Awareness and likelihood of accepting COVID-19 vaccines among the university students of Bangladesh

Massive vaccination is very important to end the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This study determined the willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccine by the university students of Bangladesh and identified their apprehension about the effectiveness and safety of COVID-19 vaccines. Students were invited to complete an online cross-sectional survey (April 3 to June 10, 2021) to explore the intention to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and other factors regarding the responsiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine. Among the 191 respondent students, 52.9% willingly agreed to receive a vaccine, where the remaining was either not decided yet (27.7%) or was not intended to get vaccinated (15.7%). The odd of getting a vaccine were only 1.15. About 83.2% of students were conscious about the severity of COVID-19 and many students responded that they are well-versed about vaccine activity (67.5%) and risk factors (66%). Among the approved vaccines, most students preferred the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine ChAdOx1 (38.7%) and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b2 (34%). As some of the students still have lesser intent to accept vaccines, public health officials need to be more proactive to focus on vaccine safety and benefits to enhance vaccine coverage among university students of Bangladesh

Awareness and likelihood of accepting COVID-19 vaccines among the university students of Bangladesh

Massive vaccination is very important to end the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This study determined the willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccine by the university students of Bangladesh and identified their apprehension about the effectiveness and safety of COVID-19 vaccines. Students were invited to complete an online cross-sectional survey (April 3 to June 10, 2021) to explore the intention to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and other factors regarding the responsiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine. Among the 191 respondent students, 52.9% willingly agreed to receive a vaccine, where the remaining was either not decided yet (27.7%) or was not intended to get vaccinated (15.7%). The odd of getting a vaccine were only 1.15. About 83.2% of students were conscious about the severity of COVID-19 and many students responded that they are well-versed about vaccine activity (67.5%) and risk factors (66%). Among the approved vaccines, most students preferred the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine ChAdOx1 (38.7%) and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b2 (34%). As some of the students still have lesser intent to accept vaccines, public health officials need to be more proactive to focus on vaccine safety and benefits to enhance vaccine coverage among university students of Bangladesh.</jats:p

Thermal characterization of chicken feather/PLA biocomposites

In this work, thermal properties of composites from chicken feather fiber (CFF) and polylactic acid (PLA) were investigated. CFF/PLA green composites were manufactured by extrusion and injection molding. Short and long fibers (3 and 20 mm) were used at different contents (2, 5 and 10 mass%). The effects of fiber concentration and fiber length on thermal properties of CFF/PLA composites were studied. Thermal properties of CFF/PLA composites were examined through differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TG) and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). From the experiments, it was found that addition of CFF was effective to improve the thermal properties of PLA. The DSC results showed that heat flow increased with the increase in CFF content on the glass transition, on the crystallization temperature and on melting temperature. The TG results revealed that addition of CFF to PLA had positive effect on the thermal stability. In addition, the results of DMA experiments showed that the tan δ decreased with the increasing CFF content, indicating less damping and more elastic behavior in the composites. The results obtained from this study provide important information on the temperature-dependent properties of CFF/PLA and lead to new product development based on natural resources. © 2017, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary