Coronavirus: Towards controlling of the pandemic - Indian scenario

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.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Wai Hang Kwok ◽  
Sai Kumar Vadde ◽  
Guanjin Wang

BACKGROUND The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is one of the greatest threats to human beings in terms of healthcare, economy and society in recent history. Up to this moment, there are no signs of remission and there is no proven effective cure. The vaccine is the primary biomedical preventive measure against the novel coronavirus. However, the public bias or sentiments, as reflected on social media, may have a significant impact on the progress to achieve the herd immunity needed principally. OBJECTIVE This study aims to use machine learning methods to extract public topics and sentiments on the COVID-19 vaccination on Twitter. METHODS We collected 31,100 English tweets containing COVID-19 vaccine-related keywords between January and October 2020 from Australian Twitter users. Specifically, we analyzed the tweets by visualizing the high-frequency word clouds and correlations between word tokens. We built the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model to identify the commonly discussed topics from massive tweets. We also performed sentiment analysis to understand the overall sentiments and emotions on COVID-19 vaccination in Australian society. RESULTS Our analysis identified three LDA topics, including "Attitudes towards COVID-19 and its vaccination", "Advocating infection control measures against COVID-19", and "Misconceptions and complaints about COVID-19 control". In all tweets, nearly two-thirds of the sentiments were positive, and around one-third were negative in the public opinion about the COVID-19 vaccine. Among the eight basic emotions, "trust" and "anticipation" were the two prominent positive emotions, while "fear" was the top negative emotion in the tweets. CONCLUSIONS Our new findings indicate that some Australian Twitter users supported infection control measures against COVID-19 and would refute misinformation. However, the others who underestimated the risks and severity of COVID-19 would probably rationalize their position on the COVID-19 vaccine with certain conspiracy theories. It is also noticed that the level of positive sentiment in the public may not be enough to further a vaccination coverage which would be sufficient to achieve vaccination-induced herd immunity. Governments should explore the public opinion and sentiments towards COVID-19 and its vaccination and implement an effective vaccination promotion scheme besides supporting the development and clinical administration of COVID-19 vaccines.


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 ◽  
pp. 003335492110587
Author(s):  
Andrew D. Redd ◽  
Lauren S. Peetluk ◽  
Brooke A. Jarrett ◽  
Colleen Hanrahan ◽  
Sheree Schwartz ◽  
...  

The public health crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a deluge of scientific research aimed at informing the public health and medical response to the pandemic. However, early in the pandemic, those working in frontline public health and clinical care had insufficient time to parse the rapidly evolving evidence and use it for decision-making. Academics in public health and medicine were well-placed to translate the evidence for use by frontline clinicians and public health practitioners. The Novel Coronavirus Research Compendium (NCRC), a group of >60 faculty and trainees across the United States, formed in March 2020 with the goal to quickly triage and review the large volume of preprints and peer-reviewed publications on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 and summarize the most important, novel evidence to inform pandemic response. From April 6 through December 31, 2020, NCRC teams screened 54 192 peer-reviewed articles and preprints, of which 527 were selected for review and uploaded to the NCRC website for public consumption. Most articles were peer-reviewed publications (n = 395, 75.0%), published in 102 journals; 25.1% (n = 132) of articles reviewed were preprints. The NCRC is a successful model of how academics translate scientific knowledge for practitioners and help build capacity for this work among students. This approach could be used for health problems beyond COVID-19, but the effort is resource intensive and may not be sustainable in the long term.


2020 ◽  
Vol 258 (5) ◽  
pp. 1049-1055 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy H. T. Lai ◽  
Emily W. H. Tang ◽  
Sandy K. Y. Chau ◽  
Kitty S. C. Fung ◽  
Kenneth K. W. Li

European View ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-163
Author(s):  
Nad’a Kovalčíková ◽  
Ariane Tabatabai

As governments and citizens around the world have struggled with the novel coronavirus, the information space has turned into a battleground. Authoritarian countries, including Russia, China and Iran, have spread disinformation on the causes of and responses to the pandemic. The over-abundance of information, also referred to as an ‘infodemic’, including manipulated information, has been both a cause and a result of the exacerbation of the public health crisis. It is further undermining trust in democratic institutions, the independent press, and facts and data, and exacerbating the rising tensions driven by economic, political and societal challenges. This article discusses the challenges democracies have faced and the measures they have adopted to counter information manipulation that impedes public health efforts. It draws seven lessons learned from the information war and offers a set of recommendations on tackling future infodemics related to public health.


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.


Author(s):  
Kai Gong ◽  
Zhong Xu ◽  
Zhefeng Cai ◽  
Yuxiu Chen ◽  
Zhanxiang Wang

BACKGROUND During the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), internet hospitals in China were engaged with epidemic prevention and control, offering epidemic-related online services and medical support to the public. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to explore the role of internet hospitals during the prevention and control of the COVID-19 outbreak in China. METHODS Online epidemic-related consultations from multicenter internet hospitals in China during the COVID-19 epidemic were collected. The counselees were described and classified into seven type groups. Symptoms were recorded and compared with reported patients with COVID-19. Hypochondriacal suspicion and offline visit motivation were detected within each counselees’ group to evaluate the social panic of the epidemic along with the consequent medical-seeking behaviors. The counselees’ motivation and the doctors’ recommendation for an offline visit were compared. Risk factors affecting the counselees’ tendency of hypochondriacal suspicion and offline visit motivation were explored by logistic regression models. The epidemic prevention and control measures based on internet hospitals were listed, and the corresponding effects were discussed. RESULTS A total of 4913 consultations were enrolled for analysis with the median age of the counselees at 28 years (IQR 22-33 years). There were 104 (2.12%) healthy counselees, 147 (2.99%) hypochondriacal counselees, 34 (0.69%) exposed counselees, 853 (17.36%) mildly suspicious counselees, 42 (0.85%) moderately suspicious counselees, 3550 (72.26%) highly suspicious counselees, and 183 (3.72%) severely suspicious counselees. A total of 94.20% (n=4628) of counselees had epidemic-related symptoms with a distribution similar to those of COVID-19. The hypochondriacal suspicion (n=2167, 44.11%) was common. The counselees’ motivation and the doctors’ recommendation for offline visits were inconsistent (<i>P</i>&lt;.001) with a Cohen kappa score of 0.039, indicating improper medical-seeking behaviors. Adult counselees (odds ratio [OR]=1.816, <i>P</i>&lt;.001) with epidemiological exposure (OR 7.568, <i>P</i>&lt;.001), shortness of breath (OR 1.440, <i>P</i>=.001), diarrhea (OR 1.272, <i>P</i>=.04), and unrelated symptoms (OR 1.509, <i>P</i>&lt;.001) were more likely to have hypochondriacal suspicion. Counselees with severe illnesses (OR 2.303, <i>P</i>&lt;.001), fever (OR 1.660, <i>P</i>&lt;.001), epidemiological exposure history (OR 1.440, <i>P</i>=.01), and hypochondriacal suspicion (OR 4.826, <i>P</i>&lt;.001) were more likely to attempt an offline visit. Reattending counselees (OR 0.545, <i>P</i>=.002) were less motivated to go to the offline clinic. CONCLUSIONS Internet hospitals can serve different types of epidemic counselees, offer essential medical supports to the public during the COVID-19 outbreak, reduce the social panic, promote social distancing, enhance the public’s ability of self-protection, correct improper medical-seeking behaviors, reduce the chance of nosocomial cross-infection, and facilitate epidemiological screening, thus, playing an important role on preventing and controlling COVID-19.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 312-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel, H. T. Ling ◽  
Christina Mee Chyong Ho

The health crisis of the COVID-19 outbreak has global impacts on humanity and theeconomy. Such pandemic effects are believed to have influenced human behaviour; issues ofpanic buying (overbuying) and noncompliance among individuals are shown evident. However,the underlying understanding on such behaviours due to the pandemic remains unclear.Therefore, this perspective paper adopts the social dilemma theory and microeconomics conceptsto analyse and explain the effects of COVID-19 on social behavioural reactions. It attempts toaddress the questions of what and why are the behaviours of individuals shown during thecoronavirus pandemic and showcase how the theory is associated with current social phenomena.Real scenarios based on media reporting from the sociodemographic context of Malaysia,concerning the following issues; (i) competition over daily essentials; (ii) self-honesty ofindividuals; and (iii) adherence to government policies and measures enforcement (governance)were discussed. A conceptual framework was developed to illustrate interrelationships betweensocial dilemma concepts and the phenomena. In essence, due to fear, uncertainty and greed, selfinterestand opportunistic (defective/unethical) behaviours of most individuals prevailing oversocietal collective interest amid the pandemic have been prevalently observed in the aboveinstances, although a cooperative choice can eventually result in a better outcome for everyone.Not only do these non-cooperative behaviours of individuals create inconveniences,dissatisfactions and other forms of negative externalities, they also incentivise others to actselfishly, if no restrictions are imposed, that may eventually cause government interventionsfailures. This paper demonstrates the relevancy of the social dilemmas theory in betterunderstanding fundamental human behavioural reactions amid the health crisis and theimportance of incorporating the findings into government policymaking. Thesesociopsychological considerations help the government formulate holistic measures, namelystringent sanctions and monitoring enforcement, as well as incentivising cooperative andcompliant behaviours of the public, which then contribute to curbing the COVID-19 pandemicmore effectively.


2022 ◽  
pp. 61-82
Author(s):  
Petek Tosun

This chapter explores the social media marketing communication of brands in the first days of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak within the theoretical framework provided by signaling theory. The social media content of six Turkish brands was examined by content analysis. The findings have shown that brands shared posts in four themes: brand promotion, brand's COVID-19 messages, product promotion, and special day posts. Brands integrated the COVID-19 agenda in their social media communication in two ways. First, they designed and shared posts that focused solely on the pandemic. These COVID-19-related posts constituted a separate category that did not include any direct relevance to the brands' promotion activities. Second, they added COVID-19-related points in their social media posts. This study provides valuable findings for marketing practitioners and academicians regarding social media communication in a global health crisis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-60
Author(s):  
Murari Man Shrestha ◽  
Hari Prasad Dhakal ◽  
Banita Gurung ◽  
Sajin Rajbhandary ◽  
Sachin Shakya ◽  
...  

COVID-19 has emerged as a serious public health crisis of 21st century affecting millions of people around the world. First identified in Wuhan China, COVID-19 has spread globally claiming millions of human life and suffering. The Government of Nepal (GoN) has accelerated control measures through mass media, laboratory testing, quarantine, isolation and treatment of COVID patients in designated hospitals. With rapid spread of COVID-19, the government owned as well as the private hospitals and health institutions across the nation face a great challenge to contain the spread of the novel virus. Nepal Cancer Hospital and Research Center (NCHRC) has been managing uninterrupted treatment services to cancer patients since the beginning of spread of COVID-19 in Nepal. Early planning and preparedness has been crucial to ensure patient care in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic.


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