scholarly journals COVID-19 reproduction number and non-pharmaceutical interventions in Lithuania

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 27-37
Author(s):  
Ramunė Vaišnorė ◽  
Audronė Jakaitienė

Currently the world is threatened by a global COVID-19 pandemic and it has induced crisis creating a lot of disruptions in the healthcare system, social life and economy. In this article we present the analysis of COVID-19 situation in Lithuania and it's municipalities taking into consideration the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions on the reproduction number. We have analysed the period from 20/03/2020 to 20/06/2021 covering two quarantines applied in Lithuania. We calculated the reproduction number using the incidence data provided by State Data Governance Information System, while the information for applied non-pharmaceutical interventions was extracted from Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker and the COVID-19 website of Government of the Republic of Lithuania. The positive effect of applied non-pharmaceutical interventions on reproduction number was observed when internal movement ban was applied in 16/12/2020 during the second quarantine in Lithuania.

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Mihajlo Rabrenović ◽  
Dejan Popov ◽  
Milorad Stamenović

The aim of this paper is to examine some of the current issues regarding the degree of liberalization in Serbian economy as a part of the accession process to the World Trade Organization. Serbia's membership of the World Trade Organization is prerequisite for closing Chapter 30 in the accession negotiations with the European Union. The membership of the World Trade Organization should have a highly positive effect on the economic development of the Republic of Serbia. Closing the negotiations with the World Trade Organization will, if accompanied by other relevant economic policy measures, result in a stronger national economy and its further economic liberalization. Within the liberalization process, it is necessary for the state to intervene by its measures, as necessary, in certain areas of economic and social life.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-782
Author(s):  
Ekaterina L. Kapustina

The article performs the current discussion of such categories as local and global in modern anthropology and suggests the option of using categories for the modern sociocultural reality of Dagestan society. The positions of leading researchers, deconstructing the concepts of “locality” and “community”, offering an alternative view of a traditional society rooted in a particular place, are demonstrated. Deterritorized societies in the face of significant social changes in the world (migration, including transnational and translocal, as well as the process of globalization) are becoming a new form of social interaction, where physical locality gives way to other categories linking people into relevant communities. In relation to the Dagestan realities, it is proposed to consider local deterritized societies through the prism of the conceptual metaphor “global village”. The factors contributing to the formation of such deterritorialized communities are shown. It is also shown the example of such a community - the village of Bezhta situated on the bordeland with the Republic of Georgia. A look at the complex of physical localities united by belonging to this mountain village (the village itself, resettlement villages on the plain of Dagestan, families located outside the republic in labor migration and living a translocal life, and also to a lesser extent the village of Chantliskuri in Georgia) as version of the "global village".


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohsin Ali ◽  
Mudassar Imran ◽  
Adnan Khan

Abstract BackgroundCOVID-19 is a pandemic that has swept across the world in 2020. To date the only effective control mechanisms were non-pharmaceutical interventions, however there have been encouraging reports regarding possible medication in the literature, with emergency approval given to some drugs in various countries.MethodsWe formulate a deterministic epidemic model to study the effects of medication on the transmission dynamics of Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19). We are especially interested in how the availability of medication could change the necessary quarantine measures for effective control of the disease. We model the transmission by extending the SEIR model to include asymptomatic, quarantined, isolated and medicated population compartments.ResultsWe calculate the basic reproduction number R0 and show that for R0<1 the disease dies out and for R0>1 the disease is endemic. Using sensitivity analysis we establish that R0 is most sensitive to the rates of quarantine and medication. We also study how the effectiveness and the rate of medication along with the quarantine rate affect R0. We devise optimal quarantine, medication and isolation strategies, noting that availability of medication reduces the duration and severity of the lock-down needed for effective disease control.ConclusionOur study also reinforces the idea that with the availability of medication, while the severity of the lock downs can be eased over time some social distancing protocols need to be observed, at least till a vaccine is found. We also analyze the COVID-19 outbreak data for four different countries, in two of these, India and Pakistan the curve is still rising, and in he other two, Italy and Spain, the epidemic curve is now falling due to effective quarantine measures. We provide estimates of R0 and the proportion of asymptomatic individuals in the population for these countries.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Lowe ◽  
Ben Armstrong ◽  
Sam Abbott ◽  
Sophie Meakin ◽  
Kathleen O'Reilly ◽  
...  

&lt;p&gt;More than a year since its emergence, there is conflicting evidence on the potential influence of weather conditions on COVID-19 transmission dynamics. Respiratory viral infections often show seasonality, with influenza and other coronaviruses peaking in winter, yet the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. As SARS-CoV-2 is a new virus to humans, it is difficult to ascertain if seasonal climate variations might have enhanced or reduced transmission in the first pandemic wave given the high proportion of susceptible people and the potential confounding role of different types of non-pharmaceutical interventions adopted at different times after the onset of local outbreaks. We used a two-stage ecological&amp;#160;modelling approach to estimate weather-dependent signatures in COVID-19 transmission in the early phase of the pandemic, using a dataset of 3 million COVID-19 cases reported until 31 May 2020, spanning 409 locations in 26 countries. We calculated the effective reproduction number (R&lt;sub&gt;e&lt;/sub&gt;) over a city-specific early-phase time-window of 10-20 days, for which local transmission had been established but before non-pharmaceutical interventions had intensified, as measured by the OxCGRT Government Response Index. We calculated mean levels of meteorological factors, including temperature and humidity observed in the same time window used to calculate R&lt;sub&gt;e&lt;/sub&gt;. Using a multilevel meta-regression approach, we modelled nonlinear effects of meteorological factors, while accounting for government interventions and socio-demographic factors. A weak non-monotonic association between temperature and R&lt;sub&gt;e&lt;/sub&gt; was identified, with a decrease of 0.087 (95% CI: 0.025; 0.148) for an increase in temperature between 10-20&amp;#176;C. Non-pharmaceutical interventions had a greater effect on R&lt;sub&gt;e&lt;/sub&gt; with a decrease of 0.285 (95% CI 0.223; 0.347) for a 5th - 95th percentile increase in the government response index. The variation in the effective reproduction number explained by early government interventions was 6 times greater than for mean temperature. We find little evidence of meteorological conditions having influenced the early stages of local epidemics and conclude that population behaviour and governmental intervention are more important drivers of transmission.&lt;/p&gt;


wisdom ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (7) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Will POGHOSYAN

The alliance between politics and philosophy pursues the object to change the world as public or social life. The life implies various degrees of quality, and suggests existence regarded as a desirable condition: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is the main point of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776). We have here a whole philosophy of politics referring to Plato’s doctrine of the practical influence of philosophy on the state power to change the world (Plato, 1971, Rp. V 473d, VI 501e, VII 540d). The philosophy of politics holds life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be unalienable rights and just so lays down the basic human rights as the principles of the political law, public law. The form of government which secures these rights is called democracy. America is no longer the ruler of her own spirit. In Armenia and Russia, there is instituted now timocracy, a form of government in which love of honor is the ruling principle (timē honor + krateein to rule). There exist here public law apart from human rights. The task of the philosophy of politics is to secure democracy in the United States of America and to carry out the transition from timocracy to democracy in the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 1733-1736
Author(s):  
Abdulnaser Sinani ◽  
Faton Murseli

Communication today in both classical and new media has changed not only its way and access to interpersonal communications, but also in social relations. The world today, more than ever before, is in a struggle between classical communications, always overwhelmed by the pessimism of social developments, with new or modernized communications. Many scholars have put forward theories that testify to this war, even in the social context, that they make comparisons or connections of communicationbetween two sides of the Atlantic. The first one is on the sociological plane between European sociology and the second one onAmerican pragmatism. These relate in particular to the claims of the American empirical school and the Frankfurt school as well as to Habermasian and post-Habermasian theories of public space.This paper attempts to highlight this "war" that has a profound social impact on our lifestyles, approaches to various problems, combating misinformation or even harmful political decision-making. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to move away from the negative effects stimulated by this communicological transformation, to show that public action is not merely a passive conformism, to show that society is rational and dynamic, and that there are no externalities or absolute superiority of intellectuals. In addition, the paper will not eliminate the critics of negative phenomens whether they are consequences of shallow thoughts or low interests, or due to the lack of legal regulations in the Balkans and specifically in the Republic of Northern Macedonia, which would condemn the inclusion of negative innovations, misguided, and as consequence harmful to society.The paper will have a positive approach to today's technological developments that affect communication and social life in general. It will be an alarm case for intentional or unintentional deviations, which give alert for wrong decisions that result from sociological deviations in communication. The point of this paper is to presents a basis for study or concern, for this global transformation where local institutional issues have already taken on broad transnational character. In this context, caring for communication, especially its regular social development, would contribute to raising new dimensions of its true ideals of ethnic, political or even religious pluralism, and would represent the true ideal of not abandoning the vision of an open, multidimensional world. These are some of the most sensitive issues in the world, especially the Balkans, which will be approached with a positive and progressive look.This paper will be conducted through the survey method, and the content analysis. The public, especially the educated and critical public in the Republic of Northern Macedonia, as well as some of the traditional media and news portals in RMV, are subject of observation. In addition to the problematic rise that we claim to be world-specific but Balkan-specific, the work will extend to the communicational and sociological reality of the Republic of Northern Macedonia.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Finn D Stevenson ◽  
Bruce Mellado ◽  
Joshua Choma ◽  
Benjamin Lieberman ◽  
Fábio Corrêa ◽  
...  

A global analysis of the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on the dynamics of the spread of the COVID-19 indicates that these can be classified using the stringency index proposed by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker(OxCGRT) team. The world average for the coefficient that linearises the level of transmission with respect to the OxCGRT stringency index is αs= 0.01±0.0017 (95%C.I.). The corresponding South African coefficient is αs= 0.0078±0.00036 (95%C.I.), compatible with the world average. Here, we implement the stringency index for the recently announced 5-tier regulatory alert system. Predictions are made for the spread of the virus for each alert level. Assuming constant rates of recovery and mortality, it is essential to increase αs. For the system to remain sub-critical, the rate with which αs increases should outpace that of the decrease of the stringency index. Monitoring of αs becomes essential to controlling the post-lockdown phase. Data from the Gauteng province obtained in May 2020 has been used to re-calibrate the model, where αs was found increase by 20% with respect to the period before lockdown. Predictions for the province are made in this light.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-264
Author(s):  
S. V. Egoryshev ◽  
E. A. Egorysheva

The article considers the nature, causes, determinants and consequences of corruption. As a form of social deviation of a delinquent nature and as a type of crime, corruption has a destructive effect on all spheres of social life, primarily on their management - by redistributing their resources and by replacing social values and goals with group and personal ones. Corruption affects not only states but also international affairs; therefore, we need active opposition to corruption from the world community: International Anti-Corruption Day was included in the calendars of 187 countries including Russia. According to the World Bank, the annual global amount of bribes is 1 trillion US dollars. For many countries, corruption has become a threat to national security, which makes them seek and use effective and often radical measures to counter corruption, and to conduct comprehensive studies of corruption as an objective and widespread social phenomenon. The authors consider corruption on the basis of an interdisciplinary methodology with an emphasis on institutional and structural-functional approaches, which allowed to identify institutional features of corruption, its structure, functions and social consequences, and to assess the efficiency of anti-corruption measures. The article is based on the statistical data on the dynamics of corruption in Russia and the Republic of Bashkortostan in 2012-2020, and on the results of the sociological survey conducted by the Institute for Strategic Studies of the Republic of Bashkortostan in 2020 according to the methodology for assessing corruption described in the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation. The survey focused on the problems in the interaction of citizens and employees of state and municipal authorities (everyday corruption), and in the interaction of authorities and business (business corruption) (the corresponding samples were 814 and 300 people). The study of everyday corruption was conducted by individual formalized interviews, of business corruption - by the online survey on the Google Forms.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. e0244474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Arroyo-Marioli ◽  
Francisco Bullano ◽  
Simas Kucinskas ◽  
Carlos Rondón-Moreno

We develop a new method for estimating the effective reproduction number of an infectious disease (R) and apply it to track the dynamics of COVID-19. The method is based on the fact that in the SIR model, R is linearly related to the growth rate of the number of infected individuals. This time-varying growth rate is estimated using the Kalman filter from data on new cases. The method is easy to implement in standard statistical software, and it performs well even when the number of infected individuals is imperfectly measured, or the infection does not follow the SIR model. Our estimates of R for COVID-19 for 124 countries across the world are provided in an interactive online dashboard, and they are used to assess the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions in a sample of 14 European countries.


Author(s):  
Zhanna Nurlanovna Matenova ◽  
Bayan Bekkairovna Dosskaliyeva

Housing policy at all times and around the world has been one of the most complex, socially contradictory and socially significant problems. Housing policy as a social phenomenon is implemented with great difficulties and is often accompanied by a severe crisis, covering all areas of reformed social life. The social essence of housing policy is carried out in the conditions of state support and control of entrepreneurship, designed to form not only a market for goods and services, but also a market for housing construction. The authors of the article consider housing problems in the country and the mechanisms implemented by the state to provide housing for the population.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document