scholarly journals Evaluation of the Economic, Environmental, and Social Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Japanese Tourism Industry

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 10302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusuke Kitamura ◽  
Selim Karkour ◽  
Yuki Ichisugi ◽  
Norihiro Itsubo

According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) annual Emissions Gap Report 2019, further reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are needed to reduce climate change impacts. In Japan, the 2030 Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) target is an emissions reduction of 26% compared to 2013. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has led to 43,341,451 confirmed cases and 1,157,509 confirmed deaths globally and affected 218 countries (as of 27 October 2020). In Japan, as of the same date, 96,948 infectious cases and 1724 deaths related to the new coronavirus had been recorded. These numbers continue to increase. In Japan, in March 2020, the number of international tourist arrivals decreased by about 93% compared to last year at the same period. The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) reported several significant scenarios for the tourism industry. COVID-19 is the greatest shock to international tourism since 1950 and represents an abrupt end to the 10-year period of sustained growth that followed the 2009 financial crisis. It was thought that it would be possible to analyze the economic, environmental, and social impacts of rapid social changes. Thus, this study estimates changes in Japan’s tourist consumption, the carbon footprint (CFP), and employment due to the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The calculations in this study adopt a lifecycle approach using input–output tables. Based on these observations, this study uses four scenarios (SR 1, no recovery until December; SR 2, recovery from October; SR 3, recovery from July or September; and SR 0, same growth rate as 2018–2019) for Japan to calculate the CFP and employment change using input–output table analysis based on tourist consumption, which is a tourism metric. According to our results (2019 vs. SR 1 and 3), the consumption loss is between 20,540 billion yen (−65.1%) and 12,704 billion yen (−39.1%), the CFP reduction is between 89,488 Mt-CO2eq (−64.2%) and 54,030 Mt-CO2eq (−37.5%), and the employment loss is between 2,677,000 people (−64.2%) and 1,678,000 people (−37.5%). As of November 2020, the tourism industry continues to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the post-COVID-19 society, it will be necessary to maintain the GHG emissions reductions achieved in this short period and realize economic recovery. This recovery must also be sustainable for tourism stakeholders and society.

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bapi Gorain ◽  
Hira Choudhury ◽  
Nagashekhara Molugulu ◽  
Rajani B. Athawale ◽  
Prashant Kesharwani

Sudden outbreak of a new pathogen in numbers of pneumonic patients in Wuhan province during December 2019 has threatened the world population within a short period of its occurrence. This respiratory tract–isolated pathogen was initially named as novel coronavirus 2019 (nCoV-2019), but later termed as SARS-CoV-2. The rapid spreading of this infectious disease received the label of pandemic by the World Health Organization within 4 months of its occurrence, which still seeks continuous attention of the researchers to prevent the spread and for cure of the infected patients. The propagation of the disease has been recorded in 215 countries, with more than 25.5 million cases and a death toll of more than 0.85 million. Several measures are taken to control the disease transmission, and researchers are actively engaged in finding suitable therapeutics to effectively control the disease to minimize the mortality and morbidity rates. Several existing potential candidates were explored in the prevention and treatment of worsening condition of COVID-19 patients; however, none of the formulation has been approved for the treatment but used under medical supervision. In this article, a focus has been made to highlight on current epidemiology on the COVID-19 infection, clinical features, diagnosis, and transmission, with special emphasis on treatment measures of the disease at different stages of clinical research and the global economic influence due to this pandemic situation. Progress in the development on vaccine against COVID-19 has also been explored as important measures to immunize people. Moreover, this article is expected to provide information to the researchers, who are constantly combating in the management against this outbreak.


2020 ◽  
pp. 63-74
Author(s):  
Jelisaveta Vučković ◽  
Vesna Tsitsivas

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 virus pandemic, which is still ongoing, and it is uncertain when it will end. Essentially, it is an epidemiological problem which has turned into economic, sociological, socio-political and psychological one. Based on the information available so far, it can be concluded that the tourism industry (and within it, especially the business operations of travel agencies and tour operators), both in the world and in Serbia, is one of the most affected, due to the pandemic. Freedom of movement is restricted and people's safety is endangered, which are the key preconditions for tourism mobility. The subject of analysis in this paper is an attempt to look at the psychological aspect of the COVID-19 virus pandemic, with special emphasis on its possible consequences on the mental health of the employees in travel agencies in Serbia. Meny experts think that it will undoubtedly adversely affect people's mental health, and prospective studies on this topic will follow in the future.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-43
Author(s):  
Bhim Bahadur Kunwar

This research aims to discover and present the impacts of COVID-19 in tourism in the context of Lumbini and its premises. As COVID-19 spread globally, it has created many challenges in health and security, daily lives, the national economy, and the global tourism industry. The COVID-19 outbreak has been considered as the most challenging tragedy that occurred in the world after the 2nd world war. The World Health Organization (WHO) had listed Nepal also as a country with a high-risk zone of COVID-19.The travel restriction and nationwide lock-down implemented by many countries including Nepal have resulted in a stranded traveler’s movement. As the consequences ticket reservation, flight services, transportation, hotel, and restaurants were closed and several job losses were registered in the tourism sector. The negative effects like fear, threat, frustration, and losing the confidence of tourism entrepreneurs appeared. This has brought changes in the tourists’ behavior and their motivation to travel for the next few years. In Lumbini businesses like lodges, hotels, restaurants, and travel offices were also severely affected by the pandemic. Thus, the tourism sector has been facing serious threats due to the prolonged lockdown and closing of tourism activities than the terror of COVID-19 itself.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laila zahra ◽  
Yaser Daanial Khan

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 which is widely known as Sars-Cov-2 is a deadly virus that is the main cause of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19). This plague affects the human immune system badly and adversely affects the human body. This disease emerged from Wuhan, China, and spread all over the world in a very short period. The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned the world about its dire consequences and directed all the countries to take strict precautionary measures and still, there are lots of things that need to be done. This study focuses on the in silico methods which use immunoinformatic approaches to build epitope-based subunit vaccine for SARS-COV-2 that is used to produce several positive immune responses within the host cell. Various B-cells, Tc cells, and Th cells containing different epitopes are considered for the inhibition of spike of SARS-COV-2. By following different approaches, eventually, the structure of the proposed vaccine consists of Tc, Th cells, and B-cells joined by different linkers was designed. Currently having B-cell as well as IFN-y made epitopes confirm the humoral and cell-mediated immune response developed by the proposed vaccine. An online server, PSIPRED is used to develop the model of vaccine. 15 antigenic epitopes were chosen from Spike protein to develop an effective vaccine. This vaccine was antiviral, non?allergic, and less toxic. The sequence of vaccine structure was then validated by different computational methods like Molecular Docking, RMSD, RMSF, and Molecular Dynamic Simulation. Java Codon adaption tool also known as JCat is used for maximal optimization of vaccine expression with vector.<br>


Author(s):  
Amara Saad Chandoul, Widad Ali Zughir

In this paper, the researcher stresses that the crisis of Corona, which the world has gone through and is still primarily a crisis of awareness in providing priorities. This predicts the emergence of serious economic and social problems that may afflict existing societies and systems, or arrange them in a worse way, as the foundations of justice in the world are broken. The researcher notes that the world around the pandemic is divided into three parts : The first part, whoever claims to be a true pandemic is a caution, and they are in two directions : The first one is for whoever thinks that the pandemic is natural and requires cooperation in finding a solution and complying with the provisions of the World Health Organization. The second concern whoever goes on to say that the pandemic is an effective act, and he has all the information about it and has to disclose and stop spreading it to protect humanity. The second part cover people who deny the seriousness of the pandemic and that it is just a conspiracy in preparation for the adoption of a new political system that rules the world, increases the servitude of the people and oppresses the poor, and they are in two directions: The first one, concern people who deny the existence of such a virus in the first place. The second, includes who acknowledges his existence and excludes his danger. The third part, is the part of persons holding that the existence of a pandemic or does not matter as much as it matters how to deal with it and with similar counterparts that are not literally dangerous to it, and the originality of their duty is to seek the assistance of the qualified and specialized, to provide the most important on the important and to present alternatives that prove sustainability as possible and possible. This is because the boasting of building hospitals in a short period was not accompanied by building laboratories to eradicate such a scourge and others that we live in and may be experienced by humanity in the future. The research concluded that it is necessary to not look into the existence or absence of the pandemic, but rather to look at how to deal with it and overcome it and its counterparts, without stopping people's lives or political exploitation of the crisis. It deals also to be careful in order that fear does not dominate us at the point of illusion, and to look with insight into what can carry conspiracy. The researcher adopted the inductive approach, by tracking people's opinions about COVID-19. The research also dealt with the descriptive approach, in presenting these opinions, in analyzing and clarifying their evidence, clarifying what is in, and discussing it.


Author(s):  
Chin Yan SUEN ◽  
Hong Hang LEUNG ◽  
Ka Wo LAM ◽  
Karen P HUNG ◽  
Mei Yan CHAN ◽  
...  

The possibility to extend the lifespan or even reuse one-off personal protective equipment, especially for N95 respirator and surgical mask become critical during pandemic. World Health Organization has confirmed that wearing surgical mask is effective in controlling the spread of respiratory diseases in the community, but the supply may not be able to satisfy all the demands created all over the world in a short period of time. This investigation found that dry heat and UVC irradiance could effectively disinfect the mask material without creating significant damage to surgical mask.


Viruses ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Emanuele Montomoli ◽  
Giovanni Apolone ◽  
Alessandro Manenti ◽  
Mattia Boeri ◽  
Paola Suatoni ◽  
...  

The massive emergence of COVID-19 cases in the first phase of pandemic within an extremely short period of time suggest that an undetected earlier circulation of SARS-CoV-2 might have occurred. Given the importance of this evidence, an independent evaluation was recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) to test a subset of samples selected on the level of positivity in ELISA assays (positive, low positive, negative) detected in our previous study of prepandemic samples collected in Italy. SARS-CoV-2 antibodies were blindly retested by two independent centers in 29 blood samples collected in the prepandemic period in Italy, 29 samples collected one year before and 11 COVID-19 control samples. The methodologies used included IgG-RBD/IgM-RBD ELISA assays, a qualitative micro-neutralization CPE-based assay, a multiplex IgG protein array, an ELISA IgM kit (Wantai), and a plaque-reduction neutralization test. The results suggest the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in some samples collected in the prepandemic period, with the oldest samples found to be positive for IgM by both laboratories collected on 10 October 2019 (Lombardy), 11 November 2019 (Lombardy) and 5 February 2020 (Lazio), the latter with neutralizing antibodies. The detection of IgM and/or IgG binding and neutralizing antibodies was strongly dependent on the different serological assays and thresholds employed, and they were not detected in control samples collected one year before. These findings, although gathered in a small and selected set of samples, highlight the importance of harmonizing serological assays for testing the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and may contribute to a better understanding of future virus dynamics.


Author(s):  
Kom Campiranon

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 12 March 2020. Since then, COVID-19 has significantly influenced the global economic, political, and socio-cultural systems (Sigala, 2020). This pandemic is arguably one of the most substantial challenges facing businesses in the past 100 years (Hall et al., 2020). Although the tourism industry has been generally resilient in recovery from a variety of crises (e.g. terrorism, earthquakes, and outbreaks such as SARS), tourism is one of many industries in which COVID-19 has caused severe adverse effects (UNWTO, 2020b) and has given rise to profound and long-term changes (Sigala, 2020). Moreover, it is not yet clear if, or when, businesses will return to normal (Cankurtaran & Beverland, 2020). As COVID-19 has continued to spread across the world, travel restrictions and border shutdowns have been enforced in many countries to curb its spread (Qiu et al., 2020). Flights have been canceled (Haywood, 2020), forcing millions of travelers to postpone their travel plans (Rwigema, 2020). People all over the world have experienced quarantine or isolation, whilst businesses have been closed in response to the outbreak of COVID-19 (Kabadayi et al., 2020) which has caused supply chain disruptions. Whilst the events sector is considered as a vital part of the tourism industry (Mohanty et al., 2020; Rwigema, 2020), it has been disrupted the most (Gajjar & Parmar, 2020; Gössling et al., 2020) due to the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 (Congrex Switzerland, 2020; Margolis et al., 2020; Min Ho & Ming Sia, 2020; Mohanty et al., 2020; Ranasinghe et al., 2020) which lead to social distancing (Rwigema, 2020; Sigala, 2020), the avoidance of crowd gatherings (Hao et al., 2020), travel restrictions, border controls, and involuntary quarantine (Disimulacion, 2020).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laila zahra ◽  
Yaser Daanial Khan

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 which is widely known as Sars-Cov-2 is a deadly virus that is the main cause of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19). This plague affects the human immune system badly and adversely affects the human body. This disease emerged from Wuhan, China, and spread all over the world in a very short period. The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned the world about its dire consequences and directed all the countries to take strict precautionary measures and still, there are lots of things that need to be done. This study focuses on the in silico methods which use immunoinformatic approaches to build epitope-based subunit vaccine for SARS-COV-2 that is used to produce several positive immune responses within the host cell. Various B-cells, Tc cells, and Th cells containing different epitopes are considered for the inhibition of spike of SARS-COV-2. By following different approaches, eventually, the structure of the proposed vaccine consists of Tc, Th cells, and B-cells joined by different linkers was designed. Currently having B-cell as well as IFN-y made epitopes confirm the humoral and cell-mediated immune response developed by the proposed vaccine. An online server, PSIPRED is used to develop the model of vaccine. 15 antigenic epitopes were chosen from Spike protein to develop an effective vaccine. This vaccine was antiviral, non?allergic, and less toxic. The sequence of vaccine structure was then validated by different computational methods like Molecular Docking, RMSD, RMSF, and Molecular Dynamic Simulation. Java Codon adaption tool also known as JCat is used for maximal optimization of vaccine expression with vector.<br>


2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-419
Author(s):  
Yolana Pringle

AbstractThis article explores the African Mental Health Action Group (AMHAG), one of the earliest examples of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) attempts to promote ‘ownership’ over development through the South–South cooperation envisaged in Technical Cooperation in Developing Countries. Formed in 1978, the AMHAG was intended to guide national and regional policy on mental health, while also fostering national and collective self-reliance. For a short period, between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, it was central to the WHO’s strategy for promoting policies of mental health in primary healthcare in Africa. It was a largely ineffective tool, with national governments having different opinions on the value of mental health, and poor coordination between AMHAG countries. Approaching the AMHAG as a regional project and transnational network, however, the article provides explores the importance of regions and regionalism in international health cooperation, as well as the inequities of participation in health development. Drawing on WHO archival material spanning over twenty countries and two national liberation movements, it argues that participating countries were differently positioned not only to navigate relationships between countries, but also to contend with the shifting landscape of international assistance, as well as – for some – contexts of war, violence and political and economic instability. The article not only serves as a case study of power imbalances in a failed development initiative, but also sheds light on the WHO’s engagement with mental health during a period that historians of psychiatry in Africa have tended to overlook.


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