Rui-Fonseca Pinto, the current Director of the School of Health Sciences from the Polytechnic of Leiria, and Rui Passadouro da Fonseca, medical doctor at ACeS Pinhal Litoral, both researchers at ciTechCare, are co-authors of the article “Optimal control of the COVID-19 pandemic: controlled sanitary deconfinement in Portugal”, published on February 10th in Scientific Reports (Nature).The authors propose a forecasting mathematical model to anticipate the consequences of political decisions during the COVID-19 pandemics, thus being a public health decision support tool. This work allows testing various scenarios of pandemic management (e.g., closure of sectors of the economy, partial/total compliance with protection

Catarina Marques, Specialist Nurse in Intensive Care of Centro Hospitalar de Leiria, EPE and PhD student at ciTechCare, published on January 27 an opinion article in the Diário de Leiria on the importance of hand hygiene, highlighting the fundamental role of this gesture to fight the pandemic and identifying the various forms of hand hygiene.Catarina points out that “The hands are covered mostly by bacteria, but also fungi, viruses and protozoa (…). It is through touch (contact) of surfaces (…) that these microorganisms reach our hands, and it is also through this transmission route that they can be left on

Salvato Feijó, collaborator member of ciTechCare, current clinical director of Centro Hospitalar de Leiria and director of the Pulmonology Departmentof the same hospital, was interviewed by Jornal de Leiria on January 28th, where he spoke about the challenge that the Leiria Hospital Center, like other hospitals in the country, is facing due to the new wave of COVID-19. “We are in a race against the pandemic time to gain some advantage, given the epidemiological evolution. The situation is very serious.” says Salvato. “What we are experiencing in hospitals is not comparable with anyother time. (…) The health system mustrespond. (Alprazolam)

ciTechCare has another publication, this time an Editorial with the title “Eccentric Exercise in COPD: Take It or Leave It?” (doi: 10.1016/j.chest.2020.10.021), published on Chest, with the authorship of Joana Cruz, lecturer at the School of Health Sciences, Polytechnic of Leiria, and researcher at ciTechCare, and Chris Burtin, lecturer and researcher at REVAL-BIOMED, Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences (Faculteit Revalidatiewetenschappen), Universiteit Hasselt (Belgium).This Editorial presents a critical review of the role of eccentric exercise in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), based on a recent article published in the same journal, “Submaximal eccentric cycling in people with COPD: acute whole- body cardiopulmonary

Sónia Gonçalves Pereira, researcher at ciTechCare, published an opinion article on January 14, in Jornal de Leiria, with a topic that is even more distressing today – the pandemic situation in which we all live in, the feeling of insecurity when looking at the present and the future, and the need for adaptation. Sónia emphasizes that «the society is ‘made of change’. (…) Today’s society has already experienced the disturbance. Adaptation is now needed. We need to give it time (and space). Tomorrow.» Read full article HERE.