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Similar to many other countries, journalistic production in China during the first half of 2020 was dominated on a thematic level by the COVID-19 pandemic. The trend included the mouthpiece of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Renmin Ribao. Its news and commentary articles, which are widely republished by other media, influence the country’s political life, and contribute to the process of meaning generation in the news discourse and to the CCP’s effort to align Chinese citizens to official narratives. Renmin Ribao can therefore provide a relevant source to investigate the relationship between political power and the COVID-19 pandemic, starting from the hypothesis that the paper’s narrative would aim at discursively turning the international health crisis into a piece of positive propaganda. This study aims to verify whether and how the paper did so, and to question the assumption that the outlet’s media discourse can be equated to the CCP official discourse. The research is developed as a case study and blends quantitative and qualitative tools grounded on Applied Linguistics, Discourse-Historical Approach, and Frame Analysis, in order to analyse a corpus of commentaries that have appeared in the outlet’s online edition in 2020. By applying a Genre Analysis approach, the study also offers insights into the possibility to identify distinguishing characteristics and communicative goals in the different sub-genres of Renmin Ribao commentaries.

This paper presents the generation of a plausible data set related to the needs of COVID-19 patients with severe or critical symptoms. Possible illness’ stages were proposed within the context of medical knowledge as of January 2021. The parameters chosen in this data set were customized to fit the population data of the Valencia region (Spain) with approximately 2.5 million inhabitants. They were based on the evolution of the pandemic between September 2020 and March 2021, a period that included two complete waves of the pandemic. Contrary to expectation and despite the European and national transparency laws (BOE-A2013-12887, 2013; European Parliament and Council of the European Union, 2019), the actual COVID-19 pandemic-related data, at least in Spain, took considerable time to be updated and made available (usually a week or more). Moreover, some relevant data necessary to develop and validate hospital bed management models were not publicly accessible. This was either because these data were not collected, because public agencies failed to make them public (despite having them indexed in their databases), the data were processed within indicators and not shown as raw data, or they simply published the data in a format that was difficult to process (e.g., PDF image documents versus CSV tables). Despite the potential of hospital information systems, there were still data that were not adequately captured within these systems. Moreover, the data collected in a hospital depends on the strategies and practices specific to that hospital or health system. This limits the generalization of "real" data, and it encourages working with "realistic" or plausible data that are clean of interactions with local variables or decisions (Gunal, 2012; Marin-Garcia et al., 2020). Besides, one can parameterize the model and define the data structure that would be necessary to run the model without delaying till the real data become available. Conversely, plausible data sets can be generated from publicly available information and, later, when real data become available, the accuracy of the model can be evaluated (Garcia-Sabater and Maheut, 2021). This work opens lines of future research, both theoretical and practical. From a theoretical point of view, it would be interesting to develop machine learning tools that, by analyzing specific data samples in real hospitals, can identify the parameters necessary for the automatic prototyping of generators adapted to each hospital. Regarding the lines of research applied, it is evident that the formalism proposed for the generation of sound patients is not limited to patients affected by SARS-CoV-2 infection. The generation of heterogeneous patients can represent the needs of a specific population and serve as a basis for studying complex health service delivery systems.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2022 7(1), 481-506 | Article | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. - II. The case of the ESM: why the Eurozone's governance does not question the unity of the EU institutional framework. - II.1. The establishment of the ESM. - II.2. The institutional functioning of the ESM. - III. The impact of tasks entrusted to the EU institutions under the ESM on the institutional equilibrium within the EU legal order. - III.1. How are new tasks entrusted to the EU institutions? - III.2. What impact do these new tasks produce on the institutional equilibrium within the EU? - IV. The post-Covid institutional set-up: back to a "community" mode of governance? - V. Conclusion. | (Abstract) In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the EU and its Member States had to face very pragmatic issues: how to avoid the economic collapse of Greece, Portugal and Ireland? Decisions had to be taken quickly in any institutional or legal forum that was immediately available. For this specific reason, legal solutions entailing the conclusion of international agreements by some of the EU Member States outside the EU legal framework were taken as a new normal. Due to a close legal relationship between these new international treaties and the EU legal order, a decision was also taken to "borrow" already existing EU institutions and entrust them with new tasks. In this Article, we question the role of EU institutions outside the EU legal framework. We first address the evolution of the EU institutional framework in the context of the euro crisis in relation to art. 13 TEU and recital 7 of the TEU preamble and the requirement of "unity of the institutional framework". Section II shows that "borrowing" the EU institutions outside the EU legal framework does not seem to alter the nature of the single EU institutional setting. Section III questions whether the tasks entrusted to the EU institutions outside the EU legal framework do not undermine the existing institutional equilibrium within the EU legal order. Section IV addresses the EU response to the Covid-19 pandemic from an institutional perspective as raising similar concerns within the EU legal order. The last section concludes.

Results from the European project RESISTIRÉ show that the pandemic outbreak and policies adopted to contain the virus have reinforced pre-existing gender inequalities, resulting in a “spiral of increasing inequalities” (Axelsson et al., 2021: 110). The care domain is a key part of this spiral and has been at the centre of debates and of some of the COVID-19 policy responses. However, for the most part, policy interventions in the care domain have focused primarily on work-life balance, neglecting the impact of health-related policy restrictions on domestic workers – a highly feminised and racialised sector. Yet these workers have been dramatically affected by the pandemic and related policies, not only in terms of exposure to infection, but also in terms of exacerbation of pre-existing and intersecting inequalities. Moreover, when policies did address the domestic sector, they often reproduced gender stereotyped understandings of the nature of care work, and reinforced racist assumptions on migration. This paper compares the policies on domestic workers enacted during the pandemic in Italy and Spain, which illustrate how public policy engages in gendering and racializing domestic workers. Drawing on Bacchi’s methodology, it seeks to unfold and problematise the representations and implicit assumptions related to care work, and the gender and racial hierarchies underpinning them.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2021 6(1), 189-198 | European Forum Insight of 7 June 2021 | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. - II. Diversity in Member States' approach to COVID-19 related travel restrictions. - III. The EU institutions' response to the implications of Member States imposing differing COVID-19 travel restrictions. - IV. Council Recommendation on a coordinated approach to measures restricting free movement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. - V. Striking a balance between respect for Member States competence in protecting public health at national level and combating the risks to European unity and freedoms from Member States imposing differing restrictive measures. - VI. The Council Recommendation's timely and useful guidance and recommendations. - VII. The Recommendation's lack of consideration of other international public health bodies. - VIII. Final remarks. | (Abstract) The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted many EU Member States to introduce unilateral and diverse travel restriction measures and border controls. European Treaties do allow the Member States to derogate from free movements on the grounds of public health, however, the imposition of inconsistent and diverse restrictions threaten the integrity of the Union. The European Commission and Council have an important role to play promoting cooperation and solidarity amongst the EU Member States and safeguarding the Union. A recent Council Recommendation for a coordinated approach to measures restricting free movement is an example of the EU's response, but does it go far enough? For it is important to acknowledge that a Recommendation is not a legally binding instrument. This Insight analyses the Council Recommendation and its role in promoting a coordinated response to the COVID-19 pandemic by the EU Member States.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2020 5(3), 1143-1170 | Article | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction: border closures as a source of symbolic capital. - II. Reintroduction and termination of internal border controls. - II.1. Legality of the initial suspension of border-free travel. - II.2. Alternatives to systematic internal border controls. - II.3. Return to normality: intergovernmental cooperation. - II.4. Institutional implications: limited sway of legal supranationalism. - III. "A Europe that protects": closure of the external Schengen border. - III.1. "Fortress Europe" as an affirmative narrative. - III.2. Individualised assessment and proportionality. - III.3. Exemption of travellers with an "essential function or need". - IV. Restricting the free movement of Union citizens. - IV.1. The principle of proportionality: between individual cases and abstract considerations. - IV.2. Distinguishing different categories of free movement. - IV.3. Graded approaches towards quarantine and other alternatives. - IV.4. Practical implications of travel restrictions. - IV.5. Coherence of domestic and border restrictions. - V. Conclusion. | (Abstract) Initial response to the Covid-19 pandemic capitalised on symbolism of national belonging. Against this background, borders soon took centre stage in the effort to tackle the spread of the virus during the spring of 2020 with Member States enforcing drastic restrictions to inter-state mobility, both at internal and external Schengen borders. As the second wave rolled in, restrictions gained momentum again, even though Member States by and large, did not revert to symbolically relevant border controls and travel bans. This Article revisits the measures taken by the Member States and EU institutions at the internal and external borders of the Schengen area until late-October 2020 and draws lessons regarding the interaction of symbolism, law and politics in times of crisis. It focuses on shifts in the perception of borders and the role of different actors in the closure and the subsequent re-opening thereof. We illustrate that the supranational institutions struggled to support the rule of law without the political support of the Member States, even though the rich case law of the Court of Justice on the internal market provides critical doctrinal arguments that can be employed in times of crises.

El fenómeno de la soledad se está convirtiendo, cada vez más, en un problema amplio y relevante de las sociedades contemporáneas. En consecuencia, son muchas las investigaciones que abordan esta realidad, como numerosas son también las intervenciones que tratan de hacerle frente, en especial tras la pandemia provocada por la COVID-19. Para acercar al lector a esta realidad, en el presente artículo se exponen de forma heurística las diversas posturas existentes sobre la soledad mediante una novedosa cartografía teórica que propone un nuevo recorrido por el actual estado de la cuestión del campo de la soledad, formado por las aportaciones de distintas disciplinas. Para ello se ha seguido un método de revisión bibliográfica reflexiva con el objetivo de generar nuevos alineamientos teóricos que esclarezcan las posiciones desde las que hoy se escribe acerca de la soledad. Finalmente, el texto esboza algunas líneas reflexivas que el acercamiento sociológico a la soledad deberá tener en cuenta para constituirse como interlocutor válido y valioso en el actual campo de estudio de la soledad.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: Governments across the world were forced to impose social distancing and lockdown measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, caused by coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that emerged in December 2019. Following the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic, the disruptions, including restrictive measures such as school closures had severe impacts on the physical, emotional and mental health of all people, especially children with special needs. There was also scant data, particularly in low-to-middle-income countries. Existing literature stems mostly from western countries, thus the need to perform a comprehensive review on this topic. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The primary objective of the systematic review is to understand the impact of COVID-19 and restrictive measures such as school closures on the educational outcomes and physical and mental health of school-going children with special needs. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: This systematic review used the PRISMA 2020 checklist where four databases and grey literature were searched for full text articles, peer reviewed publications in the English language that were published during January 2019–December 2021. RESEARCH RESULTS: The literature search identified 1294 publications, of which 25 key papers were selected. These studies investigate the impact on children with special needs across the globe, with a majority of papers from Europe. We found that COVID-19 and the digitalization of schooling had severe impacts on the physical and mental health of children with special needs and their parents/caregivers. CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND APPLICABLE VALUE OF RESEARCH: These studies highlight the need for an inclusive school environment to ensure that the learning outcomes for children everywhere are achieved. Further, a hybrid model that includes classroom learning with novel inventive methods would be beneficial for children with special needs.

The aim of this paper is a study on Covid-19 pandemic and restrictions that came along. With restrictions, violations. The principle of legality, the basic historical construction of the rule of law, had been solemnly and repeatedly vilified and carried with it many constitutional rights and principles, which, more than indispensable for us, are so on a universal level, such as the restless go and come and exercise economic activity. Under the auspices of teratological decrees, of congenital malformation, our rights were restricted. But what is worse: often under the parsimonious eye of those who should be keeping the Constitution. Is it deference to the political propaganda pieces, based on biopower, that invade the everyday? Is it a fear of contributing to health discouragement, justifying non-legality? In this paper, more than addressing the unconstitutionality of restrictions, we propose to discuss the reasons for this passivity and acceptance. Methodologically, we use inductive guidance, choosing some characteristics as a starting point to build a broader conclusion, using a wide bibliographic and jurisprudential review.

La presente investigación se enfocó en el estudio de la agenda setting y el tratamiento informativo sobre la campaña de vacunación masiva contra el Covid-19; para ello, se tomó como sujeto de investigación dos canales televisivos de mayor rating en Ecuador: Ecuavisa y Teleamazonas. Como punto de partida, se consideró dicha temática puesto que fue el principal ofrecimiento del presidente Guillermo Lasso durante su candidatura presidencial en el 2021. El diseño metodológico se configuró desde un procedimiento analítico descriptivo que nos permitió resaltar las características de los dos canales de televisión. Para el efecto, se partió desde un enfoque cuanti-cuanlitativo a través del análisis de contenido y análisis de discurso, esta triangulación nos permitió conocer el tratamiento informativo y el discurso de las noticias de cada medio para conocer el tipo de contenido periodístico difundido en relación con la campaña de vacunación. Para el levantamiento de información, se tomó como referencia los 100 primeros días de la gestión del presidente Lasso; por tanto, el corpus de la investigación estuvo conformado por 66 noticias de Teleamazonas y 78 de Ecuavisa. Los resultados preliminares dan muestra que el canal Ecuavisa difunde información con un enfoque más apegado a la deontología periodística, contrasta fuentes y apela al argumento de especialistas, casi en su totalidad de emisiones, aunque también utiliza la primera persona en gran parte de su discurso. Por otro lado, en Teleamazonas todas las noticias son narradas en tercera persona y el sesgo hacia el Gobierno resalta a través de titulares y contenido meramente divulgativo.

La mayoría de las investigaciones sobre gobernanza multinivel desde una perspectiva de género han tenido como variable dependiente las políticas de igualdad (Haussman et al., 2010). Por el contrario, son menos frecuentes las investigaciones que analizan la presencia de las mujeres como protagonistas de la gobernanza multinivel, sus formas de actuación o el efecto de sus acciones en el resultado final (Gushchina y Kaiser, 2021). Esta investigación aborda esta perspectiva en una situación de pandemia, donde la urgencia y la interdependencia estimulan la regla de participación ejecutiva. La limitada presencia de mujeres en la gestión intergubernamental de la pandemia está estrechamente relacionada con su escasa presencia en los gobiernos. El poder ejecutivo y, en especial, la jefatura de gobierno siguen siendo un terreno cerrado para las mujeres. Actualmente, casi la mitad de los países de la Unión Europea no han tenido en su historia a ninguna mujer como primera ministra (Novo-Arbona, 2020). Sin embargo, los sistemas federales y descentralizados han representado una vía de acceso de las mujeres a las jefaturas de los poderes ejecutivos, y su presencia ha sido más común en las jefaturas de las unidades constituyentes. El porcentaje de mujeres ministras también ha aumentado considerablemente, y ellas han ocupado carteras más prestigiosas, como las de Asuntos Exteriores, Defensa o Economía, aunque tradicionalmente —y todavía hoy— es más habitual su presencia en las relacionadas con los cuidados, como los servicios sociales o el ámbito sanitario (Kroeber y Hüffelmann, 2021). Este artículo identifica los órganos de decisión multinivel más relevantes desde la declaración de la pandemia, la presencia de mujeres en ellos y su rol dentro de las organizaciones.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a multifaceted crisis, impacting health, the economy, policy and society at large, and also resulting in a humanitarian crisis. These crises have impacted everyone, although the effects have been unevenly distributed, leading to further disadvantage and marginalisation for those who were already vulnerable and marginalised. The pandemic laid bare and intensified pre-existing gender inequalities in many aspects of life, from the labor market and educational opportunities to health and social protection systems. The unequal impacts on women and men have been observed in the economy and employment, in domestic work and care, in physical and mental health, and in violence. The collection of articles in this special issue critically interrogates these key issues relating to the impact of the pandemic on gender equality in Europe, highlighting exacerbated gender inequalities, policy responses and the potential for a gender-responsive recovery. This special issue brings together a collection of eight articles that investigate various aspects of gender inequality exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and that explore potential pathways towards achieving greater gender equality in the post-pandemic world. They summarise the findings and contributions of several social scientists and also of two EU funded projects: RESISTIRÉ (GA 101015990) and GEARING Roles (GA 824536). The articles are structured around five main themes: labor market disparities, education and skill development, social and political responses, post-pandemic opportunities, and care. Each article contributes unique insights, empirical findings and policy recommendations from a feminist perspective to enrich the ongoing discourse on gender equality. Together, the articles show the necessity of feminist analysis of crisis, and reveal the structural roots of inequalities while simultaneously emphasising the necessity for transformative action to address inequalities.

As a result of the publication of the Judgements of the SpanishConstitutional Court no. 148/2021 and no. 2021, the state of alarm has beenreconfigured in the Spanish legal system. The established doctrine opens a newscenario regarding the application and effects of this exceptional state, as wellas its connection with the Spanish ordinary crisis regulations. The purpose ofthis paper is to analyze the utility of this exceptional state in the light of suchdecisions. The paper addresses the referred matter focusing on the historicalevolution of the legal crisis instruments in Spain, on the original configurationof the state of alarm, and, of course, on the new position of this institution for itsfuture use.

This paper examines a tension in the time of a pandemic between governmental representations of death as an anomaly and techniques for normalising death as an inevitable outcome of life. It contends that the technology of registering a death during the COVID-19 pandemic is conditioned upon differentiating between the normal and the pathological, standards and variations, and average and excess. Indeed, death registration depends on the creation of a new universal nomenclature for ascertaining death causation, which excludes various circumstances of a person’s life in order to stabilise SARS-CoV-2 as a normative category for classification. The paper thus reveals how during a pandemic, registration can been utilised to pathologise specific kinds of death, while unproblematically reifying the concept of a normal death. It argues that what the COVID-19 pandemic exposes, particularly though the productive tension between the rhetoric of death as both an anomaly and inevitable, is that normalising technologies are inextricable from how a panoply of institutions determine what deaths should be counted at all. Este artículo examina la tensión que se produjo en el primer año de pandemia de la COVID-19 entre discursos sobre la muerte como anomalía y las técnicas para normalizar la muerte como resultado inevitable de la vida. Afirma que la tecnología de registro de muertes en el norte global en 2020 estaba condicionada por diferenciar entre lo normal y lo patológico, lo normal y la variación, y la media y el exceso. De hecho, el registro de un fallecimiento dependía de la creación de una nueva nomenclatura universal para comprobar la causa, lo cual excluía diversas circunstancias de la vida de una persona a fin de estabilizar el SARS-CoV-2 como una categoría normativa de clasificación. Por tanto, el artículo revela como, en época de pandemia, la tecnología de registro se puede usar para patologizar determinados tipos de muertes. Se argumenta que la fase inicial de la COVID-19 deja al descubierto, sobre todo a través de la tensión productiva entre discursos de la muerte como anomalía e inevitabilidad, que las tecnologías normalizadoras son inextricables de la forma en que un entramado de instituciones deciden qué muertes se deben contabilizar. Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1232

This paper explores the relationship between residential confinement to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus, seen as a public policy, and how it affects the informal labor sector, as well as the responseof individuals to the pandemic in the states of Mexico. Forming panels for various levels of informality applied to panel vector auto-regressive (PVAR) shows that staying at home as public policy becomes more effective as informality decreases. In addition, the response of individuals to an increase in the spread of the pande-mic depends on the level of informality: for states with lower rates of informality, individuals respond to a higher concentration of residential confinement. But for states with a higher level of informality, the evidence is not significant. The paper considers the role of informality in the development of an effective public policy.

The COVID-19 crisis had a huge impact on education and became the subject of many scientific studies. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the opinions of professors and students on the quality of teaching and satisfaction with e-learning during the COVID-19 crisis. The aim of the research is to answer the question to what extent professors and students are satisfied with the quality of e-learning in higher education institutions, as well as their expectations in the future. The research was created on the research platform 1KA and conducted in the period from November 12, 2021 to February 12, 2022 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A survey questionnaire was used as a research instrument, which was sent to 192 addresses, 101 publics and 91 private faculties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and included 132 professors and 202 students. The results of the research showed that the quality of teaching is positively influenced by the satisfaction and level of usefulness of the tools used among professors, but also among students. The results also confirmed that more work experience leads to lower e-learning expectations in the future. The paper presents empirical research that was conducted on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina about the impact of COVID-19 on the quality of e-learning. The scientific contribution of the paper is reflected in the fact that it can be used in research related to the impact of crises on teaching in higher education institutions, as well as potential future emergency situations of crisis and uncertainty that result in new models of teaching that combine classroom and e-teaching.

Abstract The spread of COVID-19 in early 2020 has prompted governments to impose travel and mobility restrictions ranging from increased border controls to limitations to internal movement, and border closures. These measures significantly influenced migration trends and patterns, leaving thousands of migrants and refugees with nowhere to go. Therefore, this paper examines the influence of the COVID-19 on the lives of migrants and refugees in three Maghreb states (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) and studies the policies implemented to assist in areas such as health, shelter, and economic relief. This paper also considers the legal and material practices through which migrants and refugees were governed during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The paper finds that as the pandemic develops and waves of infection continue in the region, local governments face crumbling healthcare infrastructure and long-term financial consequences that directly affect nationals and non-nationals.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the hybridization dynamics of the Third sector at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. The progressive contamination between the State, market, family and Third sector spheres has long been subject of interest of the scholars. This paper aim at analysing these dynamics through the case study of Fondazione Banco Alimentare (Italian Food Bank Foundation). The case helps in investigating the impact of the pandemic on the role, logics and actors that make up the Third sector (both organizations and people) and its relation with the other subsystems. The empirical analysis shows that the pandemic and its consequences has enhanced the role of Fondazione Banco Alimentare, thanks to its relevance during the food emergency that also increased its visibility in the media. There are more institutional and non-institutional donors, more beneficiaries and help requests that resulted also in an accelerated professionalization and training of volunteers and employers. In conclusion, the Italian Food Bank and its network dealt with processes of digitalization, institutionalization and professionalization. These transformations resulted in a new positioning of the organization in the public sphere and redefined its relationship between local, national and European institutions.

¿Cómo es la vejez en Iberoamérica? En un sentido amplio, ya son visibles, estudiadas, analizadas y conocidas en los países iberoamericanos, la longevidad - definida como supervivencia individual y colectiva - y la expectativa de vida - es la media de la cantidad de años que vive una determinada población absoluta o total en un cierto período. Con este número monográfico esperamos contribuir en este debate. Así, fueron seleccionados 15 artículos y una reseña que tratan temas importantes para la población mayor como salud, covid, educación, convivencia, servicios, derechos. participación, residencias además de otros enfocados en aquellos pueblos y comunidades tradicionales. En el caso de los pueblos y comunidades tradicionales, las especificidades de su longevidad y expectativa de vida vienen siendo incorporadas muy lentamente al conocimiento técnico-científico, a las políticas y a la gestión pública. Esperamos que este monográfico sobre longevidad sirva no solo para que los gestores públicos pongan en marcha e implementen políticas para ese grupo de población sino también para que la sociedad visibilice que la vida tiene muchos periodos y que todos ellos son importantes. Si algo hemos aprendido durante la pandemia es que las soluciones no pueden ser individuales sino colectivas, apliquemos esta lección al cuidado y protección de las personas mayores que lo necesiten, pero sin olvidar que son ciudadanos de pleno derecho y por lo tanto tienen derecho a ser oídos en las medidas que se tomen. En caso contrario estaremos quitándoles los derechos que les corresponden.

O envelhecimento populacional tem implicado em um processo de reestruturação do processo de cuidado. As Instituições de Longa Permanência para Idosos surgem na tentativa de assistência à população idosa. Entretanto, a literatura apresenta um desfalque quanto a gestão financeira dessas instituições. Diante do exposto, o objetivo do trabalho foi analisar comparativamente os custos por direcionador em instituições privadas e filantrópicas no contexto da COVID-19. Trata-se de estudo transversal, descritivo-exploratório, realizado em Minas Gerais com 10 instituições. Foram analisados dados referentes às receitas e custos das ILPIs. Os resultados demonstram que as instituições filantrópicas possuem custos totais maiores do que as privadas. Tendo sido consideradas os direcionadores de alimentação, hospedagem, higiene e conforto, atendimento clínico e lazer. A hospedagem representa o maior custo por residente, já o lazer, o menor custo. O estudo reforça o incipiente gerenciamento de custos nas ILPIs e o agravamento da situação financeira durante a pandemia.

O estudo se desenvolveu por meio do acompanhamento da gestão financeira realizada em dez ILPIs sem fins lucrativos localizadas no estado de Minas Gerais, tendo como objetivo analisar a gestão financeira das mesmas no contexto da pandemia de COVID-19. O acompanhamento que aconteceu de forma virtual coletou os dados dos participantes por meio de encontros virtuais, questionários eletrônicos, planilhas e entrevista semi-estruturada. O estudo revelou uma carência de conhecimento dos gestores sobre gestão financeira. Tal carência se configura como um entrave para que ferramentas que podem contribuir para uma gestão mais eficiente sejam utilizadas. Entretanto, os conhecimentos compartilhados nos encontros mensais e apresentação de ferramentas que podem contribuir para uma gestão mais eficiente proporcionaram uma boa evolução nos gestores em relação ao conhecimento. Alguns participantes demonstraram planos para implementação das ferramentas e conhecimentos compartilhados. Com isso, foi possível perceber uma influência positiva gerada pelo estudo.

COVID-19 has exposed, reproduced, and created new inequalities in Latin America and the world. In this introductory paper, we discuss the impact of extant inequities on vulnerability to COVID-19 but we also identify new, and some unexpected, vulnerabilities. We emphasize vulnerabilities to the disease as well as vulnerabilities to policies and other responses in the fight against COVID-19. Building on insights from Peter Hall and Michele Lamont’s work on social resilience, we draw on the papers of this special issue to identify the important role of the state in addressing vulnerabilities and discuss the types of social resilience that vulnerable groups have turned to in their response to COVID-19.

This paper describes a Mass Ventilation System (MVS) which serves as a medical ventilator system. It can be used to ventilate large number of COVID-19 patients in parallel (5 – 50+) with personalized respiratory parameters. The system has been designed to be medically suitable for both non-invasive and invasive patient ventilation. It protects healthcare workers with its centralized air filtering solution, it increases the effectiveness of the healthcare workers with its networked communication and it can be operated in a temporary emergency hospital setup. In this paper, we describe the basic concept and building blocks of the system.

In the midst of a vast spread of COVID-19 across the world, legal regulations were introduced in most countries including social distancing, travel restrictions, and a lockdown in an attempt to slow down the spread of the virus. The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has raised companies’ awareness of the need to foster consumer’s trust in order to survive a crisis. Therefore, the present paper aims to understand the expectations that consumers have towards the behaviors and strategies implemented by brands during the pandemic. This paper contributes to the discussion on how consumers perceive brand’s reactions to the pandemic, by showing ways in which brands can foster brand trust through manifestations of competence, problem-solving and benevolence/integrity. Following an exploratory qualitative research, findings of interviews with consumers suggest that they are informed and interested in brands' efforts towards the topic, and in fact the brand’s positive or negative reactions to the pandemic can shape brand trust.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese political leadership has devoted substantial efforts to shape, through media and institutional discourses, a specific narrative of its response to the crisis, framing it as a fight in which the Chinese people, under the leadership of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party, promptly came together to defeat the virus. The present paper examines this dominant narrative focusing on the Chinese language section on the fight against COVID-19 of the multilingual online platform China Keywords, a project run by State and Party-affiliated institutions. Drawing on the theoretical background and analytical tools from Critical Discourse Studies, the paper provides an analysis of the discursive representation of social actors constructed by this tool. The analysis shows how different discursive strategies employed to represent specific social actors contribute to reinforce the constitutive elements of the Chinese leadership’s dominant narrative of the events of early 2020. Moreover, the paper argues that the section of China Keywords on the topic should be understood as one of the products of the multifaceted institutional efforts to “tell China’s Covid-19 story well,” both domestically and internationally.

Introduction: Early in the pandemic, older people were identified as one of the most vulnerable population. More than 80% of deaths occur in adults over the age of 65. Several conditions have been clearly established to protect the elderly, such as banning visits to nursing homes. Therefore, it is important to fully understand how this pandemic has affected the elderly. This study covers the negative effects on the physical and mental health of the elderly during COVID-19 pandemic. Methodology: A systematic review of the literature to identify COVID-19 papers with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) using PubMed, Google Scholar, Science Direct, BioMed Central (BMC) and Frontier in 2020 and 2021. Included studies are those that investigate the psychological and physical impact on elderly (>=60 years old) resulting from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unrelated, duplicated, unavailable full texts/abstract-only papers, and studies that analyzed mental and behavioral disorders due to the use of alcohol and other drugs are excluded. Results: A total of 12 studies are included out of 352. Impact of COVID-19 on physical health to elderly were weight loss, lesser time of exercise, decreased social activities, increased respiratory and heart diseases, and increased mortality. On the other hand, identified impact on mental health were higher depression, anxiety, fear of acquiring COVID due to irresponsible younger generations, discrimination and isolation, increased levels of loneliness, and generalized anxiety. Conclusion: The findings summarized in this review suggest that older adults experienced negative consequences for the ongoing pandemic, both physically and mentally. This information will be useful to responsible institutions when acting and making decisions for elderly regarding health care access and public health measures.

Founder-entrepreneurs in SMEs tend to have an active role in shaping the business and the direction and management of their innovation strategies. During COVID-19, their understanding of risks and approach towards decision making has become very crucial as the market sensitivity changed drastically with various levels of challenges such as travel restrictions, national lockdown, reduced market demand and operational uncertainty. So far, there are very limited studies on the role of the founder-entrepreneurs from Chinese high-tech software SMEs in managing the business risks from the pandemic. This paper will address some of these gaps by presenting case studies of 9 successful high-tech software SMEs in China and discuss how their founder-entrepreneurs have engaged with the market, identified COVID-19 related risks and how they have made critical decisions to survive and explore new market opportunities for growth. As part of a longitudinal study, in-depth interviews were conducted with the founder-entrepreneurs at various stages of the pandemic to explore their progress with the business operation and management. The paper will discuss the role of the founder-entrepreneurs from SMEs in risk analysis and decision-making. It makes an important contribution to the growing literature on Chinese SMEs, and COVID-19.

Globally, COVID-19 reached unprecedented levels of contagion, affecting the social meetings, public spaces, and many everyday aspects. During the first days of the pandemic, supply chains were severely impacted by a great uncertainty in socio-economic terms, causing irrational variations and the inability to forecast demand. In this paper, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the behaviour of different companies is analysed based on the variation in supply and demand of consumer-packaged goods. The pandemic outbreak disruption, the bullwhip effect caused by demand fluctuations, and the resilience of different companies were studied. A multiple case study methodology is used to analyse the decision-making process of fourteen different companies, from diverse sectors in Uruguay, affronting the pandemic. The paper’s main findings include the identification of disruption and operation risks along with coordination in supply chain management during the first four months of the pandemic. Moreover, due to the necessity of sanitation and comestibles, and the fear of stockout, consumers’ demand was uncertain, and the bullwhip effect was observed in critical channels of some products. Finally, the resiliency and robustness of the affected companies were studied and good practices for a resilient and robust response to the pandemic were identified and analysed.

A crisis marks a turning point for an entire society or a social subsystem by challenging old but not yet abandoned conceptions. In civil law countries, the infectious disease COVID-19 has led to a crisis in legal education. Despite many technological developments in society over the last few decades (e.g., digitalization, the development of the Internet, the rise of artificial intelligence), the legal education system has been remarkably sluggish and has barely adapted to these changes. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has shaken legal education to its foundations, as it has directly affected teaching methods by distancing the deliverers of know-how from its recipients. As this paper suggests, this has ultimately altered the aim of legal education and the content that is taught, moving away from an education model focused mainly on knowledge acquisition to one in which the processing of a large amount of information, critical thinking and analytical skills are quintessential. Revivifying the Socratic method of teaching plays a significant role in this new educational model and is crucial in today’s world of ever-changing social environments and laws. This method can nurture people with a legal education who are able to understand, apply, and further develop the body of law to a high quality. This paper proposes an adaptable model for future legal education in civil law countries focusing on the understanding of the legal system from a holistic perspective rather than on the reproduction of memorized knowledge.

The aim of this paper, is to highlight the impact of the novel coronavirus on those entering and undertaking legal education. It seeks to explore the opportunities that mass-disruption to the status quo presents both within the classroom and the wider extra-curricular experiences of law students at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. Additionally the authors seek to examine the key challenges faced by technology enabled, socially distanced legal education and considers whether these challenges will remain should a more technologically enabled, flexible approach to legal education provision survive pandemic conditions. The paper draws upon some of the key themes raised in other papers in this edition of the Journal of Ethics and Legal Technologies. This paper will also offer some reflections on the impact that the pandemic has had on Coventry Law School, and seeks to identify specific areas for development/ consideration by legal education providers in the post-Covid era.

The purpose of this paper is to contextualise the discussions of this edition within the Covid-19 pandemic and offer some introductory remarks to the following edition of the Journal of Ethics and Legal Technologies. The paper has the aim of briefly outlining some of the key themes and arguments that are borne out of the papers contained within.

Abstract Compared to many other countries in Europe, Estonia managed to curtail the spread of the new coronavirus rather effectively. This paper offers an overview of the measures undertaken to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in March-May 2020 and explain why Estonia managed to successfully contain the epidemic. The paper argues that the management of the crisis was facilitated by political factors, quick policy learning, cooperation with the scientific community, and the existing ICT and e-government infrastructure.

Abstract This paper explores the multifaceted impact of Covid-19 on Sesto San Giovanni, in the Milan metropolitan area. It analyzes the challenges faced by local businesses and how the city responded with extraordinary measures for public spaces, revitalizing commercial sectors, and adopting new coping mechanisms. The pandemic underscored the strategic importance of public spaces and commercial activities as vital infrastructures for societal well-being and resilience. Integrating outdoor amenities like dehors and parklets into urban redevelopment plans has boosted economic vitality and social cohesion, creating a vibrant and interconnected urban environment.

Between 2020 and 2023, a period of time assailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, society – as a worldwide social system –experienced a novel kind of communication. The tendency for this communication to exponentially expand is due to the global numbers of people dead, dying or infected. Pandemic communication has arisen in the present to perpetuate itself in all ambiences for every social system around the globe. The health system, in turn, basing itself on the health/disease code, has reacted according to its own logic in the coordination of the actions of doctors. However, the true/false nature of communication arising from questions related to COVID-19 has taken a long time to be tested by the science system. Vaccines and possible treatments for the disease have created issues for political, economic, moral, religious and media matters. The continually expanding trend in pandemic communication has proven that it can hinder the functional differentiation of social systems. Legal communication has not been able to avoid all of the controversy. In the specific case of Law, the problem entails both the judicialization of health and the reverse (where Health becomes Law). Based on the Social Systems Theory Applied to Law, the paper argues that the maintenance of the functional differentiation of the Law system becomes necessary so as for Health not to become Law (and vice versa).

This paper succinctly examines the impact and effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the Spanish economy and labour market, with a particular focus on immigrants. The data reveal a significant negative differential effect among foreigners. The paper therefore recommends public administrations continue to work to prevent growing rootlessness and inequality.

ABSTRACT Objective: To compare the presence of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 found in the breast milk and blood of vaccinated lactating women with those not vaccinated. Data source: The study was registered in the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) under CRD42021287554 and followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional studies that evaluated antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in the milk and blood of vaccinated mothers and had as control group unvaccinated mothers were eligible. Health Sciences Descriptors (DeCs), Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and Emtree descriptors were used for the Virtual Health Library (VHL), Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (Medline/Pubmed), and Embase databases, respectively. In the Web of Science and Scopus, the strategy was adapted. No restrictions on the publication period and language were set. Data synthesis: The search identified 233 records, of which 128 duplicates and 101 papers that did not meet the inclusion criteria were excluded. Hence, four cohort studies were eligible. Nursing mothers vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines showed antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in their blood and breast milk. Conclusions: Vaccinated lactating women had higher levels of immunoglobulin G (IgG) and A (IgA) in serum and breast milk than unvaccinated women.

This paper discusses the importance of government and economic institutions in dealing with economic shocks such as the COVID-19. In attempting to deal with this massive health, social and economic upheaval, governments around the world have been using a variety of social and economic policies. These policies have two aims. First, to reduce the spread of the virus and second to mitigate the economy wide damage that the spread of the virus is causing. The paper describes the initial economic impact of the virus worldwide and on the Australian economy. It also argues that unless a rapid response is made, the likelihood of a world depression is high. The analysis focuses on the importance of government institutions in respond-ing to major economic shocks. It showcases the work of the Treasury of Australia as a model of best practice for the development of economic policies designed to respond to extreme events. The paper concludes by providing a set of economy wide policy responses to tackle the current economic shocks.

The paper reviews the impact that COVID-19 has had on the ambitions of countries to meet the Paris Accord of reducing emissions to keep global temperature increases to below 2 ºC in this century. It notes that as nations recover from the crises, if no additional measures are taken, emissions of greenhouse gases will rise again and return to their old pathway as they did after previous crises. The paper proposes actions in the short and medium terms to build back differently this time and help meet the global climate challenge.

The school principals play a pivotal role in leading educational institutions. Their lived experience as educational leaders in the context of a virulent crisis, however, is largely unexplored. This paper sought to discover the essence of educational leadership practices of school principals in the context of the current COVID-19 crisis. Following phenomenology as a research design, the researcher explored the world of six Filipino school principals through interview procedures. The analysis method developed by Colaizzi (1978) was used. The results revealed six emerging themes of educational leadership practices during a crisis as follows: 1.) navigating the crisis with adaptive leadership; 2.) cultivating practices in crisis management; 3.) managing through the machine; 4.) freezing the standards and patterns; 5.) promoting inclusivity in the new normal, and 6.) caring first for what is essential. These themes form the basis of the description and structure of the phenomenon offered at the end of the paper. Considering the present scarcity of knowledge on how school principals respond in times of crisis, this paper provides insights into educational leadership practices within the context of the COVID-19 situation

The paper aims in highlighting that situations of pandemics and social disasters, such as the recent Covid-19 emergency, have an impact on daily urban rhythms and spatial practices and, as a result, a series of emotions emerge which, in the future, we will have to take seriously in consideration when creating urban policies. Henri Lefebvre, with his book Rhythmanalysis, studied the link between rhythms (cyclical & linear) and cities, in which he also described how the frequency of rhythms in spaces could manifest signs of health or illness (Arrhythmia, Polyrhythmia, Eurhythmia and Isorhythmia). Arrhythmia (otherwise indicated as non-rhythm in greek language), characterized by an unstable frequency and a lack of repetition, is a condition manifesting signs of illness, biologically, but also, according to Lefebvre’s theory, in an individual’s daily life pattern and more generally in urban rhythms. Sudden events, in the micro or macro life, could interfere with frequency and interrupt rhythm. As a result to a sudden interference of rhythm in various scales of our daily lives (economical, social, cultural, etc.), the paper proposes that, a series of negative emotions emerge on the “surface”. Undoubtedly, the emotion-protagonist in a situation of arrhythmia (biological or urban, in our case) is fear, with which individuals but also larger scale systems (cities, activities, institutions, governments, communities, etc.) have to deal with. In the Covid-19 and quarantine situation, the individual had to adapt him/herself to a new daily pattern of life and to change profoundly him/herself routine. Apparently, individuals who managed to maintain a constant daily rhythm, although in quarantine situation (in other words, being eurhythmic inside the Covid-19 arrhythmic situation), seem to be those who managed better their emotional condition. We cannot but ask ourselves, if emotions are also responsible for an individual’s and an entire community’s resilience and quality of life, why they are missing from urban policies and the urban planning agenda. Western culture was founded on the perception of “reason”, which was immediately separated from the “emotion”. In general, the role of emotion in social life and in action, has been denied, or even when it has been taken into consideration, has been negatively addressed. During the development of the western world, analysts were taught to separate cognitive and emotional qualities of judgment and tended to study cognitive rather than emotional relationships. As a result, architecture and planning, our urban space in general, followed specific functions related to our biological rhythms only. We never really understood that emotions can condition the quality of life of the individual in a high level and never tried to incorporate emotional cognition in urban planning policies. We believe more that ever that in the future and as the Covid-19 emergency showed us, we will have to deal with the consequences of negative emotions in our daily lives. Fear, anxiety and depression, all emotions caused from arrhythmic conditions in a micro (individual) or macro (entire communities) level, will eventually have to be incorporated in our future urban policies. Studying urban rhythms and their frequency, could alarm us for eventual malfunctions (micro or macro) and prepare us for their correspondent emotions. Bridging emotions to urban policies seems rather inevitable today. In particular, tackling fear through place-specific public policies seems crucial for providing a quality of life to a community, not only in biological but also in emotional terms.

This paper attempts to show that the surge of a world pandemic known as COVID-19 has allowed the local languages of Cameroon to supplant the official languages, English and French in their daily use to fight against the pandemic or to prevent the population from the threat. To reach the people at the grassroots, local languages have been used as the main channel. The pandemic is therefore looked at as a contributor to the dynamics of small languages, mainly in Cameroon, favouring their greater use for better communication and sensitisation. Relying on the community-based approach, triggered by personal observation and community involvement, the paper demonstrates that COVID-19 has allowed the enrichment of the local languages or national languages of Cameroon with new words, and has vivified their use in an environment where they are dominated by some world killer languages like English and French. The paper concludes that the dynamics of the local languages would also benefit a lot from an interconnectedness among language committees and health care specialists who will develop entangled discourses in the local languages to reach a larger majority of peoples at the grassroots, and by doing so, creating more new words that will perpetuate the lexical dynamics of the involved languages.

El presente texto muestra un diagnóstico sobre la intervención de los Estados en la atención y gestión del fenómeno de la migración internacional en los primeros meses de la pandemia producida por la COVID-19 en 2020. Asimismo, realiza un comparativo entre las tendencias que se habían fijado en las agendas de gobierno, así como entre las distintas políticas y mecanismos en materia migratoria utilizados para controlar y mitigar la enfermedad producida por el virus del SARS-CoV-2. El desarrollo de la pandemia de la COVID-19, así como el incremento en el número de contagios y muertes, han incentivado a los Estados a implementar nuevas políticas y mecanismos en materia migratoria, fuera de los patrones que habían marcado a sus agendas de gobierno. Considerando esto, se plantea contestar a las siguientes preguntas: ¿Cuáles son y qué tipo de políticas han predominado? ¿Cuál es el contexto de la migración internacional durante la pandemia? y ¿Cuáles son los posibles escenarios futuros que enfrentará este fenómeno en el marco de su gestión y gobernanza?

Este artigo analisa a gestão dos hospitais de campanha criados pela Prefeitura de São Pau-lo no contexto da pandemia da COVID-19 via contratualização por resultados com Organi-zações Sociais de Saúde (OSS). Por meio de revisão bibliográfica, análise documental e de indicadores, discute-se o caráter de excepcionalidade dessas contratações em oposição aos ditames das teorias democráticas, da accountability e da Administração Pública. Ancorado nos dados e análises sobre o avanço dos mecanismos e discursos empresariais sobre a ges-tão pública, conclui-se que os mesmos pontos críticos em relação ao controle e à transpa-rência são observados em situações tanto de normalidade quanto de excepcionalidade, po-dendo-se afirmar o caráter de “excepcionalidade normalizada” desse modelo de contrata-ção por resultados.

This paper examines the respect for fundamental rights withinthe scope of the Schengen Borders Code (SBC). Firstly, it does so in the lightof the current status quo, jurisprudential and normative. It then surveys theimpact of COVID-19 and of the unprecedented measures, with no clear legalbasis, that had to be improvised against the pandemic and which had a majorimpact on the SBC (closure of external borders, reintroduction of internal bordercontrols and changing prohibitions on ¿intra-Schengen¿ movements) as wellas on fundamental rights. Finally, and also from the perspective of respect forfundamental rights, the impact of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum on theCFS is addressed, through the proposal for amendment of the CFS presented bythe Commission, currently under consideration.

The paper presents an initial analysis of issues related to health work in Brazil, in the context of COVID-19 Pandemic, seeking to contribute to a debate about the relationships between work process, the ongoing psychological dynamics and the struggle for health. It is based on a framework of Work Organizational Psychology, guided by the point of view of the activity and experience, to account for materials emerging from an experiment that has been developed within the scope of “University Extension”, under the coordination of the two authors of the paper. Initially, both the international emergency context of COVID-19 and general characteristics of the work situations that are being faced by health professionals are presented. Then, upon selection of a main axis as the object of attention, the analysis of some work situations, present in that dramatic context, is carried out, which allowed to present some clues, as conclusion.

The speed in producing information and the rush to publish scientific articles on COVID-19 in several knowledge areas have resulted in what is known as an infodemic also in the scientific field, potentially producing inaccurate information and sources of misinformation at scholarly communication. This has led to some articles being retracted or withdrawn due to unintentional errors or deliberate misconduct, but they continue to be cited. This article (i) gives an overview of the COVID-19 retracted articles and preprints, and (ii) analyses a set of post-retraction citations in the context of the COVID-19 infodemic. We analyzed 56 retracted articles and preprints by using the list available in the section on “retracted coronavirus (COVID-19) papers” in the Retraction Watch (RW) webpage. We found that 64.3% of these retractions were articles published in journals, 33.9% were uploaded in preprints servers, and 1.8% conference papers. We also analyzed 162 eligible articles out of 612 records identified by using the Google Scholar search engine. This research found that an article from The Lancet continued to be cited even after being retracted. In this case, we identified 214 post-retraction citations, of which 38% were negative (n=81), 32% were neutral (n=69), and 30% were positive citations (n=64)