during the last 3 months (June, July and August) India has shown the highest growth in the total number of confirmed cases and in the number of new daily cases, compared to the mentioned countries. Conclusion The review of the strategies adopted by China, India, the United Kingdom, Italy and Saudi Arabia to combat the COVID-19 pandemic can guide countries in the design and development of mitigation and suppression approaches to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Containment strategies such as lockdowns cannot continue in the long term. Therefore, countries must adopt mitigation and prevention strategies to protect people from infection and learn to live with the virus.

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Background Some previous studies have investigated the attitudes of healthcare professionals towards certain aspects of the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition, some general frameworks have been proposed to manage the pandemic. Objective The purpose of this article was to analyze the attitudes of healthcare practitioners in Saudi Arabia towards the treatment of patients with COVID-19, work planning of practitioners, leadership approaches to manage the pandemic, sharing information strategies, medical errors, compliance with procedures, and challenges faced by the practitioners. Furthermore, another objective was to propose a general framework for managing the COVID-19 outbreak in Saudi Arabia. Methods To achieve these purposes, a survey was designed based on an online questionnaire that was initially sent via WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, and email to 336 healthcare practitioners working in 7 hospitals in Saudi Arabia. The response rate was 30.4%. Results The outcomes indicated that healthcare practitioners in Saudi Arabia had positive attitudes towards effective communication and interaction between health professionals and patients, leadership and maintenance of team coordination, work planning, communication and cooperation between team members, training and skills development of healthcare professionals, implementing strict procedures to avoid errors and control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, maintaining an adequate supply of medicines and medical equipment, and obtaining the support of the government, the community, and the people. Conclusion Based on the findings, it was possible to suggest that the management of health care operations related to the COVID-19 outbreak in Saudi Arabia requires effective collaboration and information sharing among various stakeholders. In this sense, communication, effective leadership, coordination and work planning, adequate treatment for patients, strict compliance with hospital rules and procedures, preventive and regulatory measures, and training and support for health professionals, were parameters considered in the general qualitative framework suggested in this study for managing the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia. The propositions presented in this study can help the Saudi Arabian government implement an effective plan to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in this country.

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted every aspect of human lives including health, businesses, and lifestyles. In spite of governments implementing various strategies across the globe, the pandemic is still expanding with increasing numbers of positive cases. In addition, countries are reopening and easing lockdown restrictions in order to get their economies back on track, and this has led to an increase in the transmission of novel coronavirus. Therefore, it is essential to regularly review the containment strategies employed in different regions in order to understand the characteristics of COVID-19 transmission and to formulate a future course of actions. Objective The objective of this study is to review the COVID-19 transmission statistics in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and European Union (EU) countries, and to compare these data with the various containment strategies implemented for containing the spread of the virus. Methods A review method was adopted along with different statistical methods for comparing and analyzing COVID-19 data and containment strategies. Transmission types and the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) in the countries in both regions are used to present the current state of the pandemic. In addition, changes in the number of COVID-19 cases are compared with the mitigation and suppression strategies implemented in both regions and their impact is analyzed. Results Countries in the EU were slow in reacting to the pandemic, as delays are observed in the implementation of mitigation strategies. However, suppression strategies were implemented soon after mitigation strategies. GCC countries, on the other hand, were quick to react, and they implemented both mitigation and suppression strategies simultaneously, as soon as the pandemic emerged. The CFR was found to be low among GCC countries compared to EU countries. In addition, a second wave of transmission was observed in the EU, whereas in GCC countries there has been no second wave, although a gradual increase in the number of cases is observed. Community transmission was observed among the majority of countries in both GCC and EU countries. Conclusions With the reopening of markets, the focus of governments should be on developing integrated user-centric preventive strategies, with a blend of awareness creation, motivation, and support.

The amount of time and money required to finish a software project and distribute the final product increases when there are bugs in the programme. Software procedures like defect monitoring and repair may be both costly and time-consuming to complete. Because it is difficult to locate and correct every defect in a product, it is essential that the negative effect of those defects be minimised in order to provide a result that is of better overall quality. The process of identifying troublesome sections of software code is known as software defect prediction. This paper presents an optimized machine learningenabled model for software fault prediction to improve software quality. PC1 data set is fed as input data in this model. Important features are selected by ant colony optimization (ACO) technique. Selected features are fed as input to support vector machine. Training and testing of SVM is performed by PC1 data set. Performance of ACO SVM Ant Colony Optimization Support Vector Machine is compared with SVM, Naive Bayes classifier and K-Nearest Neighbour classifier. The performance of ACO-based SVM is better for software fault classification and prediction.