Infectious disease, human capital, and the BRICS economy in the time of COVID-19

Current and Projected Mortality and Hospitalization Rates Associated With Conditional Cash Transfer, Social Pension, and Primary Health Care Programs in Brazil, 2000-2030

Importance

The health outcomes of increased poverty and inequalities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have been substantially amplified as a consequence of converging multiple crises. Brazil has some of the world's largest conditional cash transfer (Programa Bolsa Família [PBF]), social pension (Beneficio de Prestacão Continuada [BPC]), and primary health care (Estratégia de Saúde da Família [ESF]) programs that could act as mitigating interventions during the current polycrisis era of increasing poverty, slow or contracting economic growth, and conflicts.

Objective

To evaluate the combined association of the Brazilian conditional cash transfer, social pension, and primary health care programs with the reduction of morbidity and mortality over the last 2 decades and forecast their potential mitigation of the current global polycrisis and beyond.

Design, Setting, and Participants

This cohort study used a longitudinal ecological design with multivariable negative binomial regression models (adjusted for relevant socioeconomic, demographic, and health care variables) integrating the retrospective analysis from 2000 to 2019, with dynamic microsimulation models to forecast potential child mortality scenarios up to 2030. Participants included a cohort of 2548 Brazilian municipalities from 2004 to 2019, projected from 2020 to 2030. Data analysis was performed from September 2022 to February 2023.

Exposure

PBF coverage of the target population (those who were poorest) was categorized into 4 levels: low (0%-29.9%), intermediate (30.0%-69.9%), high (70.0%-99.9%), and consolidated (≥100%). ESF coverage was categorized as null (0), low (0.1%-29.9%), intermediate (30.0%-69.9%), and consolidated (70.0%-100%). BPC coverage was categorized by terciles.

Main outcomes and measures

Age-standardized, all-cause mortality and hospitalization rates calculated for the entire population and by age group (<5 years, 5-29 years, 30-69 years, and ≥70 years).

Results

Among the 2548 Brazilian municipalities studied from 2004 to 2019, the mean (SD) age-standardized mortality rate decreased by 16.64% (from 6.73 [1.14] to 5.61 [0.94] deaths per 1000 population). Consolidated coverages of social welfare programs studied were all associated with reductions in overall mortality rates (PBF: rate ratio [RR], 0.95 [95% CI, 0.94-0.96]; ESF: RR, 0.93 [95% CI, 0.93-0.94]; BPC: RR, 0.91 [95% CI, 0.91-0.92]), having all together prevented an estimated 1 462 626 (95% CI, 1 332 128-1 596 924) deaths over the period 2004 to 2019. The results were higher on mortality for the group younger than age 5 years (PBF: RR, 0.87 [95% CI, 0.85-0.90]; ESF: RR, 0.89 [95% CI, 0.87-0.93]; BPC: RR, 0.84 [95% CI, 0.82-0.86]), on mortality for the group aged 70 years and older, and on hospitalizations. Considering a shorter scenario of economic crisis, a mitigation strategy that will increase the coverage of PBF, BPC, and ESF to proportionally cover the newly poor and at-risk individuals was projected to avert 1 305 359 (95% CI, 1 163 659-1 449 256) deaths and 6 593 224 (95% CI, 5 534 591-7 651 327) hospitalizations up to 2030, compared with fiscal austerity scenarios that would reduce the coverage of these interventions.

Conclusions and relevance

This cohort study's results suggest that combined expansion of conditional cash transfers, social pensions, and primary health care should be considered a viable strategy to mitigate the adverse health outcomes of the current global polycrisis in LMICs, whereas the implementation of fiscal austerity measures could result in large numbers of preventable deaths.

Comparison of Omicron and Delta Variants of SARS-CoV-2: A Systematic Review of Current Evidence

INTRODUCTION

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) caused the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in late 2019 in Wuhan, China. In early 2020, the disease spread rapidly around the world. Since the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 has evolved dramatically into a wide variety of variants endowed with devastating properties. As of March 6, 2022, five SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, including Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Omicron strains have been identified. Due to the crucial importance of understanding the differences between the Omicron and Delta variants, this systematic review was conducted.

METHODS

This systematic review investigated new variants of Omicron SARS-CoV-2 based on current studies. Online databases were searched for English articles as of January 03, 2023. Selection of publications was a two-step process of title/abstract and full-text assessment against eligibility criteria. The relevant data from the included articles were systematically collected and organized in a designed table for analysis. To ensure the quality of the review, the PRISMA checklist and Newcastle- Ottawa Scale (NOS) of quality assessment were utilized.

RESULTS

The data extracted from 58 articles were analyzed, including 10003 pieces of evidence. Lower risk of hospitalization, ICU admission, and mortality after vaccination were reported in the Omicron variant compared to the Delta variant. Additionally, the Delta variant led to more severe clinical symptoms in comparison to the Omicron variant.

CONCLUSION

The Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 results in less severe disease outcomes as compared to Delta. Nevertheless, it remains crucial to maintain ongoing monitoring, implement containment measures, and adapt vaccination protocols to effectively address the evolving variants.

Pandemics, economy and health in Asia-A scenario of post 2020

Utilizing a daily data of 29 Asian Economies from June 2021 to June 2022, this study investigates the impacts of economic growth, health infrastructures and Government measures on COVID-19 cases. Our results demonstrate that GDP, Government intervention, testing and vaccination exert positive impacts on COVID-19 cases. We incorporate factors like weather to know how temperature impacts COVID-19 Cases. Our results demonstrate that magnitude of COVID-19 cases goes on upward fashion in winter days more. With reference to co-morbid conditions like diabetes, we notice that people with diabetes are more vulnerable to the infections, however due to the greater behavioral response, we obtain a negative association between co-morbid conditions and new COVID-19 cases. However, the intensity of COVID-19 cases is decimated with the improvement in health facilities and behavioral changes. Besides basic regression estimates, our instrumental variable estimates hold true in the line of regression results while underlying the relation with the COVID-19 cases. Interestingly, our results from alternate specification ensures that high human development with greater openness has resulted in more COVID-19 cases. Overall, our study belies the fact that vaccination and higher govt intervention can prevent COVID-19. Rather, a comprehensive policy is recommended on cross-country basis to overcome such challenge.•The Study analyzes the relation among COVID-19, economic growth and health infrastructure on a daily basis from June 2021 to June 2022 for 29 Asian Economies•Our empirical strategy involves regression followed by robustness tests of instrumental variable regression model.•Results show that higher growth, human development, lesser vaccination and trivial govt intervention post 2020 have resulted in more COVID-19 cases.

Artificial neural network (ANN)-based estimation of the influence of COVID-19 pandemic on dynamic and emerging financial markets

The COVID-19 pandemic is a serious global issue destroying financial markets awfully. The proper estimation effect of COVID-19 pandemic on dynamic emerging financial markets is a big challenge due to a complex multidimensional data. However, the present study proposes a Deep Neural Network (DNN)-based multivariate regression approach with backpropagation algorithm and structural learning-based Bayesian network with constraint-based algorithm to investigate the influence of COVID-19 pandemic on the currency and derivatives markets of an emerging economy. The output shows that the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively influenced the financial markets as indicated by sharply depreciating currency value around 10 % to 12 % and reducing short-position of futures derivatives around 3 % to 5 % for currency risk hedging. The robustness estimation shows that there have probabilistic distributed between Traded Futures Derivatives Contracts (TFDC), Currency Exchange Rate (CER), and Daily Covid Cases (DCC) and Daily Covid Deaths (DCD). Moreover, the output represents that the futures derivatives market conditionally depends on the currency market volatility given percentage of COVID-19 pandemic. This study may help to policymakers of financial markets in decision-making to control CER volatility that may promote currency market stability to enhance currency market activities and boost confidence of foreign investors in extreme financial crisis circumstances.

How has the sustainability of countries changed after COVID-19? Evidence from the pandemics' first year

The Covid-19 crisis has caused several social-related issues; the sanitary is, perhaps, the most significant one. Lockdowns and vaccination were implemented to fight the Covid-19 virus. From a sustainability perspective, Covid-19 has been considered a meaningful crisis driver that has affected nations' economies and social and natural capitals. The literature presents clues that effects appear to be different among countries. Recognizing its importance as public policies for sustainability, this study aims to assess how the sustainability of countries has changed after Covid-19, focusing on countries' economic power that reflects their capacity to face the crisis. A sample of 89 countries is considered, and 2019-2020 are set as base years for data gathering, which covers the first year of the Covid-19 crisis. Sustainability is conceptually supported and represented by a 3-D cube. The natural environment is expressed by the ecological footprint (EF) method, the economic capital by the gross domestic product (GDP), and the social capital by the happiness index. Results show that sustainability of economies was negatively affected after first year of Covid-19 crisis, but in different magnitudes, according to nations' economic power. While the sustainability of the wealthiest economies was slightly changed during 2019-2020 but maintained within the named 'useful-order' world (environmentally unsustainable, productive, and happy), the poorest economies pushed about 169 million people into the worst performance, reaching the 'ineffective' world (environmentally unsustainable, unproductive, and unhappy). Numbers highlight the inequalities of sustainability performance among countries, according to their capacity to face the Covid-19 crisis. The shield of the richest evaluated countries comprising 5 % of the world population is more powerful than the shield of the poorest evaluated countries carrying 67 % of the world population. Results claims for efforts to make different policies and provide economic support differently for countries, since although we are all under the same storm, but in different boats.

The value of vaccines

Optimizing vaccine spending depends on recognizing the full value of vaccination (VoV). Existing taxonomies of such value are not comprehensive because they are not guided by general theories. I rely on two such theories: subjective-value theory claims that what has value is determined by what people actually or ideally want in life. A welfarist theory of government states that a fundamental objective of government is to promote social value (or social welfare). These jointly imply that any aspect of life that individuals actually or ideally value and that could be negatively affected by vaccine-preventable diseases (and therefore positively affected by preventive vaccines) is an element of VoV. I build a more comprehensive-value taxonomy than currently exists based on this implication.

Exploring the Impacts of Urban Community Leisure on Subjective Well-Being during COVID-19: A Mixed Methods Case Study

Participating in community leisure activities has become an important way for the public to pursue good health and a high quality of life. However, few studies have focused on the health and welfare effects of participating in urban leisure activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to this gap in the literature, this study drew on the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory to examine the effects of community leisure on subjective well-being during the pandemic from the perspective of urban residents. A sample of 1041 urban residents in Beijing, China, was empirically analyzed by applying partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The PLS-SEM results revealed the net effects of the pandemic influence, leisure satisfaction, leisure environment, and community identity on subjective well-being. The fsQCA provided causal methods for realizing subjective well-being and a necessary condition analysis supplemented the necessary antecedents. The results showed that (1) higher levels of pandemic influence and leisure environment increased leisure satisfaction; (2) pandemic influence, leisure environment, and leisure satisfaction had a positive effect on community identity; (3) pandemic influence, leisure satisfaction, and community identity also combined with leisure environment and leisure time to positively influence subjective well-being; and (4) leisure satisfaction and community identity mediated the impacts of pandemic influence and leisure environment on subjective well-being. This paper contributes not only to empirical evidence but also to theory by constructing and enriching the research models of community leisure and subjective well-being. The practical implications for the public, community managers, and policymakers are also discussed.

Governance Quality, Public Health, Education, and Innovation: Study for Novel Implications

Pandemic or worldwide disease is the greatest issue of all time that not only affects human health but also influences the economic, educational, and other activities of the countries, since malaria is among the leading health disease that disrupts the economic system of the country. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze whether educational expenditure and technological innovation influence malarial incidence in emerging economies. This study also examined the role of government effectiveness, government health expenditure, gross domestic growth, human capital, and research and development during the period 2000-2018. Employing panel data approaches, including the slope heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence, the second-generation unit root test reveals the stationarity of all variables. The study also validated the existence of a long-run relationship between the variables. Based on the asymmetrical distribution properties, this study employed the quantile regression approach. The empirical results asserted that education and technological innovation significantly reduce malarial incidents in the panel economies. Also, government effectiveness, research and development, and human capital adversely affect incidences of malaria. In contrast, gross domestic product is the only factor found that increases malarial incidents during the selected period. Based on the empirical results, this study suggested policy measures that could benefit the governors, policymakers, and scholars.

Pandemics and Human Capital: Panel Data Evidence From 122 Countries

This study investigates the determinants of human capital stocks, measured by the Penn World Table data, in the panel dataset of 122 countries from 1996 to 2019. The special role is given to the World Pandemics Uncertainty index to measure pandemics uncertainty across countries. The paper finds that per capita gross domestic product and population increase human capital stocks. The decline in fertility rates leads to a higher level of human capital. The interesting evidence is that pandemics' uncertainty decreases human capital. These findings are valid when we focus on both the high-income and the middle/low-income economies. These results are against the Becker-Lewis theory's validity since sources of uncertainty are negatively related to human capital.

Is the SARS CoV-2 Omicron Variant Deadlier and More Transmissible Than Delta Variant?

Genetic variants of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) have been globally surging and devastating many countries around the world. There are at least eleven reported variants dedicated with inevitably catastrophic consequences. In 2021, the most dominant Delta and Omicron variants were estimated to lead to more severity and deaths than other variants. Furthermore, these variants have some contagious characteristics involving high transmissibility, more severe illness, and an increased mortality rate. All outbreaks caused by the Delta variant have been rapidly skyrocketing in infection cases in communities despite tough restrictions in 2021. Apart from it, the United States, the United Kingdom and other high-rate vaccination rollout countries are still wrestling with this trend because the Delta variant can result in a significant number of breakthrough infections. However, the pandemic has changed since the latest SARS-CoV-2 variant in late 2021 in South Africa, Omicron. The preliminary data suggest that the Omicron variant possesses 100-fold greater than the Delta variant in transmissibility. Therefore, this paper aims to review these characteristics based on the available meta-data and information from the first emergence to recent days. Australia and the five most affected countries, including the United States, India, Brazil, France, as well as the United Kingdom, are selected in order to review the transmissibility, severity and fatality due to Delta and Omicron variants. Finally, the vaccination programs for each country are also reviewed as the main factor in prevention.

A comprehensive review on comparison among effluent treatment methods and modern methods of treatment of industrial wastewater effluent from different sources

In recent years, rapid development in the industrial sector has offered console to the people but at the same time, generates numerous amounts of effluent composed of toxic elements like nitrogen, phosphorus, hydrocarbons, and heavy metals that influences the environment and mankind hazardously. While the technological advancements are made in industrial effluent treatment, there arising stretch in the techniques directing on hybrid system that are effective in resource recovery from effluent in an economical, less time consuming and viable manner. The key objective of this article is to study, propose and deliberate the process and products obtained from different industries and the quantity of effluents produced, and the most advanced and ultra-modern theoretical and scientific improvements in treatment methods to remove those dissolved matter and toxic substances and also the challenges and perspectives in these developments. The findings of this review appraise new eco-friendly technologies, provide intuition into the efficiency in contaminants removal and aids in interpreting degradation mechanism of toxic elements by various treatment assemblages.

Interplay of Nutrition and Psychoneuroendocrineimmune Modulation: Relevance for COVID-19 in BRICS Nations

The consequences of COVID-19 are not limited to physical health deterioration; the impact on neuropsychological well-being is also substantially reported. The inter-regulation of physical health and psychological well-being through the psychoneuroendocrineimmune (PNEI) axis has enduring consequences in susceptibility, treatment outcome as well as recuperation. The pandemic effects are upsetting the lifestyle, social interaction, and financial security; and also pose a threat through perceived fear. These consequences of COVID-19 also influence the PNEI system and wreck the prognosis. The nutritional status of individuals is also reported to have a determinative role in COVID-19 severity and convalescence. In addition to energetic demand, diet also provides precursor substances [amino acids (AAs), vitamins, etc.] for regulators of the PNEI axis such as neurotransmitters (NTs) and immunomodulators. Moreover, exaggerated immune response and recovery phase of COVID-19 demand additional nutrient intake; widening the gap of pre-existing undernourishment. Mushrooms, fresh fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices, and legumes are few of such readily available food ingredients which are rich in protein and also have medicinal benefits. BRICS nations have their influences on global development and are highly impacted by a large number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. The adequacy and access to healthcare are also low in BRICS nations as compared to the rest of the world. Attempt to combat the COVID-19 pandemic are praiseworthy in BRICS nations. However, large population sizes, high prevalence of undernourishment (PoU), and high incidence of mental health ailments in BRICS nations provide a suitable landscape for jeopardy of COVID-19. Therefore, appraising the interplay of nutrition and PNEI modulation especially in BRICS countries will provide better understanding; and will aid in combat COVID-19. It can be suggested that the monitoring will assist in designing adjunctive interventions through medical nutrition therapy and psychopsychiatric management.

Science Mapping of the Global Knowledge Base on Management, Leadership, and Administration Related to COVID-19 for Promoting the Sustainability of Scientific Research

The pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus has resulted in inevitable radical changes across almost all areas of daily life, with the pandemic having revealed perhaps the greatest crisis humanity has faced in modern history. This study aims to provide thematic and methodological recommendations for future sustainable research programs through a bibliometric analysis of publications focused on management, leadership, and administration related to COVID-19. The data for the study were obtained from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) bibliographic database and then analyzed according to thematic content analysis and bibliometric methodology. The study’s units of analysis include countries, journals, keywords, research models, sample/study group, and time to publication. VOSviewer software and visualization maps were used to report the findings obtained from the analyzed data. When the study’s results are evaluated regarding the number of related publications and total citations, it can be revealed that Anglo-American-, Chinese-, and European-centered dominance continues in COVID-19-related studies. The vast majority of publications on this subject area are concentrated in the field of health. In addition, the study’s findings revealed that the examined articles were generally published in journals considered as prestigious, have high impact factors, are published in the English language, and with articles published in a short time after a much-reduced editorial/review and publishing process. Unlike previous bibliometric reviews, this research comprehensively analyzed the management-, leadership-, and administration-oriented publications related to COVID-19 with a holistic approach, providing essential findings and recommendations for future sustainable thematic research opportunities.

Towards a GDPR-Compliant Blockchain-Based COVID Vaccination Passport

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world and limited work/personal life activities. Besides the loss of human lives and agony faced by humankind, the pandemic has badly hit different sectors economically, including the travel industry. Special arrangements, including COVID test before departure and on arrival, and voluntary quarantine, were enforced to limit the risk of transmission. However, the hope for returning to a normal (pre-COVID) routine relies on the success of the current COVID vaccination drives administered by different countries. To open for tourism and other necessary travel, a need is realized for a universally accessible proof of COVID vaccination, allowing travelers to cross the borders without any hindrance. This paper presents an architectural framework for a GDPR-compliant blockchain-based COVID vaccination passport (VacciFi), whilst considering the relevant developments, especially in the European Union region.