scholarly journals Intercultural Communication Challenges in the Period of the Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) (The Case of Qatar Airways)

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (16) ◽  
Author(s):  
Margo Kublashvili
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Target Group ◽  
Communication Process ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Cabin Crew ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The Impact

Under the conditions of the global threat of the modern world - the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, the demand for social distancing as a commonly proven method of preventing fatal cases and stopping the virus has fundamentally changed the process of communication in an intercultural environment. Our research aims to study the impact of the pandemic on the intercultural communication process and its quality in a multicultural environment. Cabin Crew of Qatar Airways, as one of the largest multicultural/multinational companies, was selected as a target group. A qualitative method of data collection – interviewing – was used as a research technique. In particular, the target group was interviewed through a semistructured questionnaire – by a so-called "narrative interview" method. This research enabled us to obtain new narratives which were created on the coronavirus background – responses of the Qatar Airways Cabin Crew and the company's international passengers to the challenge of Covid-19. The study and analysis of these responses revealed that representatives of different cultures (Individualistic/Collectivist cultures, High/Low uncertainty avoidance cultures, Submissive orientation/Mastery orientation cultures, Tight/Loose cultures) have different attitudes towards the pandemic as an uncertain and unpredictable future; towards the Covid-19 vaccine; towards wearing a mask and eye contact related to it; in addition, they can be distinguished by different perceptions of territorialism as personal space (physical and social distancing); different feelings of fear and anxiety and readiness to obey/disobey introduced rules or restrictions (so-called Lockdown, Curfew). According to the research, these differences are due to the "mental program" of a society, i.e. a purely cultural factor. However, despite several intercultural differences, daily contact with groups having other cultures significantly increases opportunities for collaboration, which, in times of crisis, does not hinder the process of interaction between different cultures, but on the contrary, it increases the level of intercultural acceptance and sensitivity.

scholarly journals Modelling the Potential Impact of Social Distancing on the COVID-19 Epidemic in South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
F. Nyabadza ◽  
F. Chirove ◽  
C. W. Chukwu ◽  
M. V. Visaya
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Deterministic Model ◽  
Cumulative Number ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Policy Direction ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Impact

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to be a global health problem whose impact has been significantly felt in South Africa. With the global spread increasing and infecting millions, containment efforts by countries have largely focused on lockdowns and social distancing to minimise contact between persons. Social distancing has been touted as the best form of response in managing a rapid increase in the number of infected cases. In this paper, we present a deterministic model to describe the impact of social distancing on the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 in South Africa. The model is fitted to data from March 5 to April 13, 2020, on the cumulative number of infected cases, and a scenario analysis on different levels of social distancing is presented. The model shows that with the levels of social distancing under the initial lockdown level between March 26 and April 13, 2020, there would be a projected continued rise in the number of infected cases. The model also looks at the impact of relaxing the social distancing measures after the initial announcement of the lockdown. It is shown that relaxation of social distancing by 2% can result in a 23% rise in the number of cumulative cases whilst an increase in the level of social distancing by 2% would reduce the number of cumulative cases by about 18%. The model results accurately predicted the number of cases after the initial lockdown level was relaxed towards the end of April 2020. These results have implications on the management and policy direction in the early phase of the epidemic.

scholarly journals Evaluating Classical Airplane Boarding Methods Considering COVID-19 Flying Restrictions

Symmetry ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1087 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liviu-Adrian Cotfas ◽  
Camelia Delcea ◽  
R. John Milne ◽  
Mostafa Salari
Keyword(s):  
Health Risk ◽  
Health Risks ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Zone Method ◽  
Economic Productivity ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Impact

The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has imposed the need for a series of social distancing restrictions worldwide to mitigate the scourge of the COVID-19 pandemic. This applies to many domains, including airplane boarding and seat assignments. As airlines are considering their passengers’ safety during the pandemic, boarding methods should be evaluated both in terms of social distancing norms and the resulting efficiency for the airlines. The present paper analyzes the impact of a series of restrictions that have been imposed or mooted worldwide on the boarding methods used by the airlines, featuring the use of jet-bridges and one-door boarding. To compare the efficacy of classical airplane boarding methods with respect to new social distancing norms, five metrics were used to evaluate their performance. One metric is the time to complete the boarding of the airplane. The other four metrics concern passenger health and reflect the potential exposure to the virus from other passengers through the air and surfaces (e.g., headrests and luggage) touched by passengers. We use the simulation platform in NetLogo to test six common boarding methods under various conditions. The back-to-front by row boarding method results in the longest time to complete boarding but has the advantage of providing the lowest health risk for two metrics. Those two metrics are based on passengers potentially infecting those passengers previously seated in the rows they traverse. Interestingly, those two risks are reduced for most boarding methods when the social distance between adjacent passengers advancing down the aisle is increased, thus indicating an unanticipated benefit stemming from this form of social distancing. The modified reverse pyramid by half zone method provides the shortest time to the completing boarding of the airplane and—along with the WilMA boarding method—provides the lowest health risk stemming from potential infection resulting from seat interferences. Airlines have the difficult task of making tradeoffs between economic productivity and the resulting impact on various health risks.

scholarly journals Untying the Precise Impact of COVID-19 Policy on Social Distancing Behavior

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 896
Author(s):  
Fakhar Shahzad ◽  
Jianguo Du ◽  
Imran Khan ◽  
Zeeshan Ahmad ◽  
Muhammad Shahbaz
Keyword(s):  
Causal Effect ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Movement Data ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Voluntary Behavior ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Staying At Home ◽  
At Home

Social distancing has manifold effects and is used as a non-pharmacological measure to respond to pandemic situations such as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), especially in the absence of vaccines and other useful antiviral drugs. Governments around the globe have adopted and implemented a series of social distancing strategies. The efficacy of various policies and their comparative influence on mechanisms led by public actions and adoptions have not been examined. The differences in types and effective dates of various social distancing policies in various provinces/territories of Pakistan constitute a pure ground to examine the causal effects of each COVID-19 policy. Using the location trends and population movement data released by Google, a quasi-experimental method was used to measure the impact of the government’s various social distancing policies on the people’s existence at home and their outside social mobility. Based on the magnitude and importance of policy influences, this research ranked six social distancing policies whose influence exceeded the effect of voluntary behavior. Our research outcomes describe that the trend of staying at home was firmly pushed by state-wide home order rather than necessary business closings and policies that were associated with public gathering restrictions. Strong government policies have a strong causal effect on reducing social interactions.

scholarly journals Modelling the potential impact of social distancing on the COVID-19 epidemic in South Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Nyabadza ◽  
F. Chirove ◽  
W. Chukwu ◽  
M.V. Visaya
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Deterministic Model ◽  
Cumulative Number ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Policy Direction ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to be a global health problem whose impact has been significantly felt in South Africa. Social distancing has been touted as the best form of response in managing a rapid increase in the number of infected cases. In this paper, we present a deterministic model to model the impact of social distancing on the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 in South Africa. The model is fitted to the currently available data on the cumulative number of infected cases and a scenario analysis on different levels of social distancing are presented. The results show a continued rise in the number of cases in the lock down period with the current levels of social distancing albeit at a lower rate. The model shows that the number of cases will rise to above 4000 cases by the end of the lockdown. The model also looks at the impact of relaxing the social distancing measures after the initial announcement of the lock down measures. A relaxation of the social distancing by 2% can result in a 23% rise in the number of cumulative cases while on the other hand increasing the levels of social distancing by 2% would reduce the number of cumulative cases by about 18%. These results have implications on the management and policy direction in the early phases of the epidemic.

scholarly journals The Impact of Mobility Patterns on the Spread of the COVID-19 in Indonesia

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Syafira Fitri Auliya ◽  
Nurcahyani Wulandari
Keyword(s):  
Short Term Memory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Mobility Patterns ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Mobility Data ◽  
Rapid Transmission ◽  
Long Short Term Memory ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Impact

Background: The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been spreading rapidly across the world and infected millions of people, many of whom died. As part of the response plans, many countries have been attempting to restrict people’s mobility by launching social distancing protocol, including in Indonesia. It is then necessary to identify the campaign’s impact and analyze the influence of mobility patterns on the pandemic’s transmission rate.Objective: Using mobility data from Google and Apple, this research discovers that COVID-19 daily new cases in Indonesia are mostly related to the mobility trends in the previous eight days.Methods: We generate ten-day predictions of COVID-19 daily new cases and Indonesians’ mobility by using Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) algorithm to provide insight for future implementation of social distancing policies.Results: We found that all eight-mobility categories result in the highest accumulation correlation values between COVID-19 daily new cases and the mobility eight days before. We forecast of the pandemic daily new cases in Indonesia, DKI Jakarta and worldwide (with error on MAPE 6.2% - 9.4%) as well as the mobility trends in Indonesia and DKI Jakarta (with error on MAPE 6.4 - 287.3%).Conclusion: We discover that the driver behind the rapid transmission in Indonesia is the number of visits to retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, and parks. In contrast, the mobility to the workplaces negatively correlates with the pandemic spread rate.

scholarly journals Human Mobility Restrictions and the Spread of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanming Fang ◽  
Long Wang ◽  
Yang Yang
Keyword(s):  
Human Mobility ◽  
Hubei Province ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Chinese Cities ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Spring Festival ◽  
The Social ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

AbstractWe quantify the causal impact of human mobility restrictions, particularly the lockdown of the city of Wuhan on January 23, 2020, on the containment and delay of the spread of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV). We employ a set of difference-in-differences (DID) estimations to disentangle the lockdown effect on human mobility reductions from other confounding effects including panic effect, virus effect, and the Spring Festival effect. We find that the lockdown of Wuhan reduced inflow into Wuhan by 76.64%, outflows from Wuhan by 56.35%, and within-Wuhan movements by 54.15%. We also estimate the dynamic effects of up to 22 lagged population inflows from Wuhan and other Hubei cities, the epicenter of the 2019-nCoV outbreak, on the destination cities’ new infection cases. We find, using simulations with these estimates, that the lockdown of the city of Wuhan on January 23, 2020 contributed significantly to reducing the total infection cases outside of Wuhan, even with the social distancing measures later imposed by other cities. We find that the COVID-19 cases would be 64.81% higher in the 347 Chinese cities outside Hubei province, and 52.64% higher in the 16 non-Wuhan cities inside Hubei, in the counterfactual world in which the city of Wuhan were not locked down from January 23, 2020. We also find that there were substantial undocumented infection cases in the early days of the 2019-nCoV outbreak in Wuhan and other cities of Hubei province, but over time, the gap between the officially reported cases and our estimated “actual” cases narrows significantly. We also find evidence that enhanced social distancing policies in the 63 Chinese cities outside Hubei province are effective in reducing the impact of population inflows from the epi-center cities in Hubei province on the spread of 2019-nCoV virus in the destination cities elsewhere.JEL CodesI18, I10.

scholarly journals An assessment of the impact of COVID-19 related social distancing measures on the stress levels of students

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke Edward Harding Bradley ◽  
Luke Reaper
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Female Students ◽  
Anxiety And Depression ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Mental Strain ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Teenagers And Young Adults ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Feeling Overwhelmed

Since the novel coronavirus was first reported in China in early 2020, governments have aimed to cull its spread and raise awareness of the symptoms of the infection.  These measures are collectively known as social distancing and self-isolation.  Prior to COVID-19, 85% of students in university reported feeling overwhelmed by everything they had to do at some point within the prior year (AADA, 2015).  Organizations treating teen anxiety and depression are highlighting the impact of isolation on teenagers and young adults and claim an association with a decline in self-care and a greater risk of suicide (Newport Academy, 2020).  Given the pre-existing high levels of stress and mental strain experienced by students, the consequences of social isolation may more significantly impact students in comparison with non-students.  This study uses the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) index to understand the impact that social distancing and self-isolation has on the mental health of students and non-students globally.  502 responses were gathered globally with most respondents residing in the United States of America, Italy and Ireland.  The results of this study suggest that the COVID-19 related Social Distancing and Self-isolation lead to a greater increase in stress among students than among adults as measured by STAI.  The reported stress was highest among high school age students and among female students generally.  The reported causes of this stress are primary related to the impact on education of the measures rather than directly related to the health consequences pandemic. 

Association and treatment of diabetes in patients affected by Covid-19

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 1198-1201
Author(s):  
Syed Yasir Afaque
Keyword(s):  
Diabetes Mellitus ◽  
Prognostic Value ◽  
Heart Diseases ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
Treatment Of Diabetes ◽  
Coronavirus Infection ◽  
Composite Outcomes ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Impact

In December 2019, a unique coronavirus infection, SARS-CoV-2, was first identified in the province of Wuhan in China. Since then, it spread rapidly all over the world and has been responsible for a large number of morbidity and mortality among humans. According to a latest study, Diabetes mellitus, heart diseases, Hypertension etc. are being considered important risk factors for the development of this infection and is also associated with unfavorable outcomes in these patients. There is little evidence concerning the trail back of these patients possibly because of a small number of participants and people who experienced primary composite outcomes (such as admission in the ICU, usage of machine-driven ventilation or even fatality of these patients). Until now, there are no academic findings that have proven independent prognostic value of diabetes on death in the novel Coronavirus patients. However, there are several conjectures linking Diabetes with the impact as well as progression of COVID-19 in these patients. The aim of this review is to acknowledge about the association amongst Diabetes and the novel Coronavirus and the result of the infection in such patients.

scholarly journals SARS-CoV-2/DENV co-infection: a series of cases from the Federal District, Midwestern Brazil

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Luise Schulte ◽  
José Diego Brito-Sousa ◽  
Marcus Vinicius Guimarães Lacerda ◽  
Luciana Ansaneli Naves ◽  
Eliana Teles de Gois ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Signs ◽  
Federal District ◽  
Therapeutic Interventions ◽  
Diagnostic Process ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Prevention Measures ◽  
Laboratory Findings ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Background Since the novel coronavirus disease outbreak, over 179.7 million people have been infected by SARS-CoV-2 worldwide, including the population living in dengue-endemic regions, particularly Latin America and Southeast Asia, raising concern about the impact of possible co-infections. Methods Thirteen SARS-CoV-2/DENV co-infection cases reported in Midwestern Brazil between April and September of 2020 are described. Information was gathered from hospital medical records regarding the most relevant clinical and laboratory findings, diagnostic process, therapeutic interventions, together with clinician-assessed outcomes and follow-up. Results Of the 13 cases, seven patients presented Acute Undifferentiated Febrile Syndrome and six had pre-existing co-morbidities, such as diabetes, hypertension and hypopituitarism. Two patients were pregnant. The most common symptoms and clinical signs reported at first evaluation were myalgia, fever and dyspnea. In six cases, the initial diagnosis was dengue fever, which delayed the diagnosis of concomitant infections. The most frequently applied therapeutic interventions were antibiotics and analgesics. In total, four patients were hospitalized. None of them were transferred to the intensive care unit or died. Clinical improvement was verified in all patients after a maximum of 21 days. Conclusions The cases reported here highlight the challenges in differential diagnosis and the importance of considering concomitant infections, especially to improve clinical management and possible prevention measures. Failure to consider a SARS-CoV-2/DENV co-infection may impact both individual and community levels, especially in endemic areas.

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