The Role of Digital Technologies that Could Be Applied for Prescreening in the Mining Industry During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Examining the Relationship Between Workplace Industry and COVID-19 Infection: A Cross-sectional Study of Canada's Largest Rapid Antigen Screening Program

OBJECTIVES

To control virus spread while keeping the economy open, this study aimed to identify individuals at increased risk of COVID-19 transmission in the workplace using rapid antigen screening data.

METHODS

Among adult participants in a large Canadian rapid antigen screening program (January 2021-March 2022), we examined screening, personal, and workplace characteristics and conducted logistic regressions, adjusted for COVID-19 wave, screening frequency and location, role, age group, and geography.

RESULTS

Among 145,814 participants across 2707 worksites, 6209 screened positive at least once. Workers in natural resources (odds ratio [OR] = 2.1 [1.73-2.55]), utilities (OR = 1.67 [1.38-2.03]), construction (OR = 1.35 [1.06-1.71]), and transportation/warehousing (OR = 1.32 [1.12-1.56]) had increased odds of screening positive; workers in education/health (OR = 0.62 [0.52-0.73]), leisure/hospitality (OR = 0.71 [0.56-0.90]), and finance (OR = 0.84 [0.71-0.99]) had lesser odds of screening positive, compared with professional/business services.

CONCLUSIONS

Certain industries involving in-person work in close quarters are associated with elevated COVID-19 transmission. Continued reliance on rapid screening in these sectors is warranted.

An insight on the impact of COVID-19 on the global and Turkish mining industry

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 affected numerous industries and the mining industry has not been immune to the adverse impacts caused by the pandemic. OBJECTIVE: This study examines the importance of the mining industry and its benefits to the economy of the producing countries. The paper also gives an insight into the pre-COVID global and Turkish mining industries and investigates the impact of the pandemic on the global and Turkish mining sectors. Furthermore, the study suggests numerous measures that should be adopted in mines to limit the spread of COVID-19 and conduct mining operations safely and efficiently. METHODS: An extensive literature review was conducted and relevant papers on the importance and benefits of the mining industry, the Turkish and global mining industry, and the impact of COVID-19 on the Turkish and global mining industry were studied. RESULTS: The COVID-19 crisis has deeply affected metal and mineral production and the economic sectors that depend on the mining industry for supplies. The most significant impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on the global mining industry consist of the drastic decline in demand and production and the decrease in the prices of several commodities. As with any complex global situation, the mining industries of some countries were affected more than others by the COVID-19 crisis. The Turkish mining industry was to some extent affected by the COVID-19 crisis, but it quickly recovered. CONCLUSIONS: An efficient planning of operations and adopting effective measures and precautions enable limiting the spread of COVID-19 in quarries and mines.

COVID-19 Pandemic Waves: 4IR Technology Utilisation in Multi-Sector Economy

In this paper, we reviewed the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies applied to waves of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). COVID-19 is an existential threat that has resulted in an unprecedented loss of lives, disruption of flight schedules, shutdown of businesses and much more. Though several researchers have highlighted the enormous benefits of 4IR technologies in containing the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent waves of the pandemic call for a thorough review of these technological interventions. The cyber-physical space has had its share of the COVID-19 pandemic effect, and through this review, we highlight the salient issues to help policy formulation towards managing the impact of subsequent COVID-19 waves within such environments. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to review the application of 4IR technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic waves and to highlight their shortcomings. Recent research articles were sourced from an online repository and thoroughly reviewed to highlight 4IR technology applications, innovations, shortcomings and multi-sector challenges. The outcome of this review indicates that the second wave of the pandemic resulted in a lower proportion of patients requiring invasive mechanical ventilation and a lower rate of thrombotic events. In addition, it was revealed that the delay between ICU admissions and tracheal intubation was longer in the second wave in the health care sector. Again, the review suggests that 4IR technologies have been utilized across all the sectors including education, businesses, society, manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture and mining. Businesses have revised their service delivery models to include 4IR technologies and avoid physical contacts. In society, digital certificates, among other digital platforms, have been utilized to assist with the movements of persons who have been vaccinated. Manufacturing concerns have also utilized robots in manufacturing to reduce human-to-human physical contact. The mining sector has automated their work processes, utilising smart boots to prevent infection, smart health bands and smart disinfection tunnels or walkthrough sanitization gates in the mining work environment. However, the identified challenges of implementing 4IR technologies include low-skilled workers, data privacy issues, data analysis poverty, data management issues and many more. The boom in 4IR technologies calls for intense legislation on sweeping data privacy for regulated tech companies. These findings hold salient implications for policy formulation towards tackling future pandemic outbreaks.

Ethics for integrating emerging technologies to contain COVID-19 in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is among the countries affected with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and implemented several infection control and measures such as social distancing, contact tracing, regular temperature checking in strategic entry and exit points, face masking among others. The country also implemented recursive national lockdowns and curfews to reduce the virus transmission rate and its catastrophic impact. These large-scale measures are not easy to implement, adhere to and subsequently difficult to practice and maintain which lead to imperfect public compliance, especially if there is a significant impact on social and political norms, economy, and psychological wellbeing of the affected population. Also, emerging COVID-19 variants, porous borders, regular movement of informal traders and sale of fake vaccination certificates continue to threaten impressive progress made towards virus containment. Therefore, several emerging technologies have been adopted to strengthen the health system and health services delivery, improve compliance, adherence and maintain social distancing. These technologies use health data, symptoms monitoring, mobility, location and proximity data for contact tracing, self-isolation, and quarantine compliance. However, the use of emerging technologies has been debatable and contentious because of the potential violation of ethical values such as security and privacy, data format and management, synchronization, over-tracking, over-surveillance and lack of proper development and implementation guidelines which impact their efficacy, adoption and ultimately influence public trust. Therefore, the study proposes ethical framework for using emerging technologies to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. The framework is centered on ethical practices such as security, privacy, justice, human dignity, autonomy, solidarity, beneficence, and non-maleficence.

Smart City and Crisis Management: Lessons for the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 shocked cities around the world and revealed the vulnerability of urban lives and functions. Most cities experienced a catastrophic disturbance that has lasted for a long time. Planning plays a critical role in responding efficiently to this crisis and enabling rapid functional recovery in the post-disaster era. Cities that have implemented digitalization initiatives and programs are likely to have more capacity to react appropriately. Specifically, digitalized cities could ensure the well-being of their residents and maintain continuity of urban functions. This research aims to analyze the role of technology in crisis management in the last two decades and provide appropriate policy recommendations for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Systematic literature review and subjective content analysis are employed to investigate the effects of technology on community well-being and making cities more resilient in past crises. This study shows that different technology-driven policies and actions enable crisis management, enhance community well-being, and increase urban resilience. Technology has enhanced coping and recovery capacities by increasing participation and social connectedness, enhancing physical and mental health and maintaining the functionality of education and economic systems. These have been achieved through various solutions and technologies such as social media, telehealth, tracking and monitoring systems, sensors and locational applications, teleworking systems, etc. These solutions and technologies have also been used during the COVID-19 pandemic to enhance community well-being and sustain urban functions. However, technology deployment might have adverse effects such as social exclusion, digital divide, privacy and confidentiality violation, political bias and misinformation dissemination, and inefficient remote working and education. It is suggested that to mitigate these side effects, policymakers should liberate the process of digitalization, increase the accessibility to digital services, and enhance digital literacy.

Using data mining techniques to fight and control epidemics: A scoping review

The main objective of this survey is to study the published articles to determine the most favorite data mining methods and gap of knowledge. Since the threat of pandemics has raised concerns for public health, data mining techniques were applied by researchers to reveal the hidden knowledge. Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed databases were selected for systematic searches. Then, all of the retrieved articles were screened in the stepwise process according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses checklist to select appropriate articles. All of the results were analyzed and summarized based on some classifications. Out of 335 citations were retrieved, 50 articles were determined as eligible articles through a scoping review. The review results showed that the most favorite DM belonged to Natural language processing (22%) and the most commonly proposed approach was revealing disease characteristics (22%). Regarding diseases, the most addressed disease was COVID-19. The studies show a predominance of applying supervised learning techniques (90%). Concerning healthcare scopes, we found that infectious disease (36%) to be the most frequent, closely followed by epidemiology discipline. The most common software used in the studies was SPSS (22%) and R (20%). The results revealed that some valuable researches conducted by employing the capabilities of knowledge discovery methods to understand the unknown dimensions of diseases in pandemics. But most researches will need in terms of treatment and disease control.

Framework for ethical and acceptable use of social distancing tools and smart devices during COVID-19 pandemic in Zimbabwe

Despite the successful development of vaccines, coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues to present unprecedented challenges. Besides the ongoing vaccination activities, many countries still rely on measures including social distancing, contact tracing, mandatory face masking among others. Several digital technologies such as smart devices, social distancing tools, smart applications have been adopted to enhance public adherence to reduce secondary transmission. Such technologies use health data, symptoms monitoring, mobility, location and proximity data for contact tracing, self-isolation and quarantine compliance. The use of digital technologies has been debatable and contentious because of the potential violation of ethical values such as security and privacy, data format and management, synchronization, over-tracking, over-surveillance and lack of proper development and implementation guidelines which subsequently impact their efficacy and adoption. Also, the aggressive and mandatory use of large-scale digital technologies is not easy to implement, adhere to and subsequently difficult to practice which ultimately lead to imperfect public compliance. To alleviate these impediments, we analysed the available literature and propose an ethical framework for the use of digital technologies centred on ethical practices. The proposed framework highlights the trade-offs, potential roles and coordination of different stakeholders involved in the development and implementation of digital technologies, from various social and political contexts in Zimbabwe. We suggest that transparency, regular engagement and participation of potential users are likely to boost public trust. However, the potential violation of ethical values, poor communication, hasty implementation of digital technologies will likely undermine public trust, and as such, risk their adoption and efficacy.