scholarly journals Investigating COVID-19 News before and after the Soft Lockdown: An Example from Taiwan

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (20) ◽  
pp. 11474
Author(s):  
Hsin-Yu Kuo ◽  
Su-Yen Chen ◽  
Yu-Ting Lai

COVID-19 caused an unprecedented public health crisis and was declared a global pandemic on 11 March 2020, by the World Health Organization. The Taiwanese government’s early deployment mitigated the effect of the pandemic, yet the breakout in May 2021 brought a new challenge. This study focuses on examining Taiwanese newspaper articles regarding the government response before and after the soft lockdown, collecting 125,570 articles reported by three major news channels from 31 December 2019, to 30 June 2021, and splitting them into four stages. Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling and sentiment analysis were used to depict the overall picture of Taiwan’s pandemic. While the news media focused on the impact and shock of the pandemic in the initial stage, prevention measures were more present in the last stage. Then, to focus on the government response indicators, we retrieved 31,089 related news from 125,570 news articles and categorized them into ten indicators, finding the news centered on the fundamental measures that were taken early and that were transformed into advanced measures in the latest and hardest period of the pandemic. Furthermore, this paper examines the temporal distribution of the news related to each indicator with the support of a sentiment analysis of the news’ titles and content, indicating the preparation of Taiwanese society to confront the pandemic.

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 389
Author(s):  
Fadhila Inas Pratiwi ◽  
Lilik Salamah

Coronavirus Diseases (COVID-19) in Italy was remarkably immense, with more than two hundred thousand infected cases, and more than thirty thousand people had died because of the virus as of 27th July 2020. The high number of mortality rate makes the Italy case is essential to be further explored. This article aims to elaborate on government response and strategy in handling COVID-19 that spread within the country. This article unfolds in four sections; the first part discusses how COVID-19 could spread massively in Italy and cause death for a thousand people. The second part explains the government measure and its effectivity in containing the virus. The third part elaborates on the impact of COVID-19 along with the government response in the socio-economic aspect. The last part explores the future of Italy after COVID-19. The article employs a literature review that analyzes information from various sources such as academic journals, research reports from the think tank, and news media outlets. Keywords: Coronavirus, Italy, Government, Response Kasus coronavirus di Italia sangat tinggi dan massif dengan lebih dari dua ratus ribu orang terinfeksi dan lebih dari lima puluh ribu orang meninggal pertanggal 27 Juli 2020. Tingginya jumlah orang yang terinfeksi dan jumlah orang yang meninggal membuat Italia menjadi kasus yang menarik untuk dibahas. Tujuan dari artikel ini untuk mengelaborasi tentang bagaimana respon dan strategi pemerintah Italia dalam menangani virus yang sudah menyebar di Italia. Artikel ini terdiri dari empat bahasan, pertama membahas tentang awal mula COVID-19 bisa menyebar secara masif di Italia dan mengakibatkan puluhan ribu orang meninggal. Kedua, membahas tentang bagaimana respon dari pemerintah Italia dan juga efektifitasnya dalam menangani penyebaran virus ini. Ketiga, membahas tentang dampak yang diakibatkan dari COVID-19 beserta respon pemerintah terhadap aspek sosio-ekonomi di Italia. Keempat, mendiskusikan bagaimana masa depan Italia setelah COVID-19. Artikel ini menggunakan tinjauan pustaka untuk melakukan analisis terkait dengan topik artikel yang berasal dari banyak sumber seperti jurnal akademis, laporan peneltian, artikel berita dan lain sebagainya.  Kata-kata Kunci: Coronavirus, Italia, Pemerintah, Respons 


Author(s):  
Chenyu Zhang ◽  
Jiayue Jiang ◽  
Hong Jin ◽  
Tinggui Chen

The outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019 has had a huge impact on people’s daily life. Many restaurant businesses have been greatly affected by it. Consumers’ preferences for catering industry in China have changed, such as environmental hygiene, variety of dishes, and service methods. Therefore, the analysis of consumer preference differences and changes before and after the epidemic can not only provide emergency strategies for the catering industry but further improve the catering industry’s ability to deal with public health emergencies. This paper takes five cities in China as representatives to explore the impact of COVID-19 on China’s catering industry. Based on catering review data from August 2019 to April 2020, this paper first carries out Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic analysis and SNOWNLP (A Python library for processing Chinese text) sentiment analysis. Then this paper compares the results of topic classification and sentiment analysis before and after the epidemic. Furthermore, differences and changes of consumer preferences are obtained and preferences of consumers under COVID-19 are analyzed and forecasted. The results of LDA thematic analysis before the outbreak of COVID-19 show that consumers tend to punch in cyber celebrity restaurants and pay more attention to the taste of dishes, whereas after it consumers pay more attention to the changes of dishes, dining environment as well as epidemic prevention. The number of packages and takeout was also increasing. However, the waiting time is constantly considered by consumers before and after COVID-19. Firstly, to our surprise, final outcome of emotional analysis showed that consumers’ emotional state was more positive after the epidemic than before. COVID-19 has changed the lifestyle of consumers, consumption concepts, and consumption habits. Therefore, businesses also need to take positive and flexible measures to actively get feedback from consumers to adjust dishes and business methods. Secondly, the psychological attitude of catering consumers is relatively positive during the epidemic period, which indicates that consumers have great confidence in the recovery and development of the catering industry. Businesses can comply with consumers’ psychology and combine consumption vouchers with restaurant discounts to promote consumers’ consumption. Finally, the environment and service play more and more important effect on consumers’ emotional scores at present, which indicates that dining state and comfortable mealtime environment are becoming increasingly valuable. Therefore, businesses need to improve service standards.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mara Sanfelici

Against the backdrop of a continuously changing situation, the aim of this paper is to discuss the impact of COVID-19 crisis in Italy, the government response to cope with the crisis and the major lessons learned during its management. The analysis shows how Italy’s response has been characterised by some rapid measures to tackle the health crisis, but few plans in the mitigation stage and a lack of community involvement. This contribution stress the importance of a cultural shift, through the effort to apply in practice the principles already indicated in the main global policy frameworks to guide disaster management. A community social development approach can help to build concrete actions in this direction.


Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 1275
Author(s):  
Peng Wang ◽  
Huimin Shi ◽  
Xiaojie Wu ◽  
Longzhen Jiao

(1) Background: in early 2020, COVID-19 broke out. Driven by people’s psychology of conformity, panic, group polarization, etc., various rumors appeared and spread wildly, and the Internet became a hotbed of rumors. (2) Methods: the study selected Weibo as the research media, using topic models, time series analysis, sentiment analysis, and Granger causality testing methods to analyze the social media texts related to COVID-19 rumors. (3) Results: in study 1, we obtained 21 topics related to “COVID-19 rumors” and “outbreak rumors” after conducting topic model analysis on Weibo texts; in study 2, we explored the emotional changes of netizens before and after rumor dispelling information was released and found people’s positive emotions first declined and then rose; in study 3, we also explored the emotional changes of netizens before and after the “Wuhan lockdown” event and found positive sentiment of people in non-Wuhan areas increased, while negative sentiment of people in Wuhan increased; in study 4, we studied the relationship between rumor spread and emotional polarity and found negative sentiment and rumor spread was causally interrelated. (4) Conclusion: These findings could help us to intuitively understand the impact of rumors spread on people’s emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic and help the government take measures to reduce panic.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (12) ◽  
pp. 1458-1464
Author(s):  
Sweta Kamboj ◽  
Rohit Kamboj ◽  
Shikha Kamboj ◽  
Kumar Guarve ◽  
Rohit Dutt

Background: In the 1960s, the human coronavirus was designated, which is responsible for the upper respiratory tract disease in children. Back in 2003, mainly 5 new coronaviruses were recognized. This study directly pursues to govern knowledge, attitude and practice of viral and droplet infection isolation safeguard among the researchers during the outbreak of the COVID-19. Introduction: Coronavirus is a proteinaceous and infectious pathogen. It is an etiological agent of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). Coronavirus, appeared in China from the seafood and poultry market last year, which has spread in various countries, and has caused several deaths. Methods: The literature data has been taken from different search platforms like PubMed, Science Direct, Embase, Web of Science, who.int portal and complied. Results: Corona virology study will be more advanced and outstanding in recent years. COVID-19 epidemic is a threatening reminder not solely for one country but all over the universe. Conclusion: In this review article, we encapsulated the pathogenesis, geographical spread of coronavirus worldwide, also discussed the perspective of diagnosis, effective treatment, and primary recommendations by the World Health Organization, and guidelines of the government to slow down the impact of the virus are also optimistic, efficacious and obliging for the public health. However, it will take a prolonged time in the future to overcome this epidemic.


Author(s):  
Elad Keren ◽  
Abraham Borer ◽  
Lior Nesher ◽  
Tali Shafat ◽  
Rivka Yosipovich ◽  
...  

Abstract Objective: To determine whether a multifaceted approach effectively influenced antibiotic use in an orthopedics department. Design: Retrospective cohort study comparing the readmission rate and antibiotic use before and after an intervention. Setting: A 1,000-bed, tertiary-care, university hospital. Patients: Adult patients admitted to the orthopedics department between January 2015 and December 2018. Methods: During the preintervention period (2015–2016), 1 general orthopedic department was in operation. In the postintervention period (2017–2018), 2 separate departments were created: one designated for elective “clean” surgeries and another that included a “complicated wound” unit. A multifaceted strategy including infection prevention measures and introducing antibiotic stewardship practices was implemented. Admission rates, hand hygiene practice compliance, surgical site infections, and antibiotic treatment before versus after the intervention were analyzed. Results: The number of admissions and hospitalization days in the 2 periods did not change. Seven-day readmissions per annual quarter decreased significantly from the preintervention period (median, 7 days; interquartile range [IQR], 6–9) to the postintervention period (median, 4 days; IQR, 2–7; P = .038). Hand hygiene compliance increased and surgical site infections decreased in the postintervention period. Although total antibiotic use was not reduced, there was a significant change in the breakdown of the different antibiotic classes used before and after the intervention: increased use of narrow-spectrum β-lactams (P < .001) and decreased use of β-lactamase inhibitors (P < .001), third-generation cephalosporins (P = .044), and clindamycin (P < .001). Conclusions: Restructuring the orthopedics department facilitated better infection prevention measures accompanied by antibiotic stewardship implementation, resulting in a decreased use of broad-spectrum antibiotics and a significant reduction in readmission rates.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 1282-1291
Author(s):  
Sanjay Dhamija ◽  
Ravinder Kumar Arora

The article examines the impact of regulatory changes in the tax on dividends on the payout policy of Indian companies. The tax law was recently amended to levy tax on dividends received by large shareholders. As the promoters group is the largest shareholder, this is expected to have a negative impact on the payout policy of companies. Furthermore, companies with larger promoter holdings have a higher motivation to reduce their payout. The study covers 370 companies present in the BSE 500 Index and compares the dividend payout of the companies before and after the introduction of tax levy. The study finds that the newly introduced tax indeed caused a shift in the dividend policy of companies, particularly those companies which have high levels of inside ownership. The findings have significant implications for companies, investors and the government.


Author(s):  
Emmanuel Mensah Aboagye ◽  
◽  
Nana Osei Owusu ◽  

Air pollution continues to be an environmental problem that poses a lot of health risks to the young and aged. Developed countries have invested heavily to curb this environmental problem, causing severe threats to human lives, yet the results do not look convincing. In developing countries, the situation is difficult than they can imagine, resulting in governments borrowing to fight what looks like a lost battle [1-3]. The in-depth study of this environmental menace - air pollution, suggests that the government enacts stringent measures to help fight this battle. This is because air pollution has natural (volcanic eruption) and anthropogenic (human activities) causes. In December 2019, the deadly Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak was soon declared as a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) [4]. Majority of countries have had their share of the impact of this outbreak. Many countries resorted to city lockdown to strictly control the movement of people and economic activities as recommended by WHO.


Author(s):  
Duaa Mohamed Bakhshwin ◽  
Abdulaziz Bakhshwin

Background: On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the Coronavirus outbreak officially as a pandemic. This pandemic has led to new measurements to prevent viral spread. The measures included decreasing the person’s mobility outside homes with subsequent changes in the lifestyles, particularly in physical activity and eating habits. It has been noticed that consumption of some vitamins may help in preventing or reducing the symptoms of viral infection. Those vitamins include vitamin C, D and zinc. There is a common observation that the general public believes that the use of vitamins, especially vitamins C, D and zinc, reduces the chance of acquiring COVID-19. Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on taking vitamins supplements by the Saudi general population in order to explore their believes regarding the protective value of these vitamins against COVID-19 infection. Subjects and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted using a self-administrated questionnaire that was designed, uploaded to the Google form and distributed online to the general Saudi population through the social media (Whatsapp, Twitter) as well as through email between August and December 2020. Statistical Packaged of Social Sciences program (SPSS) for Windows (version 17.0., Chicago: SPSS Inc) was used to analyze the data. A significant difference was considered when the p value is < 0.05. Student t-test and Chi-square (χ2) test were used to compare the studied variables as appropriate. Results: A total of 1043 participants were included in this study (64.9% females, 35.1% males). The mean age for them was 35.3±14.78 years. Only 9.3% (97 participants) were diagnosed to have COVID-19. About 28% of the participants were in contact with COVID-19 cases. Among participants diagnosed to have COVID-19 infection, (13% versus 29%) were taking vitamin C and (2% versus 15%) were taking zinc supplements daily during the 6 months before and after the pandemic, respectively, while (20% versus 25%) were taking vitamin D supplements weekly during the 6 months before and after the pandemic, respectively. Among participants who were in contact with COVID-19 cases, (8% versus 20%) and (3% versus 11%) were taking vitamin C and zinc supplements daily during the 6 months before and after the pandemic, respectively, while (14% versus 16%) were taking vitamin D supplements weekly during the 6 months before and after the pandemic Conclusion: The interest of taking multivitamin by Saudi population, such as vitamins C and D, zinc increased during and after the pandemic compared to that before it. There is no scientific evidence based on previous studies confirmed the role of dietary supplementation and multivitamins in preventing COVID-19 infection, therefore, effective education on the rationale use of vitamins during COVID-19 pandemic should be emphasized at local and/or national levels.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-17
Author(s):  
Mirza Ghulamudin Ghulamudin ◽  
Maufur ◽  
Beni Habibi

Covid-19 has now attacked Indonesia, where the spread of the disease is very fast. Not only in Indonesia, but all corners of the world are currently experiencing a health crisis. In the beginning, the spread of Covid-19 had an impact on economic activity which began to sluggish. This also has an impact on the education system in Indonesia. Until several countries decided to close schools and universities. In an effort to prevent the spread of covid-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends temporarily stopping activities that would potentially cause crowds. Even during the outbreak, covid-19 in Indonesia, there were many ways that the government did to prevent its spread through social distancing. Kemendikbud instructed through the Ministry of Education and Culture (Kemendikbud) Directorate of Higher Education Circular No. 1 of 2020 concerning the prevention of the spread of covid-19 in the world of Education to organize distance learning and advise students to learn from their homes. Teachers and students are starting to be required to follow the current situation by using technology as a distance learning medium. One of the media that is being favored by teachers as a learning medium is the Google Classroom application. This application is an application that can make it easier for students and teachers to create effective learning. Given that students today are a generation who are very familiar with the use of technology. The use of technology in learning is an alternative method used by teachers during the Covid-19 Pandemic.


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