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Voice in the Times of the COVID- 19 Pandemic
The pandemic of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) affected the modern world in a way never seen before. After an initial phase of disbelief, we all have been affected, some personally with irreparable losses, others collectively, with difficulties maintaining professional activities and ensuring a dignified survival. There are almost 4.5 million dead, more than 200 million infected as of August 2021 (1); and the pandemic is still not over. Global markets have been shaken, and the impact on commerce, industry, employment, and income has been profound. The global economy will suffer years before it recovers.
The human voice also was affected profoundly. Artistic voice professionals had their events cancelled, and thousands of support professionals in the productions were left unemployed. Visits to teachers of singing and voice health providers were reduced to voice emergencies. Clinical voice evaluation through laryngoscopy, as well as the acoustic and aerodynamic measurements, are tasks that potentially disseminate viruses by aerosols or droplets and were restricted to severe cases or modified to reduce the risk of infection.
The Effect of Online Teaching on Vocal Health Among Saudi Teachers During COVID-19 Pandemic
The goal of this study is to determine how online education affects the vocal health of schoolteachers in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. Teachers' phono trauma is well-known as a serious occupational hazard, and online education was the primary mode of delivering instruction to students during COVID-19.Patient Satisfaction with Virtual vs In-Person Voice Therapy
To determine whether there is a difference in patient satisfaction between in-person and virtual voice therapy.Relationship Between Room Acoustics With Voice Symptoms and Voice-Related Quality of Life Among Colombian School and College Teachers During Online Classes in Times of COVID-19 Pandemic
To determine the relationship between working conditions, especially room acoustics, with voice symptoms and voice-related quality of life among Colombian school and college teachers during online classes in times of COVID-19 pandemic.Vocal Fold Paralysis Following COVID-19 Vaccination: Query of VAERS Database
Vocal fold paresis or paralysis (VFP) may severely affect quality of life due to dysphonia and respiratory distress. As an increasing percentage of the United States population receives the COVID-19 vaccination, the objective of this study is to determine the correlation of COVID-19 postvaccination recurrent laryngeal neuropathy and resulting VFP.The Impact of Masking Habits on Voice in a Sub-population of Healthcare Workers
To evaluate the impact of face masks on voice in a sub-population of healthcare workers, namely residents, medical students, and nurses, during the COVID-19 era.Developing Educational Health Modules to Improve Vocal Wellness in Mask-Wearing Occupational Voice Users
To develop educational modules to improve vocal wellness and optimize communication in mask-wearing occupational voice users.Aerosol Dispersion During Different Phonatory Tasks in Amateur Singers
Due to increased aerosol generation during singing, choir rehearsals were widely prohibited in the course of the CoVID-19 pandemic. Most studies on aerosol generation and dispersion focus on professional singers. However, it has not been clarified if these data are also representative for amateur singers.The Effect of Masks and Respirators on Acoustic Voice Analysis During the COVID-19 Pandemic
World Health Organization declared the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness and reliability of voice analysis performed with surgical masks and respirators during the pandemic and to discuss its routine applicability.Reopening the Bavarian State Opera Safely: Hygiene Strategies and Incidence of COVID-19 in Artistic Staff During Theater Season 2020/2021
Due to the drastically rising coronavirus disease (COVID-19) incidence since March 2020, social life was shut down across the globe, and most opera houses were closed. As a result, there are limited data on SARS-CoV-2 infections among artists. The Bavarian State Opera has been reopened in September 2020. This study aimed to identify the incidence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection among employees in the Bavarian State Opera. In addition, the various hygiene strategies for the work groups within the institution are described.Machine Learning-based Voice Assessment for the Detection of Positive and Recovered COVID-19 Patients
Many virological tests have been implemented during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic for diagnostic purposes, but they appear unsuitable for screening purposes. Furthermore, current screening strategies are not accurate enough to effectively curb the spread of the disease. Therefore, the present study was conducted within a controlled clinical environment to determine eventual detectable variations in the voice of COVID-19 patients, recovered and healthy subjects, and also to determine whether machine learning-based voice assessment (MLVA) can accurately discriminate between them, thus potentially serving as a more effective mass-screening tool.Voice Quality and Vocal Tract Discomfort Symptoms in Patients With COVID-19
Dysphonia and laryngeal problems are some of the manifestations of the COVID-19 pandemic due to respiratory disease as a primary effect of COVID-19. The aim of the present study was to investigate voice quality and vocal tract discomfort symptoms in patients with COVID-19.Effect of Face Mask on Voice Production During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an ongoing global pandemic and wearing face mask is recommended across the globe to break the transmission chain of infection. The masks available in the market are of different types and materials and tend to alter the voice characteristics of the speaker. This can therefore impair optimal communication and the present study is a systematic review exploring the effect of various masks on voice production parameters.The Effect of Singers’ Masks on the Impulse Dispersion of Aerosols During Singing
During the Covid-19 pandemic, singing activities were restricted due to several super-spreading events that have been observed during rehearsals and vocal performances. However, it has not been clarified how the aerosol dispersion, which has been assumed to be the leading transmission factor, could be reduced by masks which are specially designed for singers.Challenges and Opportunities in Deploying COVID-19 Cough AI Systems
What if COVID-19 could be detected by cough and voice sounds? A reliable diagnosis based on cough and voice sounds would provide a fast and convenient way to detect COVID-19 in both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals. During the COVID-19 pandemic, several groups, including OpenSigma with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, AI4 Covid-19 with the University of Oklahoma, COVID-19 Sounds with the University of Cambridge, COUGHVID with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, and Saama AI research, and Wadhwani AI with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have successfully isolated acoustic patterns characteristic of COVID-19 with smartphone-recorded voluntary cough and voice samples using artificial intelligence (AI).COVID-19 and Remote Learning: Predictive Factors of Perceived Improvement or Worsening of the Voice in Brazilian Teachers
Given the transformations in teaching modalities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aimed to evaluate the factors associated with vocal self-perception during the pandemic and to investigate the ability of selected variables to predict changes in vocal self-perception in teachers with professional vocal demands during the investigated period.Can Resident Auditory-Perceptual Voice Assessments Predict Medical Urgency of Voice Disorders?
Growing reliance on telemedicine has created new triaging challenges. This study investigated how effectively otolaryngology resident auditory-perceptual voice assessments performed via telemedicine determined the need for urgent in-person clinic visits.Self-Perceived Voice Handicap During COVID19 Compulsory Facemask Use: A Comparative Study Between Portuguese and Spanish Speakers
This study investigates self-perceptions of voice-related handicap as a function of facemask use in the general working population during the COVID19 outbreak, using the Voice Handicap Index (VHI). Each VHI item was answered twice in a row; the first answer referred to the condition of not wearing a facemask (henceforth, the Without condition) and the second to the condition of using a facemask (henceforth, the With condition). VHI scores were collected via Google Forms (Google, Mountain View, California), targeting 2 groups of speakers of different nationalities, Portuguese (n = 261) and Spanish (n = 297).Vocal Signs and Symptoms Related to COVID-19 and Risk Factors for their Persistence
To compare the occurrence of vocal signs and symptoms before, during, and after coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and analyze possible risk factors for the persistence of these signs and symptoms after disease resolution.Vocal Self-Perception of Singers During COVID-19 Pandemic
Objective: to compare the self-perception of vocal fatigue and use of singing voice during the COVID-19 pandemic between professional and amateur singers and to relate this self-perception with vocal use characteristics during this period. Methodology: Participants were 121 singers divided into professional singers group (PSG) (12 men and 20 women) comprising singers who depended exclusively on singing as a profession and an amateur singers group (ASG) (37 men and 52 women) of singers who did not depend exclusively on singing for their livelihood.Persistent Dysphonia in Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients
The main objective of this study is to estimate the prevalence of persistent dysphonia in hospitalised COVID-19 patients.Adjustment of Health-Care Service Delivery Among Phoniatricians and ENT Specialists During the COVID-19 Pandemic, A UEP Survey
Applying measures that prioritize staff safety, while protecting patient safety and care, represents a challenge during the current pandemic. Many documents of recommendations toward safe practice have been developed for this purpose.The Effects of the Use of Protective Face Mask on the Voice and Its Relation to Self-Perceived Voice Changes
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects that the use of protective face mask has over the voice and to search for associations between the self-reported voice changes and the levels of discomfort experienced by the participants. Also, to detect any change it the phonatory patterns while speaking with face mask.COVID-19: Acoustic Measures of Voice in Individuals Wearing Different Facemasks
The global health pandemic caused by the SARS-coronavirus 2 (COVID-19) has led to the adoption of facemasks as a necessary safety precaution. Depending on the level of risk for exposure to the virus, the facemasks that are used can vary. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of different types of facemasks, typically used by healthcare professionals and the public during the COVID-19 pandemic, on measures of voice.Analysis of COVID-19 Resulting Cough Using Formants and Automatic Speech Recognition System
As part of our contributions to researches on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, we have studied the cough changes to the infected people based on the Hidden Markov Model (HMM) speech recognition classification, formants frequency and pitch analysis. In this paper, An HMM-based cough recognition system was implemented with 5 HMM states, 8 Gaussian Mixture Distributions (GMMs) and 13 dimensions of the basic Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) with 39 dimensions of the overall feature vector.Voice Acoustics and Vocal Effort in Mask-Wearing Healthcare Professionals: A Comparison Pre- and Post-Workday
We evaluated voice acoustics and self-perceptual ratings in healthcare workers required to wear face masks throughout their workday.
