A Report on COVID-19 Variants, COVID-19 Vaccines and the Impact of the Variants on the Efficacy of the Vaccines

Author(s):  
Michael Halim

The Coronavirus pandemic has caused negative effects across the globe; mortality and morbidity being the main impact. After WHO, termed the disease a pandemic in March 2020, they gave in health guidelines to follow to control the spread of the disease. The health industry, academia, and different governments are united to develop and test various vaccines at an unprecedented speed to combat the pandemic fully and bring the world back to its feet. Some of the vaccines developed include Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca. However, just like other viruses, the SAR-CoV-2 virus keeps changing through mutation, as various variants, different from the first one are emerging. Evidence shows that the three new variants; UK, Brazil, and South Africa are more severe in terms of transmissibility, disease severity, evading of the immune response, and reducing the ability to neutralized antibodies, compared to the original coronavirus. With such knowledge of the existence of different strains, the arises concerns on whether the already available vaccines are effective enough in preventing the new COVID-19 strains. Studies are still underdeveloped to learn more on the virologic, epidemiologic, and clinical characteristics of the ever-emerging variants. This research, through a systemic review of literature, seeks to find out whether the variants of SAR-CoV-2 have an impact on the efficacy of various vaccines developed in fighting the disease and the entire body’s immune response.

Author(s):  
Jacques de Jongh

Globalisation has had an unprecedented impact on the development and well-being of societies across the globe. Whilst the process has been lauded for bringing about greater trade specialisation and factor mobility many have also come to raise concerns on its impact in the distribution of resources. For South Africa in particular this has been somewhat of a contentious issue given the country's controversial past and idiosyncratic socio-economic structure. Since 1994 though, considerable progress towards its global integration has been made, however this has largely coincided with the establishment of, arguably, the highest levels of income inequality the world has ever seen. This all has raised several questions as to whether a more financially open and technologically integrated economy has induced greater within-country inequality (WCI). This study therefore has the objective to analyse the impact of the various dimensions of globalisation (economic, social and political) on inequality in South Africa. Secondary annual time series from 1990 to 2018 were used sourced from the World Bank Development indicators database, KOF Swiss Economic Institute and the World Inequality database. By using different measures of inequality (Palma ratios and distribution figures), the study employed two ARDL models to test the long-run relationships with the purpose to ensure the robustness of the results. Likewise, two error correction models (ECM) were used to analyse the short-run dynamics between the variables. As a means of identifying the casual effects between the variables, a Toda-Yamamoto granger causality analysis was utilised. Keywords: ARDL, Inequality, Economic Globalisation; Social Globalisation; South Africa


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Justine Atkinson ◽  
Firdoze Bulbulia

As a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns across the world, digital access has become paramount, as most aspects of education have moved online. Drawing together five case studies located in South Africa, Argentina, the Netherlands, India and Ethiopia, this article assesses the role of film education during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a specific focus on the impacts of digital access. We examine multimodal forms of film education, and how these were used to inform, entertain and educate children during the crisis by the varying work undertaken by the organizations. Applying theories of intersectionality, we address the need for context-specific approaches to film education, focusing upon the impact that the societal and individual contexts had on the dissemination of film education in each country.


Author(s):  
Tuncay Dilci ◽  
Anıl Kadir Eranıl

This chapter examines the impacts of social media on children. Advantages and disadvantages of social media are always available. Positive aspects of social media include allowing children to be brought up as multicultural individuals, enabling education and training environments to design for purposes, using as the main or supplementary source of education, a great power in creating and sharing information. Its negative aspects include leading to a reduction of their academic, social, and cognitive skills in the early periods when children were exposed to the social media, causing the children to develop obesity, mostly bringing up as consumption-centered individuals, perceive the world as a screenshot, and have low critical, creative, and reflective thinking skills. Therefore, one of the most important tasks undertaken to reduce or eliminate the negative effects is to raise and educate media-literate individuals.


Author(s):  
Hisham H. Abdelbaki

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 27pt 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-EG;">No doubt, the </span><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-size: 10pt;">international financial crisis that started in the United States of America will cast its effects on all countries of the world, developed and developing. Yet these effects vary from one country to another for several reasons. The GCC countries would not escape these negative effects of this severe crisis. The negative effects of the crisis on gulf countries come from many aspects: first, decrease in price of oil on whose revenues the development programs in these countries depend; second, decrease in the value of US$ and the subsequent decrease in the assets owned by these countries in US$; third, a case of economic stagnation will prevail in the world with effects starting to appear. </span><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-EG;">It is obvious that this would be reflected on the real sector in the economies causing a series of negative effects through decrease of the world demand for exports of GCC countries of oil, petrochemicals and aluminum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Lastly, increased inflation rates with decreased interest rates will result in a decrease in real interest with an accompanying decrease in incentives for saving and consequently investment and economic development. The main aim of the research is to assess the economic effects of the global financial crisis on GCC countries. The paper results are that the big reserves of foreign currencies achieved by the GCC countries in the past few years have helped increase their ability to bear the effects of the financial effects on one hand and their ability to adopt expansionary policies through pumping liquidity to absorb the regressive effects of the crisis on the other. The paper recommends the necessity of taking precautionary procedures for the effects which will result from the expansionary policies effective in GCC countries. <strong></strong></span></span></p>


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.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 411-417
Author(s):  
Vuyokazi Magungxu ◽  
Philani Moyo .

South Africa has one of the highest inmate populations in the world. In order for the South African Correctional Services system to provide an environment conducive for the appropriate rehabilitation and reformation of its many inmates, it requires a balanced prisoner-warder ratio based on international standards. But is this the case in South African prisons? This is one of the questions that this article engages as it examines the prisoner-warder ratio at the East London Maximum Correctional Centre (ELMCC) in an effort to understand the effects of prison overcrowding on the prison work environment and correctional personnel. Based on empirical evidence gathered through qualitative techniques, the study finds a disproportionate prisoner-warder ratio at the ELMCC. This disproportion has a number of negative effects on the prison work environment and direct security personnel on duty. For example, high absenteeism is rife with warders frequently on sick leave while others are regularly on temporary incapacity leave. High stress levels are also a major problem pushing many warders into alcohol abuse. Cognitive job satisfaction and organizational commitment are also negatively affected by this disproportion with the majority of warders indicating poor work performance due to low morale and lack of motivation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 930-952
Author(s):  
Marijana Maksimović ◽  
Neven Cvetićanin

The aim of this research is to examine how the coronavirus, which has become a global process, has affected the labour market. The goal is to confirm or reject the hypothesis that there has been an increase in unemployment since the beginning of the pandemic. Also, the aim is to answer the research question whether social dialogue has managed to mitigate the negative effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Analytical and descriptive methods were used in this research. The scientific research presented in this paper makes a significant contribution to the study of the impact of the coronavirus on the regions, economic activity and unemployment. The paper presents data on the number of the (un)employed in the world before the beginning of the pandemic and after the end of the first and most critical year.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gulcin Ozbay ◽  
Mehmet Sariisik ◽  
Veli Ceylan ◽  
Muzaffer Çakmak

PurposeThe main purpose of this study is to make a comparative evaluation of the impacts of previous outbreaks and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on the tourism industry. COVID-19 appears to have disrupted all memorizations about epidemics ever seen. Nobody has anticipated that the outbreak in late December will spread rapidly across the world, be fatal and turn the world economy upside down. Severe acute respiratory syndrome, Ebola, Middle East respiratory syndrome and others caused limited losses in a limited geography, thus similar behaviors were expected at first in COVID-19. But it was not so. Today, people continue to lose their lives and experience economic difficulties. One of the most important distressed industries is undoubtedly tourism.Design/methodology/approachThis study is a literature review. In this review, a comparative evaluation between the impact of previous outbreaks and COVID-19 on the tourism industry has been made based on statistics and previous research studies.FindingsThe information and figures obtained show that COVID-19 and previous outbreaks have such significant differences that cannot be compared. COVID-19 has been one of the worst to live in terms of spreading speed, the geography where it spreads, loss of lives and negative effects in the whole area.Originality/valueIt is noteworthy that COVID-19 is very severe in terms of death cases and also its impacts on the economy compared to other pandemics. It remains to be argued that COVID-19 can also be a reference in terms of possible new outbreaks in the future, and is an effective actor in determining future strategies.


2021 ◽  
pp. 63-70
Author(s):  
Inna Shevchenko ◽  
Illia Dmytriiev ◽  
Oksana Dmytriieva

Problem. The global automotive industry has already had an experience of recovery from the global financial crisis of 2008, but the pandemic crisis of 2020 is quite different in nature and pattern of progress: in recent history it has had no analogues and it will be premature to state its completion. Therefore, it is important to determine the impact of the pandemic on the production and sale of cars in order to overcome the negative consequences. To address this issue, the article identifies the sensitivity of this subsector of mechanical engineering to destructive changes in the environment; an analysis of changes in the volume of production and sales of cars by countries of the world over the past period has been made. Goal. The aim of the work is to determine the destructive consequences and trends of the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the global automotive industry, namely the production and sale of cars. Methodology. To determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a vertical and horizontal analysis of car production and sales in the world has been conducted. Results. The results of the analysis allowed the authors to group the countries of the world by the destructive effects of the pandemic crisis of 2020 for the automotive industry. Originality. The carried out classification of countries by the destructive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to gain insight into its impact on the automotive industry, in particular on the production and sale of cars. Practical value. The obtained results can be recommended to identify further ways to overcome the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the automotive industry.


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