Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationships among organizational justice, innovative organization culture, perceived organizational support (POS), affective commitment and innovative behavior (IB). The mediating role of POS is tested within the relationship of justice dimensions, affective commitment and IB. Design/methodology/approach Data for this research were collected from 367 managerial and executive employees working in manufacturing and IT sector firms in Pakistan. Structural equation modeling was utilized to test hypothesized relationships. Findings Results indicate that organizational justice (distributive, procedural and interactional justice), innovative organization culture and POS are significantly related to affective commitment and employees’ IB. The findings also showed that organizational justice stimulates employees’ affective commitment and IB through mediating POS as well as directly. Research limitations/implications The main limitation of this study is its cross-sectional design and self-reported questionnaire data. This study is also limited to manufacturing and IT sector in Pakistan. Therefore, other sectors and geographical locations could be chosen for future research using a bigger sample size. Originality/value This study makes important theoretical contributions using social exchange theory. It also expands the research in the area of organizational justice dimensions, organizational culture and POS as antecedents of affective commitment and IB. This study is an exceptional investigation of justice, organization culture, POS, commitment and IB in the Pakistan cultural context.

Background The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant BA.2 sublineage has increased rapidly in Europe and Asia since January 2022. Here, we report the epidemiological and genomic analysis of a large single source BA.2 outbreak in a housing estate. Methods We analyzed the epidemiological information of a community outbreak of BA.2 (STY outbreak). We performed whole viral genome sequencing using the Oxford Nanopore MinION device. We calculated the doubling time of the outbreak within a housing estate. Results The STY outbreak involved a total of 768 individuals as of 5 th February 2022, including 432 residents, visitors or staff (56.3%) from a single housing estate (KC Estate). The outbreak at the KC Estate has a short doubling time of 1.28 days (95% confidence interval: 0.560-1.935). The outbreak was promptly controlled with the lockdown of 3 buildings within the housing estate. Whole genome sequencing was performed for 133 patients in the STY outbreak, including 106 residents of the KC Estate. All 133 sequences from the STY outbreak belonged to the BA.2 sublineage, and phylogenetic analysis showed that these sequences cluster together. All individuals in the STY cluster had the unique mutation C12525T. Conclusions Our study highlights the exceptionally high transmissibility of the Omicron variant BA.2 sublineage in Hong Kong where stringent measures are implemented as part of the elimination strategy. Continual genomic surveillance is crucial in monitoring the emergence of epidemiologically important Omicron sub-variants.

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Monitoring population protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2 variants is critical for risk assessment. We hypothesize that Hong Kong’s explosive Omicron BA.2 outbreak in early 2022 could be explained by low herd immunity. Our seroprevalence study using sera collected from January to December 2021 shows a very low prevalence of neutralizing antibodies (NAb) against ancestral virus among older adults. The age group-specific prevalence of NAb generally correlates with the vaccination uptake rate, but older adults have a much lower NAb seropositive rate than vaccination uptake rate. For all age groups, the seroprevalence of NAb against Omicron variant is much lower than that against the ancestral virus. Our study suggests that this BA.2 outbreak and the exceptionally high case-fatality rate in the ≥80 year-old age group (9.2%) could be attributed to the lack of protective immunity in the population, especially among the vulnerable older adults, and that ongoing sero-surveillance is essential.

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A novel scheme to perform the fusion of multiple images using the multivariate empirical mode decomposition (MEMD) algorithm is proposed. Standard multi-scale fusion techniques make a priori assumptions regarding input data, whereas standard univariate empirical mode decomposition (EMD)-based fusion techniques suffer from inherent mode mixing and mode misalignment issues, characterized respectively by either a single intrinsic mode function (IMF) containing multiple scales or the same indexed IMFs corresponding to multiple input images carrying different frequency information. We show that MEMD overcomes these problems by being fully data adaptive and by aligning common frequency scales from multiple channels, thus enabling their comparison at a pixel level and subsequent fusion at multiple data scales. We then demonstrate the potential of the proposed scheme on a large dataset of real-world multi-exposure and multi-focus images and compare the results against those obtained from standard fusion algorithms, including the principal component analysis (PCA), discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and non-subsampled contourlet transform (NCT). A variety of image fusion quality measures are employed for the objective evaluation of the proposed method. We also report the results of a hypothesis testing approach on our large image dataset to identify statistically-significant performance differences.

Background SARS-CoV-2 can infect human and other mammals, including hamsters. Syrian (Mesocricetus auratus) and dwarf (Phodopus sp.) hamsters are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection in the laboratory setting. However, pet shop-related COVID-19 outbreaks have not been reported. Methods We conducted an investigation of a pet shop-related COVID-19 outbreak due to Delta variant AY.127 involving at least three patients in Hong Kong. We tested samples collected from the patients, environment, and hamsters linked to this outbreak and performed whole genome sequencing analysis of the RT-PCR-positive samples. Results The patients included a pet shop keeper (Patient 1), a female customer of the pet shop (Patient 2), and the husband of Patient 2 (Patient 3). Investigation showed that 17.2% (5/29) and 25.5% (13/51) environmental specimens collected from the pet shop and its related warehouse, respectively, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA by RT-PCR. Among euthanized hamsters randomly collected from the storehouse, 3% (3/100) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA by RT-PCR and seropositive for anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody by ELISA. Whole genome analysis showed that although all genomes from the outbreak belonged to the Delta variant AY.127, there were at least 3 nucleotide differences among the genomes from different patients and the hamster cages. Genomic analysis suggests that multiple strains have emerged within the hamster population, and these different strains have likely transmitted to human either via direct contact or via the environment. Conclusions Our study demonstrated probable hamster-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2. As pet trading is common around the world, this can represent a route of international spread of this pandemic virus.

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