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Background: Identifying common factors that affect public adherence to COVID-19 containment measures can directly inform the development of official public health communication strategies. The present international longitudinal study aimed to examine whether prosociality, together with other theoretically derived motivating factors (self-efficacy, perceived susceptibility and severity of COVID-19, perceived social support) predict the change in adherence to COVID-19 containment strategies., Method: In wave 1 of data collection, adults from eight geographical regions completed online surveys beginning in April 2020, and wave 2 began in June and ended in September 2020. Hypothesized predictors included prosociality, self-efficacy in following COVID-19 containment measures, perceived susceptibility to COVID-19, perceived severity of COVID-19 and perceived social support. Baseline covariates included age, sex, history of COVID-19 infection and geographical regions. Participants who reported adhering to specific containment measures, including physical distancing, avoidance of non-essential travel and hand hygiene, were classified as adherence. The dependent variable was the category of adherence, which was constructed based on changes in adherence across the survey period and included four categories: non-adherence, less adherence, greater adherence and sustained adherence (which was designated as the reference category)., Results: In total, 2189 adult participants (82% female, 57.2% aged 31-59 years) from East Asia (217 [9.7%]), West Asia (246 [11.2%]), North and South America (131 [6.0%]), Northern Europe (600 [27.4%]), Western Europe (322 [14.7%]), Southern Europe (433 [19.8%]), Eastern Europe (148 [6.8%]) and other regions (96 [4.4%]) were analyzed. Adjusted multinomial logistic regression analyses showed that prosociality, self-efficacy, perceived susceptibility and severity of COVID-19 were significant factors affecting adherence. Participants with greater self-efficacy at wave 1 were less likely to become non-adherence at wave 2 by 26% (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.74; 95% CI, 0.71 to 0.77; P < .001), while those with greater prosociality at wave 1 were less likely to become less adherence at wave 2 by 23% (aOR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.75 to 0.79; P = .04)., Conclusions: This study provides evidence that in addition to emphasizing the potential severity of COVID-19 and the potential susceptibility to contact with the virus, fostering self-efficacy in following containment strategies and prosociality appears to be a viable public health education or communication strategy to combat COVID-19., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Introduction: We aim to understand the factors that drive citizens of different countries to adhere to recommended self-protective behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic., Methods: Survey data was obtained through the COVID-19 Impact project. We selected countries that presented a sufficiently complete time series and a statistically relevant sample for running the analysis: Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. To identify country-specific differences in self-protective behaviors, we used previous evidence and change-point detection analysis to establish variations across participating countries whose effect was then assessed by means of interrupted series analysis., Results: A high level of compliance with health and governmental authorities' recommendations were generally observed in all included countries. The level of stress decreased near the period when countries such as Cyprus, Greece or the United Kingdom relaxed their prevention behavior recommendations. However, this relaxation of behaviors did not occur in countries such as Germany, Ireland, or the United States. As observed in the change-point detection analysis, when the daily number of recorded COVID-19 cases decreased, people relaxed their protective behaviors (Cyprus, Greece, Ireland), although the opposite trend was observed in Switzerland., Discussion: COVID-19 self-protective behaviors were heterogeneous across countries examined. Our findings show that there is probably no single winning strategy for exiting future health crises, as similar interventions, aimed to promote self-protective behaviors, may be received differently depending on the specific population groups and on the particular geographical context in which they are implemented., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Alvarez-Galvez et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: Social media has changed the way we live and communicate, as well as offering unprecedented opportunities to improve many aspects of our lives, including health promotion and disease prevention. However, there is also a darker side to social media that is not always as evident as its possible benefits. In fact, social media has also opened the door to new social and health risks that are linked to health misinformation., Objective: This study aimed to study the role of social media bots during the COVID-19 outbreak., Methods: The Twitter streaming API was used to collect tweets regarding COVID-19 during the early stages of the outbreak. The Botometer tool was then used to obtain the likelihood of whether each account is a bot or not. Bot classification and topic-modeling techniques were used to interpret the Twitter conversation. Finally, the sentiment associated with the tweets was compared depending on the source of the tweet., Results: Regarding the conversation topics, there were notable differences between the different accounts. The content of nonbot accounts was associated with the evolution of the pandemic, support, and advice. On the other hand, in the case of self-declared bots, the content consisted mainly of news, such as the existence of diagnostic tests, the evolution of the pandemic, and scientific findings. Finally, in the case of bots, the content was mostly political. Above all, there was a general overriding tone of criticism and disagreement. In relation to the sentiment analysis, the main differences were associated with the tone of the conversation. In the case of self-declared bots, this tended to be neutral, whereas the conversation of normal users scored positively. In contrast, bots tended to score negatively., Conclusions: By classifying the accounts according to their likelihood of being bots and performing topic modeling, we were able to segment the Twitter conversation regarding COVID-19. Bot accounts tended to criticize the measures imposed to curb the pandemic, express disagreement with politicians, or question the veracity of the information shared on social media., (©Victor Suarez-Lledo, Javier Alvarez-Galvez. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 25.08.2022.)

The global pandemic caused by the emerging severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is threatening the health and economic systems worldwide. Despite the enormous efforts of scientists and clinicians around the world, there is still no drug or vaccine available worldwide for the treatment and prevention of the infection. A rapid strategy for the identification of new treatments is based on repurposing existing clinically approved drugs that show antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2 infection. In this study, after developing a quantitative structure activity relationship analysis based on molecular topology, several macrolide antibiotics are identified as promising SARS-CoV-2 spike protein inhibitors. To confirm the in silico results, the best candidates were tested against two human coronaviruses (i.e., 229E-GFP and SARS-CoV-2) in cell culture. Time-of-addition experiments and a surrogate model of viral cell entry were used to identify the steps in the virus life cycle inhibited by the compounds. Infection experiments demonstrated that azithromycin, clarithromycin, and lexithromycin reduce the intracellular accumulation of viral RNA and virus spread as well as prevent virus-induced cell death, by inhibiting the SARS-CoV-2 entry into cells. Even though the three macrolide antibiotics display a narrow antiviral activity window against SARS-CoV-2, it may be of interest to further investigate their effect on the viral spike protein and their potential in combination therapies for the coronavirus disease 19 early stage of infection.

This study aimed to compare the mediation of psychological flexibility, prosociality and coping in the impacts of illness perceptions toward COVID-19 on mental health among seven regions. Convenience sampled online survey was conducted between April and June 2020 from 9130 citizens in 21 countries. Illness perceptions toward COVID-19, psychological flexibility, prosociality, coping and mental health, socio-demographics, lockdown-related variables and COVID-19 status were assessed. Results showed that psychological flexibility was the only significant mediator in the relationship between illness perceptions toward COVID-19 and mental health across all regions (all p s = 0.001-0.021). Seeking social support was the significant mediator across subgroups (all p s range = <0.001-0.005) except from the Hong Kong sample ( p = 0.06) and the North and South American sample ( p = 0.53). No mediation was found for problem-solving (except from the Northern European sample, p = 0.009). Prosociality was the significant mediator in the Hong Kong sample ( p = 0.016) and the Eastern European sample ( p = 0.008). These findings indicate that fostering psychological flexibility may help to mitigate the adverse mental impacts of COVID-19 across regions. Roles of seeking social support, problem-solving and prosociality vary across regions.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic triggered vast governmental lockdowns. The impact of these lockdowns on mental health is inadequately understood. On the one hand such drastic changes in daily routines could be detrimental to mental health. On the other hand, it might not be experienced negatively, especially because the entire population was affected., Methods: The aim of this study was to determine mental health outcomes during pandemic induced lockdowns and to examine known predictors of mental health outcomes. We therefore surveyed n = 9,565 people from 78 countries and 18 languages. Outcomes assessed were stress, depression, affect, and wellbeing. Predictors included country, sociodemographic factors, lockdown characteristics, social factors, and psychological factors., Results: Results indicated that on average about 10% of the sample was languishing from low levels of mental health and about 50% had only moderate mental health. Importantly, three consistent predictors of mental health emerged: social support, education level, and psychologically flexible (vs. rigid) responding. Poorer outcomes were most strongly predicted by a worsening of finances and not having access to basic supplies., Conclusions: These results suggest that on whole, respondents were moderately mentally healthy at the time of a population-wide lockdown. The highest level of mental health difficulties were found in approximately 10% of the population. Findings suggest that public health initiatives should target people without social support and those whose finances worsen as a result of the lockdown. Interventions that promote psychological flexibility may mitigate the impact of the pandemic., Competing Interests: One of the authors is employed by a commercial affiliation: Private Pratice, Poland. This affiliation provided support in the form of salaries for author BK, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. No other authors have competing interests to declare.

B Introduction: b Lymphoma patients may be especially vulnerable to COVID-19, due to the immune dysregulation caused by the lymphoma itself and the antitumor treatments. B Conclusions: b Our results confirm a high mortality in patients with lymphoma hospitalized before 2022 for COVID-19, especially in those >=70 years old, with cardiac comorbidities, heavily pretreated or with active lymphoma. With a median follow-up of 137 days (6-597), 118 patients have died (102 from COVID-19), with an estimated 90-day OS of 72% (95% CI 67%-76%) and 64% (95% CI 58%-69%) in the overall series and hospitalized patients, respectively. [Extracted from the article]