Lock Downs Research Articles

Impact of sars Covid19 lockdown among children

Rationale: The SARS COVID 19 lock downs have seen a major impact on childhood obesity. The aim was to test the hypothesis that children, when removed from structured school activities and confined to their homes during the pandemic, will display unfavourable trends in lifestyle and eating behaviours

What Really Matters: Experiences of Emergency Remote Teaching in University Teaching and Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic and related lock downs have accelerated the need for online and remote teaching within university settings. However, due to the abrupt nature of the pandemic, many academic staff were not prepared for this forced transition. This study aimed to understand how the pandemic affected academics at a New Zealand university, with regards to their transition to emergency remote teaching. Specifically, it explores the challenges as well as benefits academics experienced during this transition. Recommendations for future online learning are also made. Academic staff (N= 67) at a New Zealand University completed an anonymous online survey. Quantitative data were analyzed statistically using descriptive and inferential statistics, while qualitative data were analyzed thematically. Major challenges experienced included miscommunication from the university, concerns about student access to technology, finding a quiet space to work, lack of digital competence skills, too much screen-time, managing work hours, and work/life balance. Benefits included enhanced flexibility, enhanced teacher creativity, increasing autonomy of learners, and reduced commute time. Looking forward, academic staff desired future teaching to include blended learning and virtual immersion. New strategies of working remotely are being explored to facilitate teaching and learning while catering to the preferences and skills of both educators and students. Our findings honor the considerable agility of academic staff who sought to sustain and enhance excellence in remote education. At an institutional level our findings point to the need for staff to be supported by their institutions as they further refine their work within new-found spaces.

Dijitalleş Yoksa Yok Ol! Covid–19 Pandemi Süreci ve Dijitalleşen İş Dünyası Üzerine Bir Çalışma

The most recent one called COVID-19 broke out in December, 2019 in Wuhan, China and has still been troubling the countries on the world. The impacts of the pandemic have shown not only on death tolls but also on social, economic and cultural aspects. The global economic crisis stemmed from the epidemic in almost every country has paralyzed everyday life circumstances from health to education and politics. In the study, the business world which is affected by the pandemic is examined in detail. The study especially takes the projects financed and suggested by the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey for women entrepreneurs as sample. As an obligation these days, digitalizing has become the trendiest topic in business world. Because of lock downs and social distancing precautions, 8 projects that are suggested by the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey have started to be conducted on digital platforms by the entrepreneurs, especially woman entrepreneurs. The digitalizing process of these projects is the main purpose of the study and as the digitalization is getting more and more important day by day, it is a crucial subject to study on as well.

The Economical and Financial Impact of COVID-19 Epidemic on Migrant Labor Force

The objective of this study is to investigate the economic and financial effects of COVID-19 epidemic on migrant labor force. Literature review is the research design of this study. It is possible to achieve economic growth in the short term with some productivity-enhancing measures. However, what matters is the long-term economic growth. This is because, as the source of long-term economic growth and technological innovations, skilled labor force is more concrete. Therefore, for long-term economic growth, supply of skilled workforce is an indispensable precondition. Results are analyzed by comparing different resources, evaluating the literature and taking advantage of International Labor Organization (ILO) and Organization for Economic Co-operating and Development (OECD) statistics. According to study results, COVID-19 poses an unprecedented negative impact on working conditions of migrant work force. Migrant workers are among the most vulnerable in the global labor force affected by the COVID-19 epidemic. But, COVID-19 lock downs will particularly have the highest negative impact on low paid and low skilled (unskilled) migrant work force. Unskilled migrant workers are often excluded from national COVID-19 policy responses in hosting countries, such as wage subsidies, unemployment benefits or social security and social protection measures. Also, access to COVID-19 testing or medical treatment might not be available to unskilled migrant workers. Concerning conclusion and recommendations, migrant workers, should be integrated into risk pooling mechanisms to guarantee social insurance and universality of coverage and solidarity in financing. Health care related benefits can also assist to protect both migrant workers and their host countries.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome- Coronavirus 2

The pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 in 2020 and still raging in 2021 is a global emergency where no country was spared from its high morbidity and mortality. Life changed in innumerable ways, from lock downs to job losses, isolation and mental health crisis. All countries suffered. If it were not for the quick development of medications and vaccines, coupled with preventive measures like facial masks, social distancing and frequent washing of hands, we will be in a worse chaos. Some countries like India and many in Latin America have been devastated and its consequences will be long felt even after the pandemic is controlled. Understanding the cause, its epidemiology and controlled measures is important. Although it took 100 years to encounter a global pandemic of this magnitude, scientists warn of almost inevitable future global pandemics. This review will explore some salient aspects of SARS-CoV-2 impact and measures to control the infection. The world’s death toll caused by SARS-CoV-2 exceeds 3 million and close to 200 million people have been infected. The available vaccines used in more than 400 million individuals, still fall short of producing herd immunity despite the high efficacy rate of most of them. There is a pressing need to immunize 80% or more. Some side effects to vaccine were reported, the majority of minor impact, although some rare ones are more serious such as thrombotic thrombocytopenia or myocarditis. Still the protection afforded from the vaccine vastly outweighs the risks and its wide use is encouraged.

A simple questionnaire for virtual follow‐up of orthognathic surgery patients during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract The outbreak of COVID -19 pandemic has affected the health care infrastructure and wellness of health care workers in several ways1. Ever since its emergence, various guidelines and protocols have been proposed to curb its spread and increase the awareness among people. As the bulk of hospital and health care resources have been diverted to manage this pandemic outbreak, elective procedures like Orthognathic surgeries have been halted. In South India, as the cases were on gradual raise post the first wave of COVID-19, immediate lock downs were announced by the Government to prevent full blown second wave of COVID-192. As the strict lock downs were prevalent and number of COVID-19 cases increased, the hospital management of our Tertiary Reference Centre decided to reduce the number of reviews and Out-Patient cases. With the majority of the areas given red alert and marked as containment zones, the number of patients reporting for follow up reduced drastically. Telemedicine has gained popularity and practice among the various aspects of Medicine especially during this pandemic due to its efficiency and cost-effectiveness3. Hence, we decided to follow up the patients who underwent orthognathic surgery and could not report for review physically, via telemedicine (Phone/video calls) with the aid of contact numbers from the hospital registry.

ONLINE MEDICAL EDUCATION AMID THE LOOMING THREAT OF COVID-19

In the aftermath of COVID-19 pandemic, the health professions education (HPE) has witnessed a powerful paradigm shift. The lock downs, social distancing and precautionary measures against the potential spread of corona virus, all strongly favor the online instructional formats1. The online learning carries an enormous untapped potential for the developing countries like Pakistan. It can strongly supplement the on-campus face to-face learning sessions. It can be easily applied to the entire continuum of HPE, which includes undergraduate medical education, postgraduate medical education and continuing professional development2. The online learning offers certain added advantages. For instance it is student centered and promotes self-directed learning. It is convenient and low cost. It allows for flexibility of schedules as well as instructional formats3.
 In the online learning sessions, the health professions educators carry some added responsibilities. For instance they should anticipate and hence circumvent issues such as system failures, communication blocks, lack of technical know-how on part of the participants and the possibility of cognitively overloading the participants. These inhibitors adversely affect the satisfaction as well as learning of the participants. The online course designers should make every possible effort to minimize these issues4. High level of motivation of the learners constitutes the cornerstone of any successful educational activity. An enthusiastic teacher is equally crucial for its success. These principles apply even more to the online instructional formats. At the very outset, the teacher should skillfully instill eagerness among participants towards achieving the desired learning objectives. He should carefully address the leaning needs of his students. During the activity, he should maintain a positive emotional milieu. At the conclusion, he should reinforce the learning through positive feedback and pointing out the competencies achieved. Additionally he should promote active interactive learning as well as produce communities of learners5.
 The online learning environment can be enhanced by efficient use of the available information technology tools alongside abiding to the basic principles of andragogy. The learning experience can be amplified by paying attention to fine details regarding the learning needs and preferences of the learners, design and delivery of the learning material and characteristics of the learners6. In the online learning sessions, certain added efforts are also required on part of the learners. For instance, they should have extra commitment and computer skills. They should develop positive attitude towards modern ways of learning and teaching. They should be tech savvy and employ the new technologies in their routine practices7.
 We conclude that the online learning sessions efficiently supplement the traditional face-to-face contact sessions. When refined further, they can even replace the contact sessions. The future medical teachers should not be mere role models and facilitators of learning but also the architects of more yielding online educational programs8.

A Study on Individuals Perception towards Development of Digital Economy during Covid-19 Pandemic

Developing country like India is facing major economical drawback because of out break of Covid-19 and it causes adverse effect on various sector like manufacturing auto, retail aviation and hospitality due to lock downs and migration of labours, on other side COVID-19 outbreak has helped India to achieve digitalization mission. In this study has been taken to know the positive impact of COVID-19 in development of digital economy in Tamilnadu. Objective of this study is to know the individual’s perception towards increased usage of digital transactions on during COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on socio economic profile. 148 samples were collected with the help of questionnaire. SPSS package has been used to derive statistical inferences.

Towards a More Stable Banking Financial Position COVID-19 Impacts and IFRS 9 Post-Model Practices “Management Overlays”

In the repercussions of the latest worldwide financial crisis that have occurred due to the corona virus reasons (COVID-19); unprecedented stressful economic conditions prevailed, coupled with significant recessionary waves reasoned of the worldwide imposed strict lock downs that have adversely affected most of the economic sectors across the globe. Based on such adverse conditions, and as banks were used to calculate their Expected Credit Losses (ECLs) within the provisioning systems (IFRS 9); the forward looking projections embedded at the banks models fell short to predict the COVID-19 hit, as well as objectively reflect the widely spread governmental rescue plans, such as payment holidays and moratoria schemes. Consequently, and based on such unprecedented challenges, new risk management practices—Management Overlays—have risen to help in terms of overcoming such a systemic uncertainty situation that added more hurdles with regard to banks models and forecasting powers. The researcher is discussing how banks can start using the management overlays, or post-model adjustments, according to each and every bank’s portfolio composition, trends, and stress testing outcomes, where risks and uncertainties cannot be adequately reflected in existing models, until the global regulators (e.g., central banks, and external auditing bodies), as well as the main research and rating agencies can reach and agree on the new set of the updated macroeconomic indicators that can be utilized globally, and per region, reflecting the new era post COVID-19, and supporting in building the new robust IFRS 9 models across the world effectively. Therefore, management overlays can play such a vital role in terms of fortifying the stability of the banking system through: ascertaining the adequacy of the banking provisioning systems, and guaranteeing the sufficiency of holding appropriate capital levels for confronting such an adverse and unprecedented situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as similar situations in the future.

The trilemma of expansionary monetary policy in the Euro area during the COVID-19 crisis

The economic crisis spurred by the Corona virus (COVID-19) confronts central banks worldwide with new kinds of challenges, as in many countries a stop in production and sales due to lock downs meets enormous fiscal and monetary impulses to overcome the crisis. In Europe the situation is more than ever complicated, as a multitude of monetary policy emergency measures implemented during the financial and European debt crisis of 2007 to 2012 are still in place, such as negative interest rates and central bank bond buying programs. Especially the bond buying programs have been intensified once more during the current Corona crisis. This article contributes to the existing knowledge by proposing a new theoretic trilemma model for the case of a monetary union. Accordingly, there exists a trade-off between stabilizing a monetary union, maintaining free capital mobility and reducing expansionary monetary policy. The results underscore the importance of resolving the trilemma without jeopardizing the currency and financial stability.

Second Wave of COVID-19 in Pakistan: Our Responsibilities and Challenges as A Nation

The Corona virus (SARS-CoV2) pandemic initiated in late December 2019 in Wuhan city of Hubei, China, which has rapidly progressed involving more than 215 countries of the world. It was caused by novel SARS-COV2 coronavirus with Huanan seafood wholesale market as the possible point of origin. In past two decades, coronaviruses epidemic of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-COV) had 37% mortality rate and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-COV) had 10% affecting more than 10,000 population together. World Health Organization (WHO) declared it as the sixth Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on January 30, 2020 and later on March 11, 2020, the WHO labeled it as a pandemic. The first case of COVID-19 from Pakistan was reported on 26th February, 2020 and has affected over 354,000 people with a mortality of over 7000 patients.Many countries of the world have seen second wave of this pandemic. Government of Pakistan has also declared a second wave on October 28, 2020, after the rise in cases from 500 to 750 per day. Now it has crossed 2000 cases. The data released by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) shows that the current percent positivity rate is close to 3 compared to the previous figure of lesser than 2 making it a bigger challenge than first wave in Pakistan. The patients now presenting in hospitals are all in critical condition. Lack of a specific vaccine or antiviral drug and non-compliance to the standard preventive measures is the major reason of initiation of a second wave of this viral infection in Pakistan. Being a nation we need to be responsible. Our country may go into economic crisis & our health facilities may choke. We have to understand how to live with this virus till the availability of vaccine or Curative antiviral drug. The Government of Pakistan is creating awareness in the public for the secondwave as the situation of pandemic is getting worse. Smart lock downs are being implemented but people are not following preventive measures that are leading to infection spread at a very alarming speed. At the moment preventive measures are the only way to stop the spread of disease. Preventive measures should be adopted to contain this deadly disease. Wearing masks, using hand sanitizers, washing hands with soap for 20 sec, keeping social distance of 6 feet are mandatory preventivestrategies. Social, political, business, recreational and religious gatherings, should be avoided. Educational institutes should follow strict standard operating procedures. Most of the people in Pakistan are not considering this disease as a matter of serious concern due to unawareness, poverty, beliefs and lack of resources. People should ignore such disbeliefs and should start considering it as a great health concern. They should follow the preventive measures in true sense.

Vendors on wheels! The changing terrain and manifestation of informality in Harare under Covid-19 pandemic restrictions

The coronavirus is affecting almost every part of the world. The impact of the virus has worsened the difficulties already confronting residents of the fast-growing cities of the developing world already suffering from many challenges, such as inadequate housing, growing poverty, poor urban environmental management, and high levels of unemployment and underemployment. As authorities introduced restrictive measures to curb the spread of the virus, the low-income people appear to be affected by the measures more than the high-income groups. One of the interventions municipal and national leaders have introduced are limitations to movements, commonly known as lock downs. Together with these lock downs has been closures of spaces where low-income vendors and other informal traders operate. How are low-income urban residents being affected by these restrictive measures? Using field observations, newspaper reports and interviews with traders as well as key informants the article examines the changing typology of informal trade under the lockdown conditions. A key finding of the study is that under a restricted trading environment, the means for carrying bulky stock and a quick get-away is giving advantage to traders on wheels. Bringing wares to sites and traveling back home now requires own transport. The well-to-do traders are replacing poor vendors.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Indian Services Sector

The COVID-19 Pandemic which resulted in lockdown across the world and business were forced to run their activities by keeping the Social Distancing in Mind to reach out to the customers. The sudden or drastic change in the business approach due to the pandemic has resulted many of the players in service industry to stop their business activities or have seen the drastic decline in their business till they are accustomed to the new approach of doing the business. Sectors like Education, Health Care, Gym, Tourism have witnessed a direct impact as the involvement of the people/Customers/Consumers were limited or completely shut to provide the services, With the government’s restrictions on the E-Commerce platform was allowed to operate with lot of restrictions to provide only essential goods to the borrowers and the service providers came in with the improvement in their services to provide contact less deliveries to the customers at their doorsteps, these type of activities has resulted enormous increase in the E-Payments crossing multi billions in the months after the initial lock downs.This chapter will highlight the scenarios both Pre and Post COVID-19 perspective towards services sector

Role of Librarians and Medical Information Experts in Response to Covid-19 in Iran

Human being has always faced different critical situations and unpredictable events such as floods, earthquakes and terrible infectious diseases such as cholera, plague, tuberculosis and influenza. However, it is believed that the Coronavirus (Covid-19) has been the most shocking pandemic that led to destructive effects in all geographical areas of the world and all aspect of terrestrial life. The governments increasingly enact quarantines, curfews, closures, and other restrictive controls against the countries, citizens, and institutions and deploy their facilities to tackle the infection and prevent its spread (1). Amid the anxiety of lock downs and the cancellation of educational programs around the world, researcher support has not stopped, and a group of knowledge brokers, led by librarians and medical informantionists, are constantly providing information services. Information is an urgent and essential commodity in any crisis. Therefore, librarians and information experts have to be always prepared to meet the information needs of society and provide the users with access to information.

Tourism and COVID-19: Social and Lateral marketing to the rescue

<p>The beginning of 2020 has been marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and its socio-economical effect at a global scale. One of the most negatively influenced sectors is tourism since in a time of limited mobility and lock downs, seems unable to continue producing and offering most of its products and services. Traditional marketing is put aside by the need of two particular types of marketing, that is, social marketing and lateral marketing, which call for the behavioral change of the consumer side, and the creative reaction of the production side, respectively. This essay tries to highlight the importance of these strategies in times of crisis.</p>

Mplications and Lessons Learned from COVID-19 Crisis to Marketing field: Experience from Tanzania Universities’ Students

This is a survey article sharing experiences from COVID-19 crisis in developing country like Tanzania. COVID-19 crisis in Tanzania was announced early this year. Since then the government and people of Tanzania have been trying on fighting the pandemic. Tanzania decided not to take the common way of lock downs like most countries in order to contain the spread of the disease. The government urged people to take precautions while continue working. One of the precautions was closing universities. Now this article is putting forward the implications and lessons learned from COVID-19 by marketing students after closure of the universities. Experience is drawn from 26 students using snowball sampling procedure where in- depth interviews were conducted to undergraduate and working part-time graduate students. The sample was taken from public and private universities and cross section research design was used. Content analysis was carried out. Collaborations and sharing digital learning experience before crisis universities and businesses were the summary findings. Thus there are lot to learn by universities, students and businesses as a result of the crisis.

A Mathematical Model for the Prediction of the Impact of Coronavirus (COVID­19) and Social Distancing Effect

The spread of coronavirus across the world has become a major pandemic following the Spanishflu of 1918. A mathematical model of the spread of the coronavirus with social distancing effect is studied. Amathematical model of the spread of the virus form Wuhan in China to the rest of the world is suggested andanalyzed. Another mathematical model with quarantine and social distancing factors is proposed and analyzed.Stability analysis for both models were carried out and data fitting was performed to predict the possible extinctionof the disease. The disease free equilibria of both models were locally and globally asymptotically stable. Themodels suggest that with interventions such as lock downs and social distancing the extinction of the coronaviruscan be achieved. Increasing social distancing could reduce the number of new cases by up to 30%. The paperpresents a unique style of considering both theoretical and data analysis which is rarely studied in the literature.Questions arising from this study for further research include the right time to apply interventions and the state ofpreparedness in case of similar pandemics.

Covid 19 Pandemic: Redefining National Security and Health Policy

The covid19 pandemic is a global health crisis of unprecedented scale and has forced the governments, policy makers and international organizations to redefine and rethink the paradigms of national security and its relationship with health policy. With approximately 1739007 confirmed cases world wide and 108432 conformed death from this disease covid19 has effectively transcended the traditional conventions on national sovereignty, borders, security and International law. From Wuhan china the disease has spread to 213 countries and territories and has involved all continents except Antarctica. Most of the countries and societies affected with covid19 have seen lock downs, travel restrictions, economic stagnation, curfews, closed businesses and schools practically disrupting normal life, weakening political and economic systems and threatening the society in general. The broad social, political, economic and religious consequences of this pandemic makes it imperative that countries especially developing countries like Pakistan rethink their national security policy and incorporate health security as an essential component of its national security doctrine.

FACS: A geospatial agent-based simulator for analysing COVID-19 spread and public health measures on local regions

ABSTRACT The recent Covid-19 outbreak has had a tremendous impact on the world, and many countries are struggling to help incoming patients and at the same time, rapidly enact new public health measures such as lock downs. Many of these decisions are guided by the outcomes of so-called Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered (SEIR) models that operate on a national level. Here we introduce the Flu And Coronavirus Simulator (FACS), a simulation tool that models the viral spread at the sub-national level, incorporating geospatial data sources to extract buildings and residential areas in a region. Using FACS, we can model Covid-19 spread at the local level, and provide estimates of the spread of infections and hospital arrivals for different scenarios. We validate the simulation results with the ICU admissions obtained from the local hospitals in the UK. Such validated models can be used to support local decision-making for an effective health care capability response to the epidemic.

Challenges in the Development of Therapeutics and Vaccines for Covid 19

No abstract available