Modeling the Global Dynamic Contagion of COVID-19

The COVID-19 infections have profoundly and negatively impacted the whole world. Hence, we have modeled the dynamic spread of global COVID-19 infections with the connectedness approach based on the TVP-VAR model, using the data of confirmed COVID-19 cases during the period of March 23rd, 2020 to September 10th, 2021 in 18 countries. The results imply that, (i) the United States, the United Kingdom and Indonesia are global epidemic centers, among which the United States has the highest degree of the contagion of the COVID-19 infections, which is stable. South Korea, France and Italy are the main receiver of the contagion of the COVID-19 infections, and South Korea has been the most severely affected by the overseas epidemic; (ii) there is a negative correlation between the timeliness, effectiveness and mandatory nature of government policies and the risk of the associated countries COVID-19 epidemic affecting, as well as the magnitude of the net contagion of domestic COVID-19; (iii) the severity of domestic COVID-19 epidemics in the United States and Canada, Canada and Mexico, Indonesia and Canada is almost equivalent, especially for the United States, Canada and Mexico, whose domestic epidemics are with the same tendency; (iv) the COVID-19 epidemic has spread though not only the central divergence manner and chain mode of transmission, but also the way of feedback loop. Thus, more efforts should be made by the governments to enhance the pertinence and compulsion of their epidemic prevention policies and establish a systematic and efficient risk assessment mechanism for public health emergencies.

Research on the Construction of University Public Health Emergency Management System Based on Psychological Counseling Intervention

After entering the information society, all kinds of risks, crises, and conflicts in society are more severe, more sudden, and uncertain than those in agricultural society and industrial society. Under the unexpected events in colleges and universities, college students’ psychological crisis, which cannot be dealt with and overcome by conventional methods, arises from their own experiences, psychological endurance, and weak self-awareness. In the face of emergencies, as a talent training base, how to collect information quickly and accurately and make prevention and control plans is directly related to the success or failure of event handling. This study attempts to analyze the characteristics and causes of students’ psychological changes in public health emergencies in colleges and universities and puts forward relevant countermeasures, so as to improve the management system of public health emergencies in colleges and universities, improve the ability to effectively deal with and properly handle public health emergencies, and promote the harmonious development of society. In the face of public health emergencies, colleges and universities should enhance the awareness of emergency management of public health emergencies, change the concept of emergency, build an efficient emergency management system, improve the ability and level of emergency management, and ensure the harmony and stability of the school.

Scientometric Analysis of Public Health Emergencies: 1994–2020

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the research hotspots and frontiers in the field of public health emergencies (PHE) between 1994–2020 through the scientometric analysis method. In total, 2247 literature works retrieved from the Web of Science core database were analyzed by CiteSpace software, and the results were displayed in knowledge mapping. The overall characteristics analysis showed that the number of publications and authors in the field of PHE kept an upward trend during the past decades, and the United States was in the leading position, followed by China and England. Switzerland has the highest central value and plays an important intermediary role in promoting the integration and exchange of international PHE research achievements. The keyword co-occurrence analysis indicated that COVID-19 was the most high-frequency keyword in this field, and there had been no new keywords for a long time until the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019. The burst detection analysis showed that the top five burst keywords in terms of burst intensity were zika virus, Ebola, United States, emergency preparedness and microcephaly. The results indicated that the research theme of PHE is closely related to the major infectious diseases in a specific period. It will continue to develop with more attention paid to public health. The conclusions can provide help and reference for the PHE potential researchers.

Establishment, Analysis, and Application of the Information Transmission and Response Model for Students of Vocational Colleges under Public Health Emergencies

To provide a basic quantitative mathematical model for data analysis, decision-making support, and application of information systems oriented to emergency research, this paper established an information transmission response model for school students under such system mathematically based on actual school information transmission data during COVID-19 prevention. This paper proposes an emergency information management method—a two-step emergency information management method. It can be referenced for promotion of the development of IT-based school management, enhancement of IT application in school emergency information management, and improvement of the speed and accuracy of information transmission.

Biodefense and Emergency Use Authorization: Different Originations, Purposes, and Evolutionary Paths of Institutions in the United States and South Korea

Background: Historical institutionalism (HI) determines that institutions have been transformed by a pattern of punctuated evolution due to exogenous shocks. Although scholars frequently emphasize the role of agency - endogenous factors – when it comes to institutional changes, but the HI analytic narratives still remain in the meso-level analysis in the context of structure and agency. This article provides domestic and policy-level accounts of where biodefense institutions of the United States and South Korea come from, seeing through emergency-use-authorization (EUA) policy, and how the EUA policies have evolved by employing the policy-learning concepts through the Event-related Policy Change Model. Results: By employing the Birkland’s model, this article complements the limitation of the meso-level analysis in addressing that the 2001 Amerithrax and the 2015 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak rooted originations and purposes of the biodefense respectively. Since the crisis, a new post-crisis agenda in society contributed to establishing new domestic coalition, which begin to act as endogenous driving forces that institutionalize new biodefense institutions and even reinforce them through path dependent way when the institutions evolved. Therefore, EUA policy cores (Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) in the United States and Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention (NPI) in South Korea keep strengthened during the policy revisions. Conclusions: The United States and South Korea have different originations and purposes of biodefense, which are institutions evolving through self-reinforce dependent way based on the lessons learned from past crises. In sum, under the homeland security biodefense institution, the US EUA focuses on the development of specialized, unlicensed PEP in response to public health emergencies; on the other hand, under the disease containment-centric biodefense institution, the Korean EUA is specialized to conduct NPI missions in response to public health emergencies.

Legislators' Plague

This chapter brings important novel insights and perspectives to the urging contemporary debate on public hygienist policies. The authors intend to explore how an episode of history of science can be used to explore the struggles of universal pandemic responses. The focus will be on the inception of science-based legislation, created to deal with public health emergencies, and their communication and social acceptance. They argue if any of the symptoms of science misinformation and a weak science foundation of legislative action identified in the 2020 coronavirus pandemic can be identified in an early 20th-century outbreak of bubonic plague in Portugal. They present a national legislative policy timeline towards the pandemic effort in the form of consolidated legislative responses to fight Porto's emerging pandemic in 1899. They also provide future studies on science-based policy with newfound material, aiding the characterization of the communication and eventual harmonization of concerted responses in preempting the spread of pandemics.

The Efficiency of Health Systems in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the EU Countries

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the insufficient capacities and capabilities of countries around the world to deal with global infectious diseases and stressed the need to improve the international health security frame-work. An efficient and comprehensive health system that is able to cope with public health emergencies is an essential prerequisite for strengthening health security. The paper analyzes the efficiency of health systems in the European Union (EU) countries and their responsiveness to the COVID-19 pandemic. The research covers 27 EU countries and it is based on the secondary data contained in the 2019 Global Health Security Index Re-port. The aim of the paper is to identify key determinants for improving the efficiency of health systems in the EU, as well as to examine the interdependence between health expenditures and the efficiency of health system in this sample of countries. The research is conducted through descriptive statistics and correlation and regression analysis. The conclusions can be useful for the EU policy makers in formulating a strategy to improve the efficiency of Member States’ health systems and preparedness for possible new pandemics.