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Refugee camps can be severely struck by pandemics, like potential COVID-19 outbreaks, due to high population densities and often only base-level medical infrastructure. Fast responding medical systems can help to avoid spikes in infections and death rates as they allow the prompt isolation and treatment of patients. At the same time, the normal demand for emergency medical services has to be dealt with as well. The overall goal of this study is the design of an emergency service system that is appropriate for both types of demand.

A spatial hypercube queuing model (HQM) is developed that uses queuing-theory methods to determine locations for emergency medical vehicles (also called servers). Therefore, a general optimization approach is applied, and subsequently, virus outbreaks at various locations of the study areas are simulated to analyze and evaluate the solution proposed. The derived performance metrics offer insights into the behavior of the proposed emergency service system during pandemic outbreaks. The Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan is used as a case study.

The derived locations of the emergency medical system (EMS) can handle all non-virus-related emergency demands. If additional demand due to virus outbreaks is considered, the system becomes largely congested. The HQM shows that the actual congestion is highly dependent on the overall amount of outbreaks and the corresponding case numbers per outbreak. Multiple outbreaks are much harder to handle even if their cumulative average case number is lower than for one singular outbreak. Additional servers can mitigate the described effects and lead to enhanced resilience in the case of virus outbreaks and better values in all considered performance metrics.

Some parameters that were assumed for simplification purposes as well as the overall model should be verified in future studies with the relevant designers of EMSs in refugee camps. Moreover, from a practitioners perspective, the application of the model requires, at least some, training and knowledge in the overall field of optimization and queuing theory.

The model can be applied to different data sets, e.g. refugee camps or temporary shelters. The optimization model, as well as the subsequent simulation, can be used collectively or independently. It can support decision-makers in the general location decision as well as for the simulation of stress-tests, like virus outbreaks in the camp area.

The study addresses the research gap in an optimization-based design of emergency service systems for refugee camps. The queuing theory-based approach allows the calculation of precise (expected) performance metrics for both the optimization process and the subsequent analysis of the system. Applied to pandemic outbreaks, it allows for the simulation of the behavior of the system during stress-tests and adds a further tool for designing resilient emergency service systems.

Outlines the role of viruses in relation to food safety. Those of significance fall largely into two groups – the so‐called small round‐structured viruses and Hepatitis A virus – the original source of which is human faeces. This may contaminate foods “in the field”, especially in the case of shellfish, or during food handling by infected food handlers. Although viruses cannot grow in foods, contamination of foods followed by person‐to‐person spread can lead to major outbreaks. The public health significance of food‐borne viruses is likely to become better appreciated as methods for their detection improve.

In Ghana, even though scholars and experts in the field of economics and finance have expressed their opinions and perceptions on the effect of the pandemic on the Ghana Stock Exchange, there has been no study conducted to that effect. This study, therefore, aimed at examining the impact of COVID-19 on the stock returns on the Ghana stock exchange. This would help policy makers and investors in making efficient decisions.

The outbreak of the novel COVID-19 has been a thorn in the flesh of the world in its entirety, affecting many aspects of life including the stock market. This study, therefore, examined the impact of the outbreak on the stock returns of the Ghana Stock Exchange. The study utilized data from the All Share Prices of the Ghana stock exchange, commonly known as the Ghana stoke exchange composite index (GSECI) for analysis. The data covered the period before the outbreak of COVID-19 and during the outbreak. It was revealed that the Ghana stock exchange experienced better returns on the market before the outbreak of the virus. The outbreak of COVID-19 has led to wide variations in the market increasing the risk of investments. The exponential General Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (EGARCH) (1, 1) model also reveals that the outbreak of COVID-19 has a significant negative effect on the returns in the market. The market in these periods of COVID-19 is highly volatile. It is recommended that investors should carefully consider risk mitigation strategies to enable them diversify their investments effectively and efficiently against the high risk associated with the market in this COVID-19 era.

It was revealed that the Ghana stock exchange experienced better returns on the market before the outbreak of the virus. The outbreak of COVID-19 has led to wide variations in the market increasing the risk of investments. The EGARCH (1, 1) model also revealed that the outbreak of COVID-19 had a significant negative effect on stock returns in the market. The market during these periods of COVID-19 was viewed as highly volatile.

The outbreak of COVID-19 is hence deduced to have a negative impact on the Ghana stock exchange. However, the knowledge of how the market has been affected by the disease, it is important that financial risk mitigation studies be undertaken. This goes beyond what this study has done. The study can further be expanded to include other important economic variables such as GDP, inflation, exchange rates and the likes in to the model.

Investors should carefully consider risk mitigation strategies to enable them diversify their investments effectively and efficiently against the high risk associated with the market in this COVID-19 era.

It is also important that investors consider diversification of their investments in order to reduce the risk in their investments. It will be more appropriate for most investors to invest with companies such as banks and the telecommunications companies listed on the on the market. This is because most of the telecommunication companies in these times have taken advantage and are making good profit on their businesses. Likewise, some of the financial institutions are considered essential institution in these times. Investing in industries such as manufacturing and the oil and gas sector may be more risky.

The decline in economic and financial market indicators could be credited to the failure of most business entities, organizations and firms which are struggling to sustain their operations in these times of COVID-19. These also include firms listed on the Ghana stock exchange with whom investors transact their daily businesses. However, about 70% of the Ghanaian economy heavily depends on these business and firms found in the private and informal sector. According to the Ghana Statistics Service COVID-19 Business Tracker Survey, about 131,000 businesses expressed their uncertainties with the business environment and also faced the challenge of financial accessibility. The study is appropriate to unearth the true effect and offer policy interventions.

Millions of the British people have for some years now been struggling valiantly to live with hard times, watching them day by day grow worse but always hopefully that the cloud had a silver lining; that one day, reason and a sense of direction would prevail. Tyranny in many forms is a feature of history; the greatest epics have been risings of ordinary people to overthrow it. The modern form of tyranny is that of Money; the cruel and sinister ways in which it can be obtained and employed and the ineffectiveness of any measures taken to control the evils which result. Money savings over the years and the proverbial bank book, once the sure safeguard of ordinary people, are whittled away in value, never to recover. Causes always seemed to be contained within the country's own economy and industrial practices, and to this extent should have been possible of control. The complex and elaborate systems constructed by the last Government were at least intended for the purpose, but each attempt to curb excessive demands for more money, more and more for doing less and less— the nucleus of inflation—produced extreme reactions, termed collectively “industrial strife”. Every demand met without compensatory returns in increased work, inevitably led to rises in prices, felt most keenly in the field of food and consumer goods. What else would be expected from such a situation?

The war in Iraq, the threat of terrorism and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic have made international business activities increasingly difficult and risky. The worldwide economic downturn and slow growth in domestic markets are forcing companies to depend more than ever on overseas trade. SARS emerged in China in November 2002 and has spread to 26 countries. The SARS epidemic has caused the most severe economic crisis in Southeast Asia since the wave of bank failures and currency devaluations that swept the region five years ago. The SARS epidemic has prompted health officials to implement travel advisories and restrictions, in order to defer nonessential travel to regions of Asia with large numbers of SARS cases. They are enforcing quarantine and isolation measures in major cities to try and limit the spread of SARS. The President of the United States has signed an executive order adding SARS to the list of communicable diseases that can be quarantined. A major disruption in China could paralyze just‐in‐time supply chains and cause an economic crisis for retailers and other businesses worldwide. The SARS epidemic has caused many economists to drastically reduce their economic‐growth forecasts for Asia. New infectious diseases, such as SARS, can emerge and easily travel around the globe, infecting less‐resilient hosts and mutating because of the influence of viruses and bacteria in their new environment. Health officials are even more concerned about the pandemic disaster that hasn’t happened, but may still. However, the SARS epidemic has created positive economic benefits for some companies.

The aim of this study is to examine the information needs and information seeking behaviors of Israeli citizens during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in 2020, with an emphasis on the dissemination of digital information by government agencies.

The research approach underlying this investigation is of the “case study” type, employing semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted with 24 Israeli citizens regarding their perceptions and experiences with government information and government services during the first months of the coronavirus.

The findings of this study reveal that most participants indicated feelings of media fatigue as a result of increased exposure to news media and social media, to the point of experiencing information overload. Second, participants described feeling a lack of clear information and poor access to accurate health and official information at the outset of the COVID-19 crisis in Israel. Third, participants in the authors’ study noted that most of the information to which they were exposed about the virus came to them through communal connections such as friends and family, via social media and messaging apps like WhatsApp. In general, the participants expressed satisfaction with the quality and availability of the data and extensive information of government ministries on social networks, together with a lack of satisfaction due to difficulties in usage and a lack of clear information on traditional government websites.

The findings present the information acquisition and the experience of citizens in situations of national emergencies and crises, in a new light, through a focus on the dissemination of government, health and news information.

The novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which started in late December 2019, has spread to more than 200 countries. As no vaccine is yet available for this pandemic, government and health agencies are taking draconian steps to contain it. This pandemic is also trending on social media, particularly on Twitter. The purpose of this study is to explore and analyze the general public reactions to the COVID-19 outbreak on Twitter.

This study conducts a thematic analysis of COVID-19 tweets through VOSviewer to examine people’s reactions related to the COVID-19 outbreak in the world. Moreover, sequential pattern mining (SPM) techniques are used to find frequent words/patterns and their relationship in tweets.

Seven clusters (themes) were found through VOSviewer: Cluster 1 (green): public sentiments about COVID-19 in the USA. Cluster 2 (red): public sentiments about COVID-19 in Italy and Iran and a vaccine, Cluster 3 (purple): public sentiments about doomsday and science credibility. Cluster 4 (blue): public sentiments about COVID-19 in India. Cluster 5 (yellow): public sentiments about COVID-19’s emergence. Cluster 6 (light blue): public sentiments about COVID-19 in the Philippines. Cluster 7 (orange): Public sentiments about COVID-19 US Intelligence Report. The most frequent words/patterns discovered with SPM were “COVID-19,” “Coronavirus,” “Chinese virus” and the most frequent and high confidence sequential rules were related to “Coronavirus, testing, lockdown, China and Wuhan.”

The methodology can be used to analyze the opinions/thoughts of the general public on Twitter and to categorize them accordingly. Moreover, the categories (generated by VOSviewer) can be correlated with the results obtained with pattern mining techniques.

This study has a significant socio-economic impact as Twitter offers content posting and sharing to billions of users worldwide.

According to the authors’ best knowledge, this may be the first study to carry out a thematic analysis of COVID-19 tweets at a glance and mining the tweets with SPM to investigate how people reacted to the COVID-19 outbreak on Twitter.

Outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has created the catastrophic situation, it has crippled all the economic activities and seized off the operations of food supply chain (FSC). Disrupted FSC escalated the societal concerns related to food safety and security. The purpose of this study is to consolidate various issues, exploring the perspectives associated with the agricultural practices, food industries and society concerns related with the FSC performance system dynamics amid of COVID-19 pandemic.

To structure this work, a detailed research literature insight focussing on the key findings associated with the past disease outbreaks like influenza, avian flu, Ebola, bird flu, SARS, foot and mouth disease and ongoing phase of COVID-19, encompassing the perspective related with various agricultural and concerned supply chain practices is clustered. Furthermore, issues having relevancy with the notion of this work, sourced from platforms of print and electronic media have been incorporated to ground the reality associated with the impacts, for better visualisation of the perspectives.

This study outlays the key findings which are relevant with the past pandemic outbreaks from the core of the research literature. It details the impact of the current COVID-19 scenario on the various FSC operations, focussing on dimensions allied with the industry, economic and society concerns. For the same, to mitigate the effects, relief measures focussing on the short- and long-term perspectives have been incorporated. Steps ramped up by the Government of India (GOI) to safeguard masses from the threat of food security, accelerate pace of the FSC operations and upscale operating capacities of the industries and agriculture practices have incorporated.

Presented work is persuaded amid of the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions hence it outlays the theoretical perspectives only. But, these perspectives portray the ongoing scenario's impacts, extending its implication to the people coming from the industry and academia background. This study can felicitate the government bodies to make them familiar with the various impacts which indented the FSCs, food industries and added woes to the society concerns.

India is the second largest populated nation of the world, and outspread of the COVID-19 has capsized the FSCs and raised the various instances, making population vulnerable to the threats of food insecurity. This study encompasses effect of the FSC disruption by incorporating its effect on the food industries practices, societal issues and extending possible relief measures to restructure the FSC dynamics. As of now, study focussing on the Indian FSC concerns, detailing of impacts due to pandemic outbreak, relief measures to sail out of the hard times are not available.

COVID-19 has become a global challenge with a significant rate of prevalence, and it has exerted devastating consequences in epidemic, economic and social terms. Therefore, a number of studies have already been, or are now being, conducted on the detrimental effects of the virus. In this respect, a question may arise: Is there any possibility to turn the threat of the virus outbreak into an opportunity in some sectors such as the banking industry? In this research, the effects of COVID-19 outbreak as an intervening element on the acceptance of branchless banking were studied.

In this research, the factors affecting the acceptance and development of branchless banking in Iran at the time of COVID-19 outbreak were identified by systematically studying the theoretical framework, conducting further research and interviewing the experts; then, a causal loop diagram of the problem in the proposed case study and the flow rate model were presented.

The simulation results showed that banking transactions and a bank's financial resources would increase by implementing the package policy of reducing the number of branches, promoting incentive policies and increasing the budget rate of the bank in Information Technology (IT). Further, by promoting customers' acceptance of new technologies, the spread of COVID-19 can be viewed as a positive factor, or even a catalyst, in the acceptance and development of branchless banking in Iran.

Based on the proposed model, the difficulties faced by individuals during the spread of COVID-19 could act as justifiable incentives to boost appropriate organizational preparations for making changes to the classic working processes. Processes such as telecommuting, job rotation and so on are among these changes.

COVID-19 caused dramatic changes in daily life, including the way people stay in a building. Since the virus's outbreak and the mandate of social distancing from WHO, a house has become an essential place for people to avoid the propagation of the virus. However, recent house configurations cannot satisfy people's needs when staying at home and have not provided complete protection from viruses. Therefore, architects are expected to create new configurations. In order to establish a new trend, this paper aimed to explore the ability of the traditional architectural concepts that discuss the efforts to produce suitable configurations.

To investigate to what extent the traditional Balinese concepts are still relevant to counter infectious diseases, architectural examinations and spatial stories were used as a method of investigations.

This paper found that certain traditional knowledge elements are still relevant to produce suitable configurations to deal with possible virus attacks and introduce more security layers to the house.

Learning from the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper provides a view of traditional concepts that are now still applicable to modifications and adaptations.

In these modifications, the traditional hierarchy of entering the house and the function of open spaces for food production are traditional elements that address the protocol to face the virus.

Local knowledge has given good things as a precious heritage from the Balinese communities' ancestors to face this new challenge.

This pandemic has taught architects to combine modern technologies with local wisdom as an approach to develop innovative antivirus designs.