Background A novel variant of SARS-CoV-2, the Delta variant of concern (VOC, also known as lineage B.1.617.2), is fast becoming the dominant strain globally. We reported the epidemiological, viral, and clinical characteristics of hospitalized patients infected with the Delta VOC during the local outbreak in Guangzhou, China. Methods We extracted the epidemiological and clinical information pertaining to the 159 cases infected with the Delta VOC across seven transmission generations between May 21 and June 18, 2021. The whole chain of the Delta VOC transmission was described. Kinetics of viral load and clinical characteristics were compared with a cohort of wild-type infection in 2020 admitted to the Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital. Findings There were four transmission generations within the first ten days. The Delta VOC yielded a significantly shorter incubation period (4.0 vs. 6.0 days), higher viral load (20.6 vs. 34.0, cycle threshold of the ORF1a/b gene), and a longer duration of viral shedding in pharyngeal swab samples (14.0 vs. 8.0 days) compared with the wild-type strain. In cases with critical illness, the proportion of patients over the age of 60 was higher in the Delta VOC group than in the wild-type strain (100.0% vs. 69.2%, p = 0.03). The Delta VOC had a higher risk than wild-type infection in deterioration to critical status (hazards ratio 2.98 [95%CI 1.29-6.86]; p = 0.01). Interpretation Infection with the Delta VOC is characterized by markedly increased transmissibility, viral loads and risk of disease progression compared with the wild-type strain, calling for more intensive prevention and control measures to contain future outbreaks. Funding National Grand Program, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Guangdong Provincial Department of Science and Technology, Guangzhou Laboratory

Abstract-Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is envisioned to be one of the most beneficial technologies for next generation wireless networks due to its enhanced performance compared to other conventional radio access techniques. Although the principle of NOMA allows multiple users to use the same frequency resource, due to decoding complication, information of users in practical systems cannot be decoded successfully if many of them use the same channel. Consequently, assigned spectrum of a system needs to be split into multiple subchannels in order to multiplex that among many users. Uplink resource allocation for such systems is more complicated compared to the downlink ones due to the individual users' power constraints and discrete nature of subchannel assignment. In this paper, we propose an uplink subchannel and power allocation scheme for such systems. Due to the NP-hard and non-convex nature of the problem, the complete solution, that optimizes both subchannel assignment and power allocation jointly, is intractable. Consequently, we solve the problem in two steps. First, based on the assumption that the maximal power level of a user is subdivided equally among its allocated subchannels, we apply many-to-many matching model to solve the subchannel-user mapping problem. Then, in order to enhance the performance of the system further, we apply iterative water-filling and geometric programming two power allocation techniques to allocate power in each allocated subchannel-user slot optimally. Extensive simulation has been conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. The results demonstrate that the proposed scheme always outperforms all existing works in this context under all possible scenarios.

Background The dynamic trends of pulmonary function in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) survivors since discharge have been rarely described. We aimed to describe the changes of lung function and identify risk factors for impaired diffusion capacity.Methods Non-critical COVID-19 patients admitted to the Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital, China, were enrolled from March to June 2020. Subjects were prospectively followed up with pulmonary function tests at discharge, three and six months after discharge.Findings Eighty-six patients completed diffusion capacity tests at three timepoints. The mean diffusion capacity for carbon monoxide (D LCO )% pred was 79.8% at discharge and significantly improved to 84.9% at Month-3. The transfer coefficient of the lung for carbon monoxide (K CO )% pred significantly increased from 91.7% at discharge to 95.7% at Month-3. Both of them showed no further improvement at Month-6. The change rates of D LCO % pred and K CO % pred were significantly higher in 0−3 months than in 3−6 months. The alveolar ventilation (V A ) improved continuously during the follow-ups. At Month-6, impaired D LCO % pred was associated with being female ; p = 0.004) and peak total lesion score (TLS) of chest CT > 8.5 ]; p = 0.007). D LCO % pred and K CO % pred were worse in females at discharge. And in patients with impaired diffusion capacity, females' D LCO % pred recovered slower than males.Interpretation The first three months is the critical recovery period for diffusion capacity. The impaired diffusion capacity was more severe and recovered slower in females than in males. Early pulmonary rehabilitation and individualized interventions for recovery are worthy of further investigations.

of assessing the cough severity mainly include the cough scores, visual analogue scale (3) and QoL questionnaires like the Leicester cough questionnaire (LCQ) (4), coughspecific quality of life questionnaire (CQLQ) (5) etc. They are easy to score and also practical for a longitudinal comparison in clinical practice. However, they are susceptible to individual factors and are unlikely to be used for a horizontal comparison. Besides, cough can be assessed objectively with cough frequency monitoring and cough challenge tests. Cough monitoring records cough Review Article on the 3rd International Cough Conference

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