Pregnancy care among French physicians: A national survey

Physicians in France have less regular obstetrical follow‐up compared to women in the general population. The main risk factors were multiparity and high workload.

Hospital corridors as lived spaces: The reconfiguration of social boundaries during the early stages of the Covid pandemic

This article explores the meanings and uses of a hospital corridor through 98 diary entries produced by the staff of an English specialist hospital during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Lefebvre's (1991, The production of space. Blackwell) threefold theorisation of space, corridors are seen as conceived, perceived and lived spaces, produced through and enabling the reconfiguration and reinterpretation of social interactions. The diaries depict two distinct versions of the central hospital corridor: its 'normal' operation prior to the pandemic when it was perceived as a social and symbolic space for collective sensemaking and the 'COVID-19 empty corridor' described as a haunting place that divided hospital staff along ostensibly new social and moral boundaries that impacted negatively on lived work experiences and staff relationships. The mobilisation of the central hospital corridor in the daily social construction of meaning and experience during a period of organisational and societal crisis suggests that corridors should not be only seen as a material backdrop for work relationships but as social entities that come into being and are maintained and reproduced through the (lack of) performance of social relations.

Implementation and expansion of laboratory capacity for molecular diagnostics in response to COVID-19 and preparedness for other emerging infectious diseases in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

Background

Afghanistan experienced various outbreaks before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, including dengue, Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF), measles, and acute watery diarrhea (AWD). Diagnostic and surveillance support was limited, with only the Central Public Health Laboratory equipped to handle outbreak responses. This article highlights initiatives taken to improve diagnostic capabilities for COVID-19 and other outbreaks of public health concern encountered during the pandemic.

Background

The World Health Organization (WHO) Afghanistan Country Office collaborated with the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (EMRO), Central Public Health Laboratory (CPHL), and National Influenza Center (NIC) to enhance COVID-19 diagnostic capacity at national and subnational facilities. To alleviate pressure on CPHL, a state-of-the-art laboratory was established at the National Infectious Disease Hospital (NIDH) in Kabul in 2021-2022, while WHO EMRO facilitated the regionalization of testing to subnational facilities for dengue, CCHF, and AWD in 2022-2023.

Results

COVID-19 testing capacity expanded nationwide to 34 Biosafety Level II labs, improving diagnosis time. Daily testing rose from 1000 in 2020 to 9200 in 2023, with 848,799 cumulative tests. NIDH identified 229 CCHF cases and 45 cases nationally. Dengue and CCHF testing, decentralized to Nangarhar and Kandahar labs, identified 338 dengue and 18 CCHF cases. AWD testing shifted to NIDH and five subnational facilities (Kandahar, Paktia, Balkh, Herat, and Nangarhar labs), while measles testing also decentralized to nine subnational facilities.

Conclusion

Afghanistan implemented a remarkable, multisectoral response to priority pathogens. The nation now possesses diagnostic expertise at national and subnational levels, supported by genomic surveillance. Future efforts should concentrate on expanding and sustaining this capacity to enhance public health responses.

Deepening and widening the gap: The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender and racial inequalities in Brazil

Shaped by inconsistent policy decisions, the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil has made structural gender and racial inequalities more acute. Black and low-income women are overburdened with unpaid domestic work, increased domestic violence, and more vulnerable due to informal and exploitative working regimes. These structural aspects are intensifying, since the pandemic has broadened inequalities at the intersection of gender, race, labor market, and social class. We examine pre- and during pandemic inequalities on three dimensions: (a) unpaid domestic and care work, (b) women's labor market participation, and (c) domestic violence. We link the care diamond model and racial stratification forwarding a feminist perspective by examining how the interlocking of race and gender in Brazil renders different socioeconomic dynamics to the detriment of Black and low-income women. Based on this evidence, we stress that a more equal future requires a better social protection and policies targeting the articulation of gender, race, and class.

Inflation Expectations, Inflation Target Credibility, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Germany

Using the exact wording of the European Central Bank's definition of price stability, we started a representative online survey of German citizens in January 2019 that is designed to measure long-term inflation expectations and the credibility of the inflation target. Our results indicate that credibility has decreased in our sample period, particularly in the course of the deep recession implied by the Covid-19 pandemic. Interestingly, even though inflation rates in Germany have been clearly below 2% for several years, credibility has declined mainly because Germans increasingly expect that inflation will be much higher than 2% over the medium term. We investigate how inflation expectations and the impact of the pandemic depend on personal characteristics including age, gender, education, and political attitude.

Multiagency safeguarding arrangements during and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic: Identifying shared learning

Measures to combat transmission of the coronavirus presented unprecedented challenges for safeguarding and child protection practice, including through withdrawal of routine opportunities to observe and engage with children and families and disruption of systems for inter-agency communication and coordination. This article reports on a two-stage study designed to identify shared learning from adaptations to professional practice in response to the measures. Interviews with 67 London-based senior safeguarding leads from seven professional groups undertaken during the summer of 2020 informed an England-wide survey to similar groups in February-March 2021. SPSS was used to analyse 417 responses, which were supplemented by answers to open questions. Findings are reported using the six practice themes which the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel expects to inform shared learning to improve safeguarding at national and local levels. The study revealed the formidable barriers facing professionals in understanding the changing environments in which children were living and in identifying and assessing new or altered risks due to the pandemic; steps taken to respond to changing risks and to keep in touch and re-engage families; strategies to support critical thinking and challenge among professionals working under unprecedented pressure; and opportunities for enhanced multiagency working and inter-agency collaboration.

Pandemic transformations in migrant spaces: Migrant entrepreneurship between super-digitalization and the new precarity

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about new patterns in labour market activities, including greater frequency, intensity and sectoral diversification of technology-mediated online work (super-digitalization). The development of online professional activities, accelerated by the pandemic, has a profound influence on migrant entrepreneurship in many dimensions. While the phenomenon also concerns the native population and is not limited to foreigners, in the case of migrant entrepreneurs it has additional unique meanings and consequences, resulting from a greater significance of mobility for migrants and its restriction during the pandemic. The analysis discusses new phenomena, such as the emergence of pandemic digital nomads and the development of migrant business ventures characterized by a de-ethnicized approach to customers. The theoretical framework for this analysis is the concept of super-digitalization of professional activities as a privilege. Digitalization is not available to everyone, but it affects everyone; it also has consequences for offline migrant entrepreneurs by creating and enhancing new mechanisms of exclusion. The article emphasizes the difference between super-digitalization and digitalization, which result in different outcomes for migrant entrepreneurs. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with 53 Polish migrant entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom.

Consumer responses to the Covid-19 crisis: evidence from bank account transaction data

This paper uses transaction-level bank account data from Denmark to study the dynamics of consumer spending during the Covid-19 pandemic. We document that aggregate spending initially dropped by almost 30% but recovered almost fully after the first wave. While spending plummeted in categories severely affected by supply restrictions, it increased in unaffected categories. Individual exposure to health risks and supply restrictions was associated with much larger spending cuts than exposure to income risk and unemployment. The findings suggest that the contraction was mainly caused by temporary health risks and supply restrictions, with a limited role for persistent negative spill-overs. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

"The pandemic of distance learning": How Arab high school students see online-learning during Covid-19

Emergency transition to online due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic has created unprecedented challenges in schooling. There is a dearth of information on the perception of Arab high school students and parents regarding the negative effects of online learning during Covid-19. Qualitative analysis of data from a multisite ethnographic-centered study collected in nine Arab countries. Data presented are only the ones recorded from students and parents. Raw data were abstracted using a mind-mapping software and coded using words. The perceived negative effects of students and parents on several aspects of the transition to online learning such as the needed technical adjustments, impact on parents, perceptions of learning online versus face to face, pedagogical drawbacks, and psychological effects are described and discussed in light of results of previous studies. In spite of cultural differences, Arab high school students and parents face the same challenges and difficulties reported in other parts of the world. The overarching theme that emerges both for parents and children is the perceived superiority of face-to-face learning in the structured environment of the school for a more holistic learning and socialization experience of students and for better long-term outcomes.

Welfare state support during the COVID-19 pandemic: Change and continuity in public attitudes towards social policies in Germany

Our analysis asks whether the pandemic situation affects welfare state support in Germany. The pandemic has increased the health and income risks calling for welfare state intervention. While increased needs, more deservingness, and higher state responsibility during such a crisis would suggest augmented support generally and among those at risk, this might be a short-term effect and cost considerations could reverse this trend. We study public attitudes towards four key social policy areas based on the German Internet Panel (GIP). We use three waves prior and further three waves since the pandemic had been declared in March 2020. The analysis shows both continuity in the popularity of social policies, in particular health and pensions, and some short-term increase in support for unemployment and family policies. The results after nearly 2 years suggest rather continuation with some thermostatic short-term boosts in support instead of any long-lasting change.

Partnering with Agents: How the Covid-19 Pandemic changed Relations between the UK Government and Public Service Contractors

The contracting out of public goods and services has become a central feature of the UK's state machinery, with more than £350 billion spent annually on services ranging from rubbish collection to building submarines. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the UK government took the unprecedented step of incorporating private providers at a national scale to deliver emergency services which were previously the purview of the state. To achieve this, the government used emergency legislation temporarily to remove competitive tenders and reduced reporting processes. In doing so, it substantially re-orientated its relationship with private providers, moving from a position of a principal granting its authority to deliver services to something more akin to a partner organisation leveraging private resources. This shift in power dynamics, coupled with an ongoing government ambition to expand the UK's public service markets, risks a permanent change in government-provider relations, to the detriment of the UK's contracting out framework.

Process modularity, supply chain responsiveness, and moderators: The Médecins Sans Frontières response to the Covid-19 pandemic

The unprecedented scale of the Covid-19 pandemic has been a challenge for health supply chains around the world. Many international humanitarian organizations have had to ensure the continuity of their already complex development programs, while addressing their supply chain disruptions linked to the pandemic. Process modularity has frequently been advocated as a strategy to mitigate such disruptions, although empirical evidence regarding its impact on supply chain responsiveness and what moderates this impact is scarce. This exploratory research uses supply chain data analysis, qualitative content analysis, interviews, and a three-round Delphi study to investigate how Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières; MSF) and its 151 missions employed process modularity during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our results show that despite severe disruptions, process modularity-based on a modular architecture, interfaces, and standards-has helped MSF maintain supply chain responsiveness. Specifically, it (1) enabled time-consuming, nonessential tasks to be skipped, (2) relieved internal and external bottlenecks, and (3) facilitated better allocation and prioritization. Our analyses also put forward eight moderators, structured in three dimensions (visibility, alignment, and resource orchestration), which can affect the impact of process modularity on supply chain responsiveness. We extend the literature on supply chain responsiveness and process modularity by presenting extensive empirical results suggesting that process modularity improves responsiveness in crisis situations, how it does so, and what moderates this impact. Our study thereby highlights the potential of this strategy and provides operationally relevant insights that could help organizations to implement or to review and redesign their process modularity.

Exploring customers' responses to online service failure and recovery strategies during Covid-19 pandemic: An actor-network theory perspective

While the debate on online service failure and recovery strategies has been given considerable attention in the marketing and information systems literature, the evolving Covid-19 pandemic has brought about new challenges both theoretically and empirically in the consumption landscape. To fully understand customers' responses to service failure during a crisis we asked 70 millennials from three European Countries-Italy, France, and the UK-to describe their responses to service failure during the Covid-19 pandemic (30 completed a 4-week diary and 40 completed a 4-week qualitative survey). Drawing on phenomenological, constructivist, and hermeneutical approaches, and utilizing an actor-network theory perspective, the current study proposes a new framework for understanding customers' responses to online service failure and recovery strategies during the Covid-19 pandemic. Conclusions highlight implications for theory, policy, and management practice through extending comprehensions of service failure recovery processes by examining how marketing policies generate different social impacts during a crisis situation which facilitate the achievement of customer satisfaction and positive outcomes.

Psychological predictors of protective behaviours during the Covid-19 pandemic: Theory of planned behaviour and risk perception

The Covid‐19 outbreak was declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization in January 2020. As a consequence, several protective measures were urged by national governments in order to limit the spread of the pandemic. Drawing on the literature on health behaviours, in the present study, we investigated the psychological factors (i.e., attitudes, social norms, perceived behavioural control, intentions, and risk perception) that were associated with two highly recommended behaviours: frequent hand washing and social distancing (i.e., staying at home except for essential reasons). The study employed a correlational design with a follow‐up. A questionnaire including measures of psychological predictors was administered via social media to a sample of 403 adults residing in Italy during the lockdown. Self‐reported behaviours were assessed one week later. Findings showed that attitudes, social norms, perceived behavioural control were significantly related to hand washing and social distancing through intentions. Risk perception was a significant predictor of social distancing but not of hand washing. These findings suggest that intervention and communication strategies aimed at encouraging preventive measures during the Covid‐19 pandemic should be organized taking into account multiple factors which partially differ depending on the type of behaviour considered. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Riding the rapids: COVID-19, the three rivers curriculum, and the experiences of the university of pittsburgh school of medicine

When faced with the COVID-19 pandemic this past spring, the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine (UPSOM) took rapid steps to ensure the safety of students, staff, and the faculty as well as to maintain the educational process. Curriculum reform efforts, already underway, proved to be an advantage in the transformation. We quickly converted to a remote and then a hybrid curriculum. Research labs were reopened with appropriate safety measures. Clinical experiences for students restarted via a phased process that emphasized safety and graduation requirements. A variety of assessment mechanisms were restarted with appropriate modifications. New teaching models, such as flipped classrooms, have become the norm, and it seems hard to imagine our returning to our old pedagogy. The curriculum committee met continually to guide the process of change and reopening. The curricular adaptation process remains ongoing, and challenges remain. Nonetheless, we have learned from our experiences and hope to use this knowledge gained as we move forward.

Stimulating economy via fiscal package: The only way out to save vulnerable Workers' lives and livelihood in Covid-19 pandemic

This paper examines critically the economic package announced by the Indian central government to counter the challenges of lives and livelihood in the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper estimates the shares of the fiscal economic packages in two phases as per the shares of the vulnerable workers and number of Covid-19 cases in the Indian states. The recent data on labour market are used from National Sample Survey Organization and data on Covid-19 cases from Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. This paper recommends alternatively a fiscal stimulus package of Rs. 10 lakh crores (5% of GDP) with an immediate effect to counter the present problems of health, food and unemployment in the pandemic and should be extended to Rs. 24 lakh crores (12% of Indian GDP) to the Indian states for at least 1 year to protect the lives and livelihood of the most vulnerable, informal and migrant workers. The populous and poor states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have higher share of vulnerable workers and highly industrialized states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi and Tamil Nadu have higher number of Covid-19 cases. Due to the unplanned lockdown in India, there has been a surge in Covid-19 cases across the country that in turn led to an increase in vulnerable workers in poor states due to reverse migration from industrialized states to populous and poor states during the pandemic. Furthermore, the paper explains the five significant factors that justify the adoption of an expansionary fiscal policy rather than monetary policy.