Background In response to the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), plenty of control measures were proposed. To assess the impact of current control measures on the number of new case indices 14 countries with the highest confirmed cases, highest mortality rate, and having a close relationship with the outbreak’s origin; were selected and analyzed. Methods In the study, we analyzed the impact of five control measures, including centralized isolation of all confirmed cases, closure of schools, closure of public areas, closure of cities, and closure of borders of the 14 targeted countries according to their timing; by comparing its absolute effect average, its absolute effect cumulative, and its relative effect average. Results Our analysis determined that early centralized isolation of all confirmed cases was represented as a core intervention in significantly disrupting the pandemic’s spread. This strategy helped in successfully controlling the early stage of the outbreak when the total number of cases were under 100, without the requirement of the closure of cities and public areas, which would impose a negative impact on the society and its economy. However, when the number of cases increased with the apparition of new clusters, coordination between centralized isolation and non-pharmaceutical interventions facilitated control of the crisis efficiently. Conclusion Early centralized isolation of all confirmed cases should be implemented at the time of the first detected infectious case.

This paper considers a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) multiuser relay system where both source and relay harvest the energy from a power beacon (PB) equipped with multiple antennas and use this harvested energy to transmit signals to several users. Realistic nonlinear energy harvesting models are applied, and time switching protocols are adopted at source and relay. We successfully derive the exact closed-form expressions of the outage probability and throughput of the system over Nakagami-fading channels. Then, we use Monte-Carlo simulations to validate the correctness of these derived mathematical expressions. Numerical results show that a higher saturated power threshold of the nonlinear energy harvester results in lower outage probability and higher throughput. Moreover, the optimal time switching ratio that maximizes the throughput is smaller than the optimal time switching ratio that minimizes the outage probability.

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a common infectious disease in clinical practice. The objective of the study was to describe the susceptibility to antibiotics of isolated bacteria and to analyze the suitability of antibiotics regimens for treatment after having a drugs susceptibility test (DST) to bacteria in CAP patients. A retrospective study was conducted at National Hospital 74, after screening the medical records of CAP patients hospitalized in the first 6 months of 2021, 32 patients with isolated pathogenic bacteria were included in the study. The results revealed that the percentage of CAP patients who isolated pathogenic bacteria was low. There were 9 isolations of isolated bacteria, in addition to the common bacteria in CAP, also including isolations of bacteria that commonly cause hospital-acquired pneumonia such as P. aeruginosa and S. aureus. Different strains were tested with different antibiotics and had different antibiotic susceptibility despite the same isolations of bacteria. Some physicians have not noticed the role of DST results in the choice of antibiotics for treatment, such as treatment regimens are not suitable for the results of DST, accounting for a high percentage. Keywords: Community-acquired pneumonia, drugs susceptibility test.

Acute exacerbation of COPD (AECOPD) represents a pivotal point in the progression of COPD, which is a major cause of physician visits, hospitalization, and death in COPD patients. Bacterial respiratory infections have long been considered the main cause of exacerbations. This study was conducted with the aim of surveying the antibiotic usage characteristics in AECOPD of hospitalized patients at National Hospital 74. Data were collected from 265 patients hospitalized from January 1st, 2021 to March 31st, 2021. Most of the patients in the study were male (82.3%) and had comorbidities (74.7%). The most isolated bacteria were Haemophilus influenzae, Moraxella catarrhalis, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The majority of patients did not change their antibiotic regimen during treatment (61.5%). Alternative regimens in patients having regimen changes tended to be more focused on Pseudomonas aeruginosa than the first regimens. In the antibiotic-containing regimens tested antibiograms of 38 patients with isolated bacteria, most of the regimens had at least 1 antibiotic sensitive to the isolated bacteria (38.5%). The results of this study provide reliable information for making recommendations to contribute to improving the effectiveness of antibiotic usage in the AECOPD treatment at National Hospital 74, reducing the medical burden for patients and society.

Objective: This study aimed to compare the efficacy and the safety of ultrasound-guided continuous thoracic paravertebral block (CTPB) to the continuous thoracic epidural block (CTEB) for pain relief in patients undergoing lung surgery. Material and Methods: Our study included 102 patients after lung surgery at the 74 Central Hospital from 9/2013 to 12/2017. Patients were divided into 2 groups: CTPB group (n= 51) and CTEB group (n= 51). The primary outcomes were the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) scores when patients were at rest (VR) and movement (VM), the total used dosage of bupivacaine - fentanyl after surgery, plasma glucose, and cortisol levels, additional doses of morphine. Adverse reactions were recorded during the study. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the 74 Central Hospital. All participants provided their informed consent. Results: There were no significant differences between CTPB and CTEB groups in terms of the VR and the VM, total used doses of bupivacaine - fentanyl after 72-hours of surgery (p> 0.05), the increased plasma glucose, and plasma cortisol (p> 0.05), and the additional doses of morphine. The percent of patients in the CTPB group undergoing adverse reactions in the circular system and the respiratory system was lower than in the CTEB group. Adverse reactions included vascular puncture, urinary retention, and itch. Conclusion: Ultrasound-guided CTPB is an effective intervention of pain relief after lung surgery. Its analgesic efficacy is comparable to CTEB. Also, this method had fewer adverse reactions in circulation and respiration compared to the CTEB.