Since the first known case of a COVID-19 infected patient in Wuhan, China on 8 December 2019, COVID-19 has spread to more than 200 countries, causing a worldwide public health crisis. The existing literature fails to examine what caused this sudden outbreak from a crisis management perspective. This article attempts to fill this research gap through analysis of big data, officially released information and other social media sources to understand the root cause of the crisis as it relates to China's current management system and public health policy. The article draws the following conclusions: firstly, strict government control over information was the main reason for the early silencing of media announcements, which directly caused most people to be unprepared and unaware of COVID-19. Secondly, a choice between addressing a virus with an unknown magnitude and nature, and mitigating known public panic during a politically and culturally sensitive time, lead to falsehood and concealment. Thirdly, the weak autonomous management power of local public health management departments is not conducive for providing a timely response to the crisis. Finally, the privatization of many state-owned hospitals led to the unavailability of public health medical resources to serve affected patients in the Wuhan and Hubei Province. This article suggests that China should adopt a Singaporean-style public health crisis information management system to ensure information disclosure and information symmetry and should use it to monitor public health crises in real time. In addition, the central government should adopt the territorial administration model of a public health crisis and increase investment in public health in China.
Public health interventions have been implemented to contain the outbreak of COVID-19 in New York City. However, the assessment of those interventions, e.g. social distancing, cloth face covering based on the real-world data from filed study is lacking. The SEIR compartmental model was used to evaluate the social distancing and cloth face covering effect on the daily culminative laboratory confirmed cases in NYC, and COVID-19 transmissibility. The latter was measured by Rt reproduction numbers in three phases which were based on two interventions in implemented in the timeline. The transmissibility decreased from phase 1 to phase 3. The Initial, R0 was 4.60 in Phase 1 without any intervention. After social distancing, the Rt value was reduced by 68%, while after the mask recommendation, it was further reduced by ~60%. Interventions resulted in significant reduction of confirmed case numbers, relative to predicted values based on SEIR model without intervention. Our findings highlight the effectiveness of social distancing and cloth face coverings in slowing down the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in NYC.
Introduction: Smoking prevalence among the medical students is high in China. Therefore, understanding the smoking motivations of medical students is crucial for smoking control, but currently there are no scales questionnaires customized for probing the smoking motivations of medical students. This aim of study was to test and modify a questionnaire for investigating smoking motivations among medical students. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 1,125 medical students at Xuzhou Medical College in China in 2012.The model fit and validity was assessed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and the reliability was tested by single-item reliability, composite reliability, and item-total correlation. Results: The prevalence of smoking was 9.84 % among study population. In the modified scales, the global fit indices identified a CFI value of 0.96, TLI was 0.96, and the RMSEA was 0.063. CFA supported the two dimensional structure of the instrument. The average variance extracted ranged from 0.45 to 0.62. All single-item reliability scores were greater than 0.20, and the composite reliability ranged from 0.74 to 0.91. Conclusion: Modified scales could be the preliminary instrument used in evaluating the smoking motivations of medical students. However, it should be further assessed using other forms and methods of validity and reliability, additional motivations of smoking, and the survey of other medical colleges in China.
Background The aim of this study was to investigate the application of remote learning and virtual microscopy in oral histopathology teaching, a unique experience in China. The oral histopathology teaching in Nanjing Medical University has been extraordinary. Material and Methods 98 third-year dental students of Grade 2016 took oral histopathology theoretical course face-to-face in 2019 (Traditional group). The 94 participants of Grade 2017 took online oral histopathology course using digital methods(E-Learning platform and Virtual Simulation Experiment Teaching Center for Dentistry) in 2020. During the practical laboratory sessions, the students in both Traditional group and Online group observed the same glass slides for morphological learning. A questionnaire survey explored students' attitudes towards the remote online learning. Results: The mean Theory test scores of the Online group (80.93±12.15) were significantly higher than those of the Traditional group (73.65±8.46) ( P < 0.01). The mean total scores of the Online group (82.94±10.76) were significantly higher than those of the Traditional group (77.25±7.55) ( P < 0.01). The percentage of high total test score (test score > 85) of the Online group (54%) was also significantly higher than that of the Traditional group (15%) ( P < 0.01). Furthermore, both remote learning and virtual microscopy courses were well accepted by students according to the questionnaire. Conclusions This study found that remote learning and virtual technology have a positive impact on oral histopathology. The findings reveal that the application of remote online learning has enhanced oral histopathology teaching in China. Key words: Oral histopathology, dental undergraduate students, virtual microscopy, remote online learning, questionnaire.
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