scholarly journals Rationale for Mass Masking in Controlling the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shing Yau Tam ◽  
Victor C. W. Tam ◽  
Helen K. W. Law ◽  
May Ling Khaw ◽  
Shara W. Y. Lee

The rapid spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) into a global pandemic caught the world unprepared. Previously effective measures for containing disease outbreaks were overwhelmed, necessitating strict controls such as lockdowns or curfews. Among the disease control interventions, community mass masking was one of the highly controversial issues with differing opinions on its indications or effectiveness from different health authorities around the world. Regions where community mass masking was timely introduced were associated with lower transmission rates, and more effective disease control. In this article, we discuss the evidence on the effectiveness, and rationale for community mass masking to prevent the COVID-19 transmission. Areas for further research to define the role of mass masking in light of the COVID-19 pandemic will be suggested. This would help policy makers in formulating mass masking policies.

1999 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-522
Author(s):  
Brady Coleman ◽  
Robert Beckman

AbstractIntegrated coastal management (ICM) programmes are being planned, formulated and implemented in coastal States all over the world. To date, however, ICM has been seen as more in the realm of policy-makers, managers, scientists, coastal resource economists, and others, rather than in the realm of lawyers. This article reveals how law and lawyers should play an absolutely essential role at all stages of the ICM process. Ideally, ICM legal consultants will have a broad range of knowledge and experience in both international legal treaties as well as in certain fundamental national law principles, so that coastal zone policies will be designed and carried out with a critical understanding of the laws and institutions needed for the long-term success of an integrated coastal management programme.


2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 3444-3456
Author(s):  
Mr J Dorasamy, Et. al.

The World Health Organization (Who) In March 2020 Declared Covid 19 A Pandemic, Due To The  Global And Rapid Spread Of A Novel Coronavirus (Who, 2020). The Covid 19 Pandemic Being Highly Infectious And Unpredictable, Has  Disrupted  Social, Economic, Environmental And Political Spheres Of Life. Globally, People Have Ventured Into A “Lockdown World”, Increasing Uncertainty About Their Future Amidst The Covid 19 Pandemic. As A Result Of The Pandemic, Social Alteration Has Taken The Form Of Social Distancing, Self-Isolation And Self-Quarantine.  Many Were Unprepared For The Shift From The “Normal”, Propelling  Undue  Stress Under The New Normal Way Of Doing Things During The Current Global Pandemic Crisis. This Has Been Accompanied By Social, Emotional And Mental Effects, As The Ongoing And Fluid Nature Of The Pandemic Has Created Uncertainty For Many People. The Covid 19 Pandemic, As A Multidimensional Stressor Affecting Wellbeing, Has Affected Individuals, Families, Educational, Occupational, And Broader Societal Systems.  


2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 39-61
Author(s):  
Meike Wagner

In 1854, the city of Munich had arranged for the “First General German Industrial Exhibition” to promote German industry to the world and invited a global audience to the event. At the same time, Franz Dingelstedt, director of the National Theater, organized a festival displaying the finest actors from Germany. Right after the opening of the festival, cholera started raging in the city and leaving 3,000 deaths in the final count. The author sketches out the role of the theatre in this crisis, when Dingelstedt was ordered by the king to keep the theatre open at any cost. This appears awkward, in regard to the current global pandemic crisis where theaters have been identified as risk zones for infection and consequently closed down. Why was the theatre at the time considered a safe and appropriate place even helping to counter the disease?


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuele Nicastri ◽  
Nicola Petrosillo ◽  
Tommaso Ascoli Bartoli ◽  
Luciana Lepore ◽  
Annalisa Mondi ◽  
...  

On January 9th, 2020, the “World Health Organization” (WHO) declared the identification, by Chinese Health authorities, of a novel coronavirus, further classified as SARS-CoV-2 responsible of a diseases (COVID-19) ranging from asymptomatic cases to severe respiratory involvement. On March 9th, 2020, WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Italy is the second most affected country by COVID-19 infection after China. The “L. Spallanzani” National Institute for the Infectious Diseases, IRCCS has been the first Italian hospital to admit and manage patients affected by COVID-19. Hereby, we show our recommendations for the management of COVID-19 patients, based on very limited clinical evidences; these recomendations should be considered as expert opinions, which may be modified according to newly produced literature data. *for the INMI COVID-19 Treatment Group – ICOTREG Abdeddaim A, Agrati C, Albarello F, Antinori A, Ascoli Bartoli T, Baldini F, Bellagamba R, Bevilacqua N, Bibas M, Biava G, Boumis E, Busso D, Camici M, Capobianchi MR, Capone A, Caravella I, Cataldo A, Cerilli S, Chinello G, Cicalini S, Corpolongo A, Cristofaro M, D’Abramo A, Dantimi C, De Angelis G, De Palo MG, D’Offizi G, De Zottis F, Di Lorenzo R, Di Stefano F, Fusetti M, Galati V, Gagliardini R, Garotto G, Gebremeskel Tekle Saba, Giancola ML, Giansante F, Girardi E, Goletti D, Granata G, Greci MC, Grilli E, Grisetti S, Gualano G, Iacomi F, Iannicelli G, Ippolito G, Lepore L, Libertone R, Lionetti R, Liuzzi G, Loiacono L, Macchione M,  Marchioni L, Mariano A, Marini MC, Maritti M, Mastrobattista A, Mazzotta V, Mencarini P, Migliorisi-Ramazzini P, Mondi A, Montalbano M, Mosti S, Murachelli S, Musso M, Nicastri E, Noto P, Oliva A, Palazzolo C, Palmieri F, Pareo C, Petrone A, Pianura E, Pinnetti C, Pontarelli A, Puro V, Rianda A, Rosati S, Sampaolesi A, Santagata C, Scarcia D’Aprano S, Scarabello A, Schininà V, Scorzolini L, Stazi GV, Taibi C, Taglietti F, Tonnarini R, Topino S, Vergori A, Vincenzi L, Visco-Comandini U, Vittozzi P, Zaccarelli M, Zaccaro G.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 410-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sruthi Rajan ◽  
Shijin Santhakumar

Purpose The innovations in fundamentals coupled with noise traders induce co-movement in diverse markets. This co-movement in equity markets which is evidenced higher during the turmoil period influences economic fundamentals of a country dissimilar in nature. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether economic fundamentals or investors’ behavior attributable to disturbances across the world are the rationale behind the crisis transmission, and thereby distinguish fundamental-based contagion from investor-induced contagion. Design/methodology/approach Initially, the study investigates the role of macroeconomic fundamentals and stock returns on crisis occurrence using panel probit estimates. Additionally, ordinary least squares estimates controlling the influence of fundamentals on domestic return capture the discrete country effect measuring the influence of domestic as well as foreign economic fundamentals along with foreign returns on the domestic stock index. Findings The empirical results reveal that foreign country stock index returns are having a significant influence on domestic returns besides a prominent role in crisis occurrence. The binary probit model confirmed the influence of both macroeconomic factors and foreign returns in crisis occurrence. The OLS estimates found evidence for investor-induced contagion in the crisis period where the effects of economic fundamentals are small in comparison to foreign market returns that are mainly dominant in pre- and post-crisis period. Research limitations/implications The propagation of crisis from one market to other would enable the policy makers to make clear regulations at right time to control for the crisis in future. The results can help the policy makers as well as investors in reducing the impact of the crisis in future by clearly monitoring the behavior of the factors under study. Originality/value The current study addresses the role of macro fundamentals and investors influence in crisis propagation. Adopting subprime crisis of 2008-2009 as a reference point and separating the sample period into pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis period, the study explains how badly the other 30 markets impacted the crisis that emerged in the USA.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuehan Ai ◽  
Angela Davis ◽  
Daniel Jones ◽  
Stanley Lemeshow ◽  
Huolin Tu ◽  
...  

The global pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has resulted in more than 129 million confirm cases. Many health authorities around the world have implemented wastewater-based epidemiology as a rapid and complementary tool for the COVID-19 surveillance system and more recently for variants of concern emergence tracking. In this study, three SARS-CoV-2 target genes (N1, N2, and E) were quantified from wastewater influent samples (n = 250) obtained from the capital city and 7 other cities in various size in central Ohio from July 2020 to January 2021. To determine human-specific fecal strength in wastewater samples more accurately, two human fecal viruses (PMMoV and crAssphage) were quantified to normalize the SARS-CoV-2 gene concentrations in wastewater. To estimate the trend of new case numbers from SARS-CoV-2 gene levels, different statistical models were built and evaluated. From the longitudinal data, SARS-CoV-2 gene concentrations in wastewater strongly correlated with daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases (average Spearman r = 0.70, p < 0.05), with the N2 gene being the best predictor of the trend of confirmed cases. Moreover, average daily case numbers can help reduce the noise and variation from the clinical data. Among the models tested, the quadratic polynomial model performed best in correlating and predicting COVID-19 cases from the wastewater surveillance data, which can be used to track the effectiveness of vaccination in the later stage of the pandemic. Interestingly, neither of the normalization methods using PMMoV or crAssphage significantly enhanced the correlation with new case numbers, nor improved the estimation models. Whole-genome sequencing result showed that those detected SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern from the wastewater matched with the clinical isolates from the communities. The findings from this study suggest that wastewater surveillance is effective in COVID-19 trend tracking and variant emergence and transmission within a community.


2020 ◽  
pp. 75-83
Author(s):  
Svetlana CEBOTARI ◽  
Victoria BEVZIUC

The activity of the World Health Organization is now becoming a topic in disputes between the big power centres – the USA and China. The role of the WHO is also becoming a research topic not only for researchers in medical sciences, but also for political specialists in international relations. With the COVID-19 crisis, the WHO is becoming a scene of the major challenges – the USA and China. This Article aims to highlight the USA and China relations with reference to the work of the WHO, including the effectiveness of the organization with a global pandemic such as that of the COVID-19.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Padmabati Gahan ◽  
Monalisha Pattnaik ◽  
Agnibrata Nayak ◽  
Monee Kieran Roul

AbstractThe novel COVID-19 global pandemic has become a public health emergency of international concern affecting 215 countries and territories around the globe. As of 28 November 2020, it has caused a pandemic outbreak with a total of more than 6,171,5119 confirmed infections and more than 1,44,4235 confirmed deaths reported worldwide. The main focus of this paper is to generate LTM real-time out of sample forecasts of the future COVID-19 confirmed and death cases respectively for the top ten profoundly affected countries including for the world. To solve this problem we introduced a novel hybrid approach AARNN model based on ARIMA and ARNN forecasting model that can generate LTM (fifty days ahead) out of sample forecasts of the number of daily confirmed and death COVID-19 cases for the ten countries namely USA, India, Brazil, Russia, France, Spain, UK, Italy, Argentina, Colombia and also for the world respectively. The predictions of the future outbreak for different countries will be useful for the effective allocation of health care resources and will act as early-warning system for health warriors, corporate leaders, economists, government/public-policy makers, and scientific experts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-69
Author(s):  
Ridwan Olamilekan Adesola ◽  
Oluwatobi Emmanuel Oladele ◽  
Ahmed Oluwasegun Tajudeen ◽  
Ogundepo Oluwatobi Moses ◽  
Murali Dinesh

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), confirmed as the global pandemic on March 11, 2020, by the World Health Organization (WHO), was caused by the outbreak of an emergent severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which was first reported in Wuhan city, China, in December 2019. Based on the previous pandemic, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) from 2002 to 2003, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in 2012. The scientific developments have fast-tracked our insights SARS-CoV-2 epidemiology, likewise vaccinology relevant for developing drugs for viral infections treatment. As there are not many detailed interventions and vaccines available for disease control, the pandemic COVID-19 poses countless threats to global public health, causing a great level of insecurity and unrest worldwide. To provide an inclusive overview to global health authorities and prospective readers worldwide, we detailed in this review the epidemiology and vaccinology of SARS-CoV-2 in Nigeria.


Author(s):  
Jyoti Prakash ◽  
Karan Bir Singh

Since the evolution of mankind, the need for food and drink has been a major concern for humans. It has been reported from the ancient records that human had to cultivate and the store food for consumption but as time passed humans started to travel from one place to another in search of food and drink which further in the modern era gave rise to the tourism sector where people travel for one place to another to explore new culture and experience the local cuisine which depicts about the place and its community living around the region. Due to this, there was a tremendous increase in the percentage of tourists every year in different continents where they only travel for leisure and availing the local cuisine that included both food and the local beverage of the location. Therefore, the essence of food is also a vital part of the lifestyle for every individual and tourists who travel to the destination and try to experience the local cuisine. If you see the world, most of the tourists are eagerly mad at traveling to India, wherein every 100 meters you will get a varied cuisine influence which fascinates the international tourists towards the country's culinary inheritance. Therefore, the role of promotion and marketing of the regional cuisine of a country as it showcases the cultural identity of the nation's heritage. Henceforth, the paper explores the framework of the tasting tourism as to create a new phase of tourism after the Covid-19 in order to increase the tourism sector by introducing a new segment where the cuisine will showcase the opportunity for providing an extensive knowledge for the regional cuisine and beverages available, where they can experience during their travel to the region. But due to the pandemic situation, it has been seen that the Indian tourism sector had a drastic change as the inflow of foreign tourists decreased, and also the food business sector is facing downfall due to the rapid spread of the virus.  Key words: Gastronomy; Tasting Tourism; Indian cuisine; Marketing; Promotion; Tourists.


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