scholarly journals The Buffering Effects of Social Insurance for the Spread of Covid-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4(I)) ◽  
pp. 19-27
Author(s):  
Moein Mirani Ahangarkolaei ◽  
Eser Demir ◽  
Tolga Constantinou ◽  
Mostafa Toranji ◽  
Tadashi Adino ◽  
...  

Global pandemics are associated with substantial losses of human capital. The best strategy of policymakers in public health before a population-wide vaccination is to reduce the outbreak of the disease and finding ways to alleviate its negative consequences in society. Previous studies show that welfare programs have externalities in unintended areas and for unplanned outcomes including a wide range of health outcomes. In this paper, we show that payments under the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program have the potential to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. Applying a difference-in-difference technique on monthly data of all US counties from January 2020 to January 2021, we document that the social insurance under the umbrella of UI payments can reduce the transmission rate of Covid-19. The results show heterogeneity across subsample with the largest effects among blacks, poor, and low educated regions

Author(s):  
Tadashi Adino ◽  
Moein Mirani Ahangar Kolaei ◽  
Eser Demir ◽  
Tolga Constantinou ◽  
Mostafa Toranji ◽  
...  

This paper explores disparities in the effect of pollution on confirmed cases of Covid-19 based on counties’ socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Using data on all US counties on a daily basis over the year 2020 and applying a rich panel data fixed effect model, we document that: 1) there are discernible social and demographic disparities in the spread of Covid-19. Blacks, low educated, and poorer people are at higher risks of being infected by the new disease. 2) The criteria pollutants including Ozone, CO, PM10, and PM2.5 have the potential to accelerate the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. 3) The disadvantaged population is more vulnerable to the effects of pollution on the spread of coronavirus. Specifically, the effects of pollution on confirmed cases become larger for blacks, low educated, and counties with lower average wages in 2019.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rayan A. Ahmed

In Wuhan, China (December 2019), viral pneumonia cases of uncertain origin have been reported. The emergency has drawn global attention. To determine the pathogenic potential, joint efforts were conducted by Chinese Multidisciplinary Task Forces. An integral component of wide range of research applications is not only determining the causative agent but also the nucleic acid bases order in biological samples. Research techniques determining genetic material features and its order is called “sequencing”, classified into three generations. Moreover, the first sequencing attempt was conducted and a genetic link identified between samples isolated from China and other previously sequenced Coronaviruses. However, there was patient to patient diversity in terms of clinical and laboratory manifestations and diseases severity. After the genetic material of the causative agent was successfully sequenced, it was named the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19. Here, we review the genome sequences of novel coronavirus infected patients from different countries such as India, Bangladesh and Ecuador compared to China (first reported case), seeking not only to recognize similarities and differences between genome sequences of novel coronavirus, but also to compare them with other forms of coronaviruses family. Utilizing this data will assist in making right decisions minimizing negative consequences of the outbreak.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 462-468
Author(s):  
Latika kothari ◽  
Sanskruti Wadatkar ◽  
Roshni Taori ◽  
Pavan Bajaj ◽  
Diksha Agrawal

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a communicable infection caused by the novel coronavirus resulting in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV). It was recognized to be a health crisis for the general population of international concern on 30th January 2020 and conceded as a pandemic on 11th March 2020. India is taking various measures to fight this invisible enemy by adopting different strategies and policies. To stop the COVID-19 from spreading, the Home Affairs Ministry and the health ministry, of India, has issued the nCoV 19 guidelines on travel. Screening for COVID-19 by asking questions about any symptoms, recent travel history, and exposure. India has been trying to get testing kits available. The government of India has enforced various laws like the social distancing, Janata curfew, strict lockdowns, screening door to door to control the spread of novel coronavirus. In this pandemic, innovative medical treatments are being explored, and a proper vaccine is being hunted to deal with the situation. Infection control measures are necessary to prevent the virus from further spreading and to help control the current situation. Thus, this review illustrates and explains the criteria provided by the government of India to the awareness of the public to prevent the spread of COVID-19.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0260399
Author(s):  
Perla Werner ◽  
Aviad Tur-Sinai

Efforts to control the spread of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic include drastic measures such as isolation, social distancing, and lockdown. These restrictions are accompanied by serious adverse consequences such as forgoing of healthcare. The study aimed to assess the prevalence and correlates of forgone care for a variety of healthcare services during a two-month COVID-19 lockdown, using Andersen’s Behavioral Model of Healthcare Utilization. A cross-sectional study using computerized phone interviews was conducted with 302 Israeli Jewish participants aged 40 and above. Almost half of the participants (49%) reported a delay in seeking help for at least one needed healthcare service during the COVID-19 lockdown period. Among the predisposing factors, we found that participants aged 60+, being more religious, and reporting higher levels of COVID-19 fear were more likely to report forgone care than younger, less religious and less concerned participants. Among need factors, a statistically significant association was found with a reported diagnosis of diabetes, with participants with the disease having a considerably higher likelihood of forgone care. The findings stress the importance of developing interventions aimed at mitigating the phenomenon of forgoing care while creating nonconventional ways of consuming healthcare services. In the short term, healthcare services need to adapt to the social distancing and isolation measures required to stanch the epidemic. In the long term, policymakers should consider alternative ways of delivering healthcare services to the public regularly and during crisis without losing sight of their budgetary consequences. They must recognize the possibility of having to align medical staff to the changing demand for healthcare services under conditions of health uncertainty.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth F. Caldwell ◽  
Sarah Falcus

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the production of large numbers of books to educate children about the novel coronavirus and the measures to control its spread. The books have been produced by a wide variety of different individuals and organizations, from health professionals and educators to national public health organizations and the United Nations. This study provides a detailed analysis of 73 picturebooks about coronavirus/COVID-19 available in English and produced between March and June 2020. The analysis reveals that the books combine early scientific knowledge about the novel coronavirus with pre-existing connotations of germs to produce a specific, comprehensible cause for the social disruption produced by the pandemic. This portrayal is frequently used to mobilize children to be heroes and fight the virus through a number of behavioural measures, principally frequent hand washing and staying at home. The books also reveal adult anxieties about the nature of childhood and the uncertainty of the nature and timing of a post-pandemic future.


Author(s):  
Andrea Maugeri ◽  
Martina Barchitta ◽  
Sebastiano Battiato ◽  
Antonella Agodi

Italy was the first country in Europe which imposed control measures of travel restrictions, quarantine and contact precautions to tackle the epidemic spread of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in all its regions. While such efforts are still ongoing, uncertainties regarding SARS-CoV-2 transmissibility and ascertainment of cases make it difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of restrictions. Here, we employed a Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered-Dead (SEIRD) model to assess SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics, working on the number of reported patients in intensive care unit (ICU) and deaths in Sicily (Italy), from 24 February to 13 April. Overall, we obtained a good fit between estimated and reported data, with a fraction of unreported SARS-CoV-2 cases (18.4%; 95%CI = 0–34.0%) before 10 March lockdown. Interestingly, we estimated that transmission rate in the community was reduced by 32% (95%CI = 23–42%) after the first set of restrictions, and by 80% (95%CI = 70–89%) after those adopted on 23 March. Thus, our estimates delineated the characteristics of SARS-CoV2 epidemic before restrictions taking into account unreported data. Moreover, our findings suggested that transmission rates were reduced after the adoption of control measures. However, we cannot evaluate whether part of this reduction might be attributable to other unmeasured factors, and hence further research and more accurate data are needed to understand the extent to which restrictions contributed to the epidemic control.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solym Mawaki Manou-Abi ◽  
Julien Balicchi

AbstractIn order to anticipate a future trends in the development of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 epidemic started early at march 13, in the french overseas department Mayotte, we consider in this paper a modified deterministic and stochastic epidemic model. The model divides the total population into several possible states or compartment: susceptible (S), exposed (E) infected and being under an incubation period, infected (I) being infectious, simple or mild removed RM, severe removed (including hospitalized) RS and death cases (D). The adding of the two new compartment RM and RS are driven by data which together replace the original R compartment in the classical SEIR model.We first fit the constant transmission rate parameter to the epidemic data in Mayotte during an early exponential growth phase using an algorithm with a package of the software R and based on a Maximum Likewood estimator. This allows us to predict the epidemic without any control in order to understand how the control measure and public policies designed are having the desired impact of controlling the epidemic. To do this, we introduce a temporally varying decreasing transmission rate parameter with a control or quarantine parameter q. Then we pointed out some values of q to maintain control which is critical in Mayotte given the fragility of its health infrastructure and the significant fraction of the population without access to water.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanjin Wang ◽  
Pei Wang ◽  
Shudao Zhang ◽  
Hao Pan

Abstract Motivated by the quick control in Wuhan, China, and the rapid spread in other countries of COVID-19, we investigate the questions that what is the turning point in Wuhan by quantifying the variety of basic reproductive number after the lockdown city. The answer may help the world to control the COVID-19 epidemic. A modified SEIR model is used to study the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan city. Our model is calibrated by the hospitalized cases. The modeling result gives out that the means of basic reproductive numbers are 1.5517 (95% CI 1.1716-4.4283) for the period from Jan 25 to Feb 11, 2020, and 0.4738(95% CI 0.0997-0.8370) for the period from Feb 12 to Mar 10. The transmission rate fell after Feb 12, 2020 as a result of China’s COVID-19 strategy of keeping society distance and the medical support from all China, but principally because of the clinical symptoms to be used for the novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) confirmation in Wuhan since Feb 12, 2020. Clinical diagnosis can quicken up NCP-confirmation such that the COVID-19 patients can be isolated without delay. So the clinical symptoms pneumonia-confirmation is the turning point of the COVID-19 battle of Wuhan. The measure of clinical symptoms pneumonia-confirmation in Wuhan has delayed the growth and reduced size of the COVID-19 epidemic, decreased the peak number of the hospitalized cases by 96% in Wuhan. Our modeling also indicates that the earliest start date of COVID-19 in Wuhan may be Nov 2, 2019.


2021 ◽  
Vol 257 ◽  
pp. 02034
Author(s):  
Qiu Feng ◽  
Ren Fuchen

Purpose The sudden outbreak of the novel coronavirus has caused varying degrees of damage to China and the world. In today’s era of information explosion, data and information are the driving force for decision-making. The improvement of medical treatment and public health systems is the most fundamental, but what a citizen needs is an intuitive and clear “seeing” the development of the epidemic. The correct trend, an accurate view and understanding of the epidemic requires us to use visual design methods to present it to the public, which is helpful to establish a correct understanding of the psychological construction of anti-epidemic at the social level.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 31-44
Author(s):  
Yasmim Berni Ferreira ◽  
Flávia Maria Ramos Freire ◽  
Victor Oliveira Araújo ◽  
Isadora Mônica Ponte De Oliveira ◽  
Lara Maria de Oliveira Paiva Freitas ◽  
...  

The knowledge of the spinal cord irrigation is important for the therapeutic planning "COVID-19" is a potentially serious, highly transmissible infectious disease that was first identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 can evolve asymptomatically, with respiratory symptoms or with systemic manifestations affecting, for example, the nervous system. This review aims to discuss the neurological manifestations of SARS-CoV-2 infection, citing the prevalence of each. This study analyzed scientific articles published from 2010 to 2021 in the PubMed database. More than 35% of patients who contract the novel coronavirus develop neurological symptoms. SARS-CoV enters the brain mainly through the olfactory bulb and spreads rapidly via transneuronal route to other related areas such as cerebellum, insula, encephalon, vessels and nerves, and the brain parenchyma itself. This causes manifestations in the CNS (dizziness and ataxias), PNS (anosmia and ageusia), and the musculoskeletal system. Given existing knowledge of other coronaviruses and respiratory viruses, the wide range of CNS and PNS associations with COVID-19 is not surprising, and this is the focus of most current reports. Neurological complications, particularly encephalitis and stroke, can cause lifelong disability, requiring long-term care and substantial costs in the social and economic sphere.


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