The elderly population is rapidly growing worldwide. By the year 2050, the elderly population will increase up to 2.1 billion. Among them, most of the elderly will be from low- to middle-income countries. India and China are the most populated countries in the world, and also they fall in the category of low- to middle-income countries. The elderly population in these two countries is also growing rapidly and creating an economic burden of geriatric care. On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic greatly affected the healthcare system. A higher mortality rate was documented among the elderly due to COVID-19; hence, it was a challenge for them to deal with a high load of the elderly population during the pandemic. These challenges never sublimate even during the post-COVID era. Mental health issues, such as stress, anxiety, and depression, are major drawbacks of COVID-19 among the elderly due to excessive fear of getting reinfection of COVID-19 and fear of social withdrawal. These factors are affecting healthy aging among the elderly. Even though WHO has taken few initiatives for healthy aging, proper interventional strategies are required to prevent mental illness and improve mental health among the elderly during the post-COVID era.

In this review, we have proposed a few mind-body strategies like Yoga, Exercise, Tai-Chi, and Qigong to improve mental health and holistic patient-centric implementation of those practices in the elderly during the post-COVID era.

Mind-body interventions can be used in a holistic patient-centric manner to prevent infectious diseases, and post-infection consequences. Further, it enhances immunomodulation along with mental health in the elderly.

Background In the face of the escalating COVID-19 pandemic amid shortages of medications and vaccines, a Vietnamese herbal formula known as Shen Cao Gan Jiang Tang (SCGJT) has been put into use for non-severe COVID-19 patients. This study aims to assess its efficacy and safety. Methods A multicenter, open-label, randomized controlled trial was conducted on 300 patients with non-severe COVID-19, randomly assigned into two groups: 150 receiving standard care (control group) and 150 receiving additional SCGJT for 10 days (SCGJT group). Time to resolution of symptoms, symptom severity, disease progression, time to discharge, the National Early Warning Score 2 (NEWS2) score, usage of Western drugs, time to viral clearance, and safety outcomes were continuously monitored. Results The SCGJT group exhibited faster symptom resolution (median: 9 vs. 13 days) and improved symptom severity, including cough, fatigue, hypogeusia, muscle aches, nasal congestion, runny nose, and sore throat, compared to the control group. Although there was a lower rate of severe progression in the SCGJT group (0.7% vs. 4.7%), the difference was not statistically significant. The time to discharge was significantly shorter in the SCGJT group (median: 7 vs. 8 days). Changes in the NEWS2 score did not show significant differences between groups. SCGJT has been demonstrated to reduce the need for symptomatic relief medications and hasten SARS-CoV-2 viral clearance. No adverse events were reported, and routine tests showed no significant differences. Conclusions SCGJT is safe and has potential clinical efficacy in non-severe COVID-19 patients. However, data regarding preventing severe progression remains inconclusive. Further studies should be conducted in light of the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has been impacting healthcare in various ways worldwide and cancer patients are greatly affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The reorganization of the health facilities in order to supply the high demand resulting from the aforementioned infection as well as the social isolation measures led to impairments for the diagnosis and follow-up of patients with gastrointestinal cancers, which has had an impact on the prognosis of the oncologic patients. In that context, health authorities and organizations have elaborated new guidelines with specific recommendations for the management of individuals with gastrointestinal neoplasms during the pandemic. Of note, oncologic populations seem to be more susceptible to unfavorable outcomes when exposed to SARS-CoV-2 infection and some interactions involving virus, tumor, host immune system and anticancer therapies are probably related to the poorer prognosis observed in those COVID-19 patients. Moreover, vaccination stands out as the main prevention method against severe SARS-CoV-2 infection and some particularities have been observed regarding the seroconversion of vaccinated oncologic patients including those with gastrointestinal malignancies. In this minireview, we gather updated information regarding the influence of the pandemic in the diagnosis of gastrointestinal neoplasms, new recommendations for the management of gastrointestinal cancer patients, the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in those individuals and the scenario of the vaccination against the virus in that population.

While the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic placed a heavy burden on healthcare systems worldwide, it also induced urgent mobilisation of research teams to develop treatments preventing or curing the disease and its consequences. It has, therefore, challenged critical care research to rapidly focus on specific fields while forcing critical care physicians to make difficult ethical decisions. This narrative review aims to summarise critical care research -from organisation to research fields- in this pandemic setting and to highlight opportunities to improve research efficiency in the future, based on what is learned from COVID-19. This pressure on research revealed, i.e., i/ the need to harmonise regulatory processes between countries, allowing simplified organisation of international research networks to improve their efficiency in answering large-scale questions; ii/ the importance of developing translational research from which therapeutic innovations can emerge; iii/ the need for improved triage and predictive scores to rationalise admission to the intensive care unit. In this context, key areas for future critical care research and better pandemic preparedness are artificial intelligence applied to healthcare, characterisation of long-term symptoms, and ethical considerations. Such collaborative research efforts should involve groups from both high and low-to-middle income countries to propose worldwide solutions. As a conclusion, stress tests on healthcare organisations should be viewed as opportunities to design new research frameworks and strategies. Worldwide availability of research networks ready to operate is essential to be prepared for next pandemics. Importantly, researchers and physicians should prioritise realistic and ethical goals for both clinical care and research.

The exceptional production of research evidence during the COVID-19 pandemic required deployment of scientists to act in advisory roles to aid policy-makers in making evidence-informed decisions. The unprecedented breadth, scale and duration of the pandemic provides an opportunity to understand how science advisors experience and mitigate challenges associated with insufficient, evolving and/or conflicting evidence to inform public health decision-making.

To explore critically the challenges for advising evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM) in pandemic contexts, particularly around non-pharmaceutical control measures, from the perspective of experts advising policy-makers during COVID-19 globally.

We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 27 scientific experts and advisors who are/were engaged in COVID-19 EIDM representing four WHO regions and 11 countries (Australia, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Ghana, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Sweden, Uganda, UK, USA) from December 2020 to May 2021. Participants informed decision-making at various and multiple levels of governance, including local/city (n=3), state/provincial (n=8), federal or national (n=20), regional or international (n=3) and university-level advising (n=3). Following each interview, we conducted member checks with participants and thematically analysed interview data using NVivo for Mac software.

Findings from this study indicate multiple overarching challenges to pandemic EIDM specific to interpretation and translation of evidence, including the speed and influx of new, evolving, and conflicting evidence; concerns about scientific integrity and misinterpretation of evidence; the limited capacity to assess and produce evidence, and adapting evidence from other contexts; multiple forms of evidence and perspectives needed for EIDM; the need to make decisions quickly and under conditions of uncertainty; and a lack of transparency in how decisions are made and applied.

Findings suggest the urgent need for global EIDM guidance that countries can adapt for in-country decisions as well as coordinated global response to future pandemics.