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Iloilo province was singled out as a model province in the Philippines because of its ability to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This study aims to examine the factors that influenced Iloilo residents' adherence to quarantine protocols.

A total of 334 Iloilo residents joined the survey. Using the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the results suggest a significant impact of attitude on adherence to quarantine protocols, while subjective norm, self-efficacy and controllability were not significant.

This study suggests that attitude predicts adherence to quarantine protocols. Further, the results showed that intrinsic motivation mediated the relationship between (1) attitude and adherence to quarantine protocols and (2) subjective norm and adherence to quarantine protocols. This implies that intrinsic motivation such as staying alive can encourage a resident to adhere to quarantine protocols.

Subsequent research should also consider how to mitigate the effects of similar public health crises in the future.

The study implies that intrinsic motivation such as staying alive can encourage a resident to follow quarantine protocol given this pandemic.

Health campaigns can lead to a more favorable attitude toward quarantine protocols adherence. Given the value of subjective norm, campaigns can also frame quarantine protocols adherence as socially responsible behavior. This can be used to target provinces with the highest risk of infection within the population. These insights can be used by local government units (LGUs), media and other stakeholders to encourage residents to adhere to quarantine protocols.

This study provides insights that can be used by the LGUs, media and other stakeholders to encourage residents to follow quarantine protocols.

This paper analyzed the healthcare systems of the Philippines and Vietnam prior to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and their strategies on mass testing, contact tracing, quarantine procedures and information dissemination about the pandemic.

Steinmo's (2008) historical institutionalism approach was used in this paper. Secondary data gathering, document analysis and comparative process tracing were employed.

The findings revealed that Vietnam's implementation of its Law on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases in 2007, its relatively low-cost healthcare system, its efficient mass testing and contact tracing strategies and its science-based decisions are contributory to its success in handling the pandemic. Meanwhile, the Philippines failure to enact its Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act in 2013, its costly and dominantly private healthcare system, its heavy focus on strict, long lockdowns and its militarist methods to control the spread of the pandemic were found to be insufficient.

Detailed study on the delivery of healthcare services in marginal areas, healthcare spending for COVID-19 positive individuals and information dissemination strategies about the pandemic were not explored.

Health institutions can redesign their governance mechanisms by ensuring a cost-effective healthcare system and maximizing resource utilization to ensure efficient management of future pandemics. Moreover, national governments should not compromise their country's healthcare system over the economy during a pandemic.

This paper analyzed the countries' history of healthcare governance and its influence in handling COVID-19 compared to previous studies which only focused on the countries' strategies during the pandemic.

The Internet is used as a tool to seek health information by individuals. Mental health concerns are the high prevalence of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and preventive steps are required to curb the illness. Therefore, to gain more insight into health concerns, it is now a common practice to seek health information on the Internet. This study propose an integrated theoretical model to explore the relationship between COVID-19 protocols and perceived online trust with online health information seeking intention (OHISI) and a moderating effect of perceived severity and perceived urgency.

Data are collected from 325 athletes in the category of individual and team sports through an online survey in a Likert-scale questionnaire. The analysis is performed with a quantitative methodology.

The study reveals the bright side of online health information (OHI), which brings athletes together and has played out with virtual happy hours, meetings and events. The bright side of OHI reflects social, cultural, technological and economic benefits. An OHI chatbot offers bright personalised side information to the individual seeker, which is more convenient and efficient than human capabilities.

The pivotal contribution is the integrated theoretical framework that is derived from multidisciplinary literature to capture the complexity of OHI. Also, it conceptualises the constructs in the context of OHI and COVID-19.

The first case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was documented in China, and the virus was soon to be introduced to its neighboring country – South Korea. South Korea, one of the earliest countries to initiate a national pandemic response to COVID-19 with fairly substantial measures at the individual, societal and governmental level, is an interesting example of a rapid response by the Global South. The current study examines contact tracing mobile applications (hereafter, contact tracing apps) for those who were subject to self-quarantine through the lenses of dataveillance and datafication. This paper analyzes online/digital data from those who were mandatorily self-quarantined by the Korean government largely due to returning from overseas travel.

This study uses an Internet ethnography approach to collect and analyze data. To extract data for this study, self-quarantined Korean individuals' blog entries were collected and verified with a combination of crawling and manual checking. Content analysis was performed with the codes and themes that emerged. In the COVID-19 pandemic era, this method is particularly useful to gain access to those who are affected by the situation. This approach advances the author’s understandings of COVID-19 contact tracing mobile apps and the experiences of self-quarantined people who use them.

The paper shows Korean citizens' understandings and views of using the COVID-19 self-tracing application in South Korea through examining their experiences. The research argues that the application functions as a datafication tool that collects the self-quarantined people's information and performs dataveillance on the self-quarantined people. This research further offers insights for various agreements/disagreements at different actors (i.e. the self-quarantined, their families, contact tracers/government officials) in the process of contact tracing for COVID-19.

This study also provides insights into the implications of information and technology as they affect datafication and dataveillance conducted on the public. This study investigates an ongoing debate of COVID-19's contact tracing method concerning privacy and builds upon an emerging body of literature on datafication, dataveillance, social control and digital sociology.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-08-2020-0377

Trafficking¹ in human beings is gross.² It constitutes one of the most egregious violations of human rights.³ The vile nature of human trafficking is also hinged on the fact that it commodifies human beings. Hence its categorisation is modern slavery.⁴ So much of trafficking activities follow the pathways5 of other transnational forms of organised crimes and irregular cross-border movement of people.6 In response to this egregious crime, several international, regional and country laws and instruments have been used or proposed for combatting human trafficking.7 These instruments forbid trafficking in human persons and provide several preventive measures, prosecution of perpetrators and protection of victims of human trafficking.8 The number of state parties to the United Nations Protocol to prevent suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (the Palermo Protocol), demonstrates the global commitment to combatting human trafficking. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on legal systems, and the capacity of both state and private institutions to combat human trafficking, has added a knotty twist to the global problem of human trafficking. This essay looks at the trends of human trafficking in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also highlights international law and policy approaches that state parties and civil society organisations should adopt to counteract the changes and sustain the fight against human trafficking. Thus, the essay contributes to updating the legal and policy approaches to combat human trafficking in this era.

This paper aims to explore empirically the interactions between the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, economic mobility and containment policy to test the effectiveness of mobility restrictions in controlling the spread of the disease.

This study used weekly regional data for the 17 Philippine regions and estimated the effect of shocks using a panel vector autoregression (VAR) model.

The authors conclude that COVID-19 deaths and incidence primarily respond to shocks that affect the lethality and transmissibility of the disease, and mobility restrictions and strict quarantine levels do not seem to have any impact on these outcomes. The movement of people during this pandemic period, on the other hand, seems to respond more to economic factors and government restrictions and less to the presence of and the characteristics of the disease.

Since the pandemic is a public bad, community cooperation is a must to address it. Clear government messaging that dispels doubts on the safety of the newly developed vaccines and that encourages public acceptance and trust might be a better nudge compared to a heavy-handed and threatening approach.

This paper aims to reflect upon the findings of a fast-track study carried out in April 2020, by the Brazilian Federation of Therapeutic Communities, focused on the impact of the first measures taken by the Brazilian therapeutic communities (TCs) in response to COVID-19.

An electronic survey was disseminated to TCs in the different regions of Brazil through online platforms. A total of 144 TCs responses were used in the final analysis. The survey collected the following information: suspected and confirmed cases of COVID-19 (only one case of COVID-19 was confirmed), changes in treatment protocols, the impact in admissions and daily activities and the safety measures adopted to stop or reduce the transmission between residents, families and staff.

The survey successfully collected general data regarding interruptions (82.6% of TCs interrupted admissions, 100% of TCs interrupted volunteer’s activities, 94% of TCs interrupted family visits and 93% of TCs interrupted external activities).

The caveat of this study is the fact that there were tight deadlines for the TCs to generate their responses and the limited availability of staff to answer long surveys. Because of this, the study could not explore other important qualitative data. The results were shared in Brazil and Latin America with the staff of TCs, the national Federations of Therapeutic Communities and government agencies linked with them, in all Latin America.

This research aims to contribute to the adoption of developed prophylaxis and prevention protocols in response to COVID-19.

This study explored how the Singaporean government responded to the Covid-19 pandemic crisis from early January 2020 to the end of May of the same year. It evaluated the capability of Singapore's leadership management in a crisis during the peak and ravaging period of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The study utilised a systematic design analysis approach, analysing Singaporean cases on the Covid-19 crisis using a systematic and narrative approach to underscore the country's response to the pandemic attack from January 2020 to May 2020.

Against the backdrop of Singapore's peculiar political system of government dominated by the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) and culture of bureaucracy, the government has increasingly executed several control measures, including strict travel bans, contact tracing, the circuit breaker–lockdown, mask-wearing, social distancing orders as well as financial support to businesses and employees from top to the bottom in the country. However, the treatment and health issues of the migrant workers in the dormitories continue to be the major concern among academics and scholars. At the same time, policy inadequacies truncate the excellent measure of Singapore's response to Covid-19. The case point review concluded that the mortality rate in Singapore remains low compared to other nations of the world. Singapore's case points unveil fundamental learning that an excellent leadership-driven harmonised strategic model is essential for crisis management in any society. The finding of the analysis demonstrated that Singapore adopted a contingency and value-based leadership model to advance good governance and tackle the spread of the deadly coronavirus in its country.

The study has demonstrated a profound analysis that has not been conducted hitherto. Investigation of the Singapore case point is not a popular analysis among Nigerian scholars. Therefore, from Nigeria's perspective, the study has showcased the good and the wrong sides of a coin in Singapore's leadership and power dynamic in crisis management.

This paper aims to offer Sitio San Roque, an informal settlement in the Philippines as a case study to explore long-term "forgetful" urban development planning in the Philippines, and the renewed visibility of the urban poor under COVID-19 lockdown. It connects scholarship on informality to issues of housing and political rights in Metro Manila to further investigate how vulnerable communities in the Global South are faring in the pandemic.

This is an exploration of Sitio San Roque, an informal settler community in Metropolitan "Metro" Manila, Philippines. This paper refers to recent journalistic reports pertaining to the community's ongoing evictions and arrests while under Metro Manila's "enhanced community quarantine." Furthermore, it converses with literature from disciplines including health-care policy, urban studies and recent studies on COVID-19 and vulnerable communities to critically discuss the plight of the urban poor in the pandemic-stricken Metro Manila.

The urban poor and members of informal communities such as Sitio San Roque are especially vulnerable to contracting COVID-19 because of precarious livelihoods and housing instability. The creation of informality in Metro Manila can be traced to political tensions, economic agendas and development planning since the time of Marcos' administration and also to global restructuring during the 1990s. However, also important to note is that under Metro Manila's lockdown, informal settlers are further disenfranchised and stigmatized via ongoing demolitions and evictions, as well as by processes of policing and criminalization by the state. The use of military and police personnel as a way to enforce lockdown in the metropolis further impedes on the rights of informal settlers and the urban poor.

Recent scholarship and reports discuss the challenges for informal communities and the urban poor in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly due to their housing conditions and loss of economic stability. This paper contributes to a critical understanding of these issues by adding the dimensions of political and housing rights. It refers to the case study of members of Sitio San Roque, who have experienced continuous threats of demolitions and arrests by state police for protesting the lack of government aid under lockdown. Both military approaches of governance and housing informality work in tandem to expose the vulnerabilities of the urban poor in Metro Manila's pandemic. Finally, this paper extends on urban studies scholar Gavin Shatkin's concept of “forgetful planning” (2004) by applying his discussions to the current context. Informal settlers have long been “forgotten” by the state's development plans, but are now remembered and deemed more visible in Metro Manila's ECQ.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a disastrous impact on a substantial number of Filipino seafarers. The government agencies played a crucial role in helping the seafarers. This paper aims to explore the challenges that the Filipino seafarers faced amid the pandemic and initially evaluate the Philippine government’s countermeasures.

This paper reviewed academic literature and secondary data to identify and analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on seafarers. To identify the full range of policies and measures that have been adopted by the Philippines’ government amid the pandemic to mitigate the impact on seafarers, an extensive survey of various sources was conducted. Furthermore, an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) survey was conducted from seafarers' perspective to analyze the priority of these government initiatives.

This study identifies four key challenges for seafarers during the pandemic: crew change crisis, healthcare shortages, certification and the derived problems including financial and mental health issues. Notably, mental health problems are prevalent but receive limited government attention. Despite the government’s efforts to assist seafarers, the AHP survey identifies crew change assistance as the most crucial issue, possibly impacting all others.

This paper recognizes the significant information regarding aid in recovery management and provides much-needed assistance to seafarers during the pandemic and similar crisis situations. It bridges the research gaps and contributes knowledge to the government, stakeholders and various entities such as shipping companies, ship management firms and seafarers' manning agencies.