Superposed Natural Hazards and Pandemics: Breaking Dams, Floods, and COVID-19

Surveillance Metrics and History of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Central Asia: Updated Epidemiological Assessment

BACKGROUND

This study updates the COVID-19 pandemic surveillance in Central Asia we conducted during the first year of the pandemic by providing 2 additional years of data for the region. The historical context provided through additional data can inform regional preparedness and early responses to infectious outbreaks of either the SARS-CoV-2 virus or future pathogens in Central Asia.

OBJECTIVE

First, we aim to measure whether there was an expansion or contraction in the pandemic in Central Asia when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the end of the public health emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic on May 5, 2023. Second, we use dynamic and genomic surveillance methods to describe the history of the pandemic in the region and situate the window of the WHO declaration within the broader history. Third, we aim to provide historical context for the course of the pandemic in Central Asia.

METHODS

Traditional surveillance metrics, including counts and rates of COVID-19 transmissions and deaths, and enhanced surveillance indicators, including speed, acceleration, jerk, and persistence, were used to measure shifts in the pandemic. To identify the appearance and duration of variants of concern, we used data on sequenced SARS-CoV-2 variants from the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID). We used Nextclade nomenclature to collect clade designations from sequences and Pangolin nomenclature for lineage designations of SARS-CoV-2. Finally, we conducted a 1-sided t test to determine whether regional speed was greater than an outbreak threshold of 10. We ran the test iteratively with 6 months of data across the sample period.

RESULTS

Speed for the region had remained below the outbreak threshold for 7 months by the time of the WHO declaration. Acceleration and jerk were also low and stable. Although the 1- and 7-day persistence coefficients remained statistically significant, the coefficients were relatively small in magnitude (0.125 and 0.347, respectively). Furthermore, the shift parameters for either of the 2 most recent weeks around May 5, 2023, were both significant and negative, meaning the clustering effect of new COVID-19 cases became even smaller in the 2 weeks around the WHO declaration. From December 2021 onward, Omicron was the predominant variant of concern in sequenced viral samples. The rolling t test of speed equal to 10 became entirely insignificant for the first time in March 2023.

CONCLUSIONS

Although COVID-19 continues to circulate in Central Asia, the rate of transmission remained well below the threshold of an outbreak for 7 months ahead of the WHO declaration. COVID-19 appeared to be endemic in the region and no longer reached the threshold of a pandemic. Both standard and enhanced surveillance metrics suggest the pandemic had ended by the time of the WHO declaration.

Risk perception of compound emergencies: A household survey on flood evacuation and sheltering behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

Compound hazards are derived from independent disasters that occur simultaneously. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the coupling of low-probability high-impact climate events has introduced a novel form of conflicting stressors that inhibits the operation of traditional logistics developed for single-hazard emergencies. The competing goals of hindering virus contagion and expediting massive evacuation have posed unique challenges for community safety. Yet, how a community perceives associated risks has been debated. This research utilized a web-based survey to explore the relationship between residents' perceptions of conflicting risks and emergency choices made during a historic compound event, the flooding in 2020 in Michigan, US that coincided with the pandemic. After the event, postal mail was randomly sent to 5,000 households living in the flooded area, collecting 556 responses. We developed two choice models for predicting survivors' evacuation options and sheltering length. The impact of sociodemographic factors on perceptions of COVID-19 risks was also examined. The results revealed greater levels of concern among females, democrats, and the economically inactive population. The relationship between evacuation choice and concern about virus exposure was dependent upon the number of seniors in the household. Concern about a lack of mask enforcement particularly discouraged evacuees from extended sheltering.

Exploring the links between flood events and the COVID-19 infection cases in Romania in the new multi-hazard-prone era

The occurrence of flood events amid the COVID-19 pandemic represents a prominent part of the emerging multi-hazard landscape, as floods are one of the most frequent and destructive natural hazards. This spatial and temporal overlap of hydrological and epidemiological hazards translates into compounded negative effects, causing a shift in the hazard management paradigm, in which hazard interaction takes centre stage. This paper calls into question whether the river flood events that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic in Romania and the way that they were managed had an impact on the infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus at county scale. To this end, hazard management data concerning the flood events that were severe enough to impose the evacuation of the population were corroborated with COVID-19 confirmed cases data. A definite link between the flood events and the dynamics of COVID-19 cases registered in the selected counties is difficult to identify, but the analysis shows that all flood events were followed by various size increases in the COVID-19 confirmed cases at the end of the incubation time range. The findings are critically interpreted by providing viral load and social-related contexts, allowing a proper understanding of the interactions between concurrent hazards.

Natural multi-hazard risk perception and educational insights among Geography and Tourism students and graduates amid the Covid-19 pandemic

Multi-hazard risk perception is an emerging research topic that has been gaining more and more interest since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, due to the unprecedented interactions between the management practices of the pandemic and of other co-occurring natural hazards, and to the compounded impact of these multi-hazards. This paper aims to investigate the specialization and study level-dependent differences concerning multi-hazard risk perception and hazard-related education insights of future potential specialists in natural hazard-induced risk management and tourism reconstruction. These differences were explored by applying a multi-layer questionnaire on 547 Geography and Tourism students and graduates from two universities in Iași City (Romania) and Novi Sad (Serbia), and performing descriptive and differential statistical analyses. The statistically significant differences that emerged refer to estimations of the impact level of the Covid-19 pandemic and of other natural hazards at different spatial scales and on different socio-economic activities, on the training/career of the respondents, and to the hazard-related education improvements. Up to date, none of the papers in the existing literature integrate both the Covid-19 pandemic and the co-occurrent natural hazards as objects of students' perception, which makes the present study a starting point for such research endeavours.

Handling natural hazards in Indonesia amid the COVID-19 pandemic: Muhammadiyah’s response and strategy

Indonesia is prone to natural hazards, which have continued to occur even during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Therefore, this study explored the response and strategy employed by Muhammadiyah, one of Indonesia’s moderate Islamic organisations, in dealing with natural hazards during this pandemic. A qualitative descriptive method was used in this study, and the data collection procedure involved finding related literature, reports, and decrees. Online interviews were also conducted with the Muhammadiyah Disaster Management Center (MDMC) administration to strengthen the data. Subsequently, this study discovered that Muhammadiyah responded by aiding victims of natural hazards, which occurred in various regions in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic. The strategies employed comprise Muhammadiyah COVID-19 Command Center (MCCC) to handle COVID-19, alongside essential recommendations to the MDMC network throughout Indonesia and the various arms of the government for dealing with natural hazards during the pandemic. Also, it showed commitment to handling these hazards by establishing a standard operating procedure for Muhammadiyah volunteers and represented Indonesia during a presentation at the World Health Organization.

A Perspective towards Multi-Hazard Resilient Systems: Natural Hazards and Pandemics

The concept of resilience has been used extensively across the sciences in engineering and the humanities. It is applied to ecology, medicine, economics, and psychology. The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has posed an extraordinary challenge to the resilience of healthcare systems, communities, and nations and has profoundly altered our previous day-to-day operations. This paper presents a discussion of the definitions and characteristics of resilient systems. Scenarios are utilized to qualitatively explore key relationships, responses, and paths for recovery across different system types. The purpose is to develop an integrated approach that can accommodate simultaneous threats to system resilience, in particular, impacts from a natural hazard in conjunction with COVID-19. This manuscript is the first to advocate for more in-depth and quantitative research utilizing transdisciplinary approaches that can accommodate considerations across our built environment and healthcare system infrastructures in pursuit of designing systems that are resilient to both natural hazards and pandemic impacts.

Individual hurricane evacuation intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic: insights for risk communication and emergency management policies

The U.S. 2020 hurricane season was extraordinary because of a record number of named storms coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic. This study draws lessons on how individual hurricane preparedness is influenced by the additional risk stemming from a pandemic, which turns out to be a combination of perceptions of flood and pandemic risks that have opposite effects on preparedness behavior. We conducted a survey in early June 2020 of 600 respondents in flood-prone areas in Florida to obtain insights into households' risk perceptions and preparedness for the upcoming hurricane season under COVID-19. The results show that concerns over COVID-19 dominated flood risk perceptions and negatively impacted people's evacuation intentions. Whereas hotel costs were the main obstacle to evacuating during Hurricane Dorian in 2019 in the same geographic study area, the main evacuation obstacle identified in the 2020 hurricane season is COVID-19. Our statistical analyses investigating the factors influencing evacuation intentions show that older individuals are less likely to evacuate under a voluntary order, because they are more concerned about the consequences of becoming infected by COVID-19. We observe similar findings based on a real-time survey we conducted in Florida with another group of respondents under the threat of Hurricane Eta at the end of the hurricane season in November 2020. We discuss the implications of our findings for risk communication and emergency management policies that aim to improve hurricane preparedness when dealing with additional health risks such as a pandemic, a situation that may be exacerbated under the future climate.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11069-021-05064-2.