Abstract:BACKGROUND: The dangerous SARS-CoV-2 virus first emerged in China in December 2019 and has rapidly spread worldwide. Currently, it has affected more than 2,850,000 people. No vaccine or drug is available yet, and therefore researchers and scientists are striving to identify potential drugs or vaccines for combating this virus. We were unable to find any review of the literature or analysis on ongoing registered clinical trials that reported diagnostic tests, therapeutics, vaccines and devices for COVID-19 alon… Show more
“…On March 8, 2020, the first COVID-19 infected case in Bangladesh was identified [12], and till now, 544544 people were infected. However, after detecting the first COVID-19 case, the government has closed all physical activities in the educational institute [17] from End of March 2020. Due to the restriction on physical classes, many educational institutes started online teaching and learning activities.…”
The devastating COVID-19 pandemic forced academia to go virtual. Educational institutions around the world have stressed online learning programs in the aftermath of the pandemic. However, because of insufficient access to ICT, a substantial number of students failed to harness the opportunity of online learning. This study explores the latent digital divide exhibited during the COVID-19 pandemic while online learning activities are emphasized among Bangladeshi students. It also explores the digital divide exposure and the significant underlying drivers of the divide. A cross-sectional survey was employed to collect quantitative data mixed with open-ended questions to collect qualitative information from the student community. The findings revealed that despite the majority of students have physical access to ICT but only 32.5% of students could attend online classes seamlessly, 34.1% of the students reported the data prices as the critical barrier, and 39.8% of students identified the poor network infrastructure is the significant barrier for them to participate in online learning activities. This paper aimed to explore the underlying issues of the digital divide among Bangladeshi students to assist relevant stakeholders (e.g., the Bangladesh government, Educational Institutions, Researchers) in providing the necessary insights to arrange for students to undertake online learning activities successfully.
“…On March 8, 2020, the first COVID-19 infected case in Bangladesh was identified [12], and till now, 544544 people were infected. However, after detecting the first COVID-19 case, the government has closed all physical activities in the educational institute [17] from End of March 2020. Due to the restriction on physical classes, many educational institutes started online teaching and learning activities.…”
The devastating COVID-19 pandemic forced academia to go virtual. Educational institutions around the world have stressed online learning programs in the aftermath of the pandemic. However, because of insufficient access to ICT, a substantial number of students failed to harness the opportunity of online learning. This study explores the latent digital divide exhibited during the COVID-19 pandemic while online learning activities are emphasized among Bangladeshi students. It also explores the digital divide exposure and the significant underlying drivers of the divide. A cross-sectional survey was employed to collect quantitative data mixed with open-ended questions to collect qualitative information from the student community. The findings revealed that despite the majority of students have physical access to ICT but only 32.5% of students could attend online classes seamlessly, 34.1% of the students reported the data prices as the critical barrier, and 39.8% of students identified the poor network infrastructure is the significant barrier for them to participate in online learning activities. This paper aimed to explore the underlying issues of the digital divide among Bangladeshi students to assist relevant stakeholders (e.g., the Bangladesh government, Educational Institutions, Researchers) in providing the necessary insights to arrange for students to undertake online learning activities successfully.
“…On March 8, 2020, the first COVID-19 infected case in Bangladesh was identified, and till now, 896770 people were infected [12,59]. However, after detecting the first COVID-19 case, the government has closed all physical activities in the educational institute from the end of March 2020 [17]. Due to the restriction on physical classes, many educational institutes started online teaching and learning activities.…”
The devastating COVID-19 pandemic forced academia to go virtual. Educational institutions around the world have stressed online learning programs in the aftermath of the pandemic. However, because of insufficient access to ICT, a substantial number of students failed to harness the opportunity of online learning. This study explores the latent digital divide exhibited during the COVID-19 pandemic while online learning activities are emphasized among Bangladeshi students. It also investigates the digital divide exposure and the significant underlying drivers of the divide. A cross-sectional survey was employed to collect quantitative data mixed with open-ended questions to collect qualitative information from the student community. The findings revealed that despite the majority of students have physical access to ICT but only 32.5% of students could attend online classes seamlessly, 34.1% of the students reported the data prices as the critical barrier, and 39.8% of students identified the poor network infrastructure is the significant barrier for them to participate in online learning activities. Although most students possess physical access to the device and the Internet, they face the first-level digital divide due to the quality of access and maintaining subscriptions. Consequently, they fail to take advantage of physical access, resulting in the third-level digital divide (Utility Gap) and submerging them into a digital divide cycle. This paper aimed to explore the underlying issues of the digital divide among Bangladeshi students to assist relevant stakeholders (e.g., the Bangladesh government, Educational Institutions, Researchers) in providing the necessary insights and theoretical understanding to arrange adequate support for students to undertake conducive online learning activities.
“…To date, 12 other studies have analyzed registered COVID-19 clinical studies [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] (see studies (as of June 18, 2020) on the recruitment and clinical outcomes using the EHR data of COVID-19 patients in Columbia University Irving Medical Center [22]. While most of these studies analyzed the basic characteristics of the included trials, some studies further analyzed the interventions [18][19][20][21], locations [13,14,18], data monitoring characteristics [14], timing of the registration and enrollment [15,21], outcomes [19,20], risk of biases [16], Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) keywords (Words or phrases that best describe the protocol) [19], sample size [17], and a subset of eligibility criteria [16,22]. Nonetheless, existing studies have not comprehensively investigated the qualitative eligibility criteria and the consideration of known risk factors of severe illnesses in COVID-19 clinical studies.…”
Objective: The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), broke out in December 2019, is a global pandemic. Rapidly in the past few months, a large number of clinical studies have been initiated worldwide to find effective therapeutics, vaccines, and preventive strategies. In this study, we aim to understand the landscape of COVID-19 clinical research and identify the gaps and issues that may cause difficulty in recruitment and the lack of population representativeness.
Materials and Methods: We analyzed 2,034 COVID-19 studies registered in the largest public registry - ClinicalTrials.gov. Leveraging natural language processing, descriptive analysis, association analysis, and clustering analysis, we characterized COVID-19 clinical studies by phase and design features. Particularly, we analyzed their eligibility criteria to understand: (1) whether they considered the reported underlying health conditions that may lead to severe illnesses, and (2) if these studies excluded older adults, either explicitly or implicitly, which may reduce the generalizability of these studies in older adults.
Results: The 5 most frequently tested drugs are Hydroxychloroquine (N=148), Azithromycin (N=46), Tocilizumab (N=29), Lopinavir (N=20), and Ritonavir (N=20). Most trials did not have an upper age limit and did not exclude patients with common chronic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes that are prevalent in older adults. However, known risk factors that may lead to severe illnesses have not been adequately considered by existing studies.
Conclusions: A careful examination of the registered COVID-19 clinical studies can identify the research gaps and inform future COVID-19 trial design towards balanced internal validity and generalizability.
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