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Social entrepreneurs mitigate the crisis effects by offering innovative solutions in situations where states and markets fail. This paper analyzes the effects of the COVID-19 crisis in Turkey on social enterprises, their adaptation process, and their need for support. In this framework, a questionnaire is administered to Turkish social entrepreneurs. The findings are evaluated, taking into account the results of work done on social enterprises, commercial enterprises, and civil society organizations in Turkey and worldwide in close time intervals. Policy recommendations are developed to increase social enterprises' resilience. Research results suggest that the pandemic has negative economic, social, and operational effects on social enterprises like all other socio-economic actors. Main recommendations for policy makers include providing legitimacy (trust) to social enterprises, carrying out awareness and visibility activities, providing financial and non-financial support, and strengthening communication over networks. This paper contributes to the literature as it is the first study examining the initial impact of the crisis on social entrepreneurs in Turkey and forms the basis for observing the changes in crisis effects in future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the pandemic that has affected the world, it is also important that healthcare professionals, who are at the forefront, experience the expression of their feelings and thoughts, together with the effort they have shown while using their professional knowledge and skills. In this context, the purpose of this research is to reveal the views and feelings, thoughts and experienced by healthcare professionals. To reach healthcare workers, Izmir was chosen as one of the cities that experienced pandemic intensely, and the question form was used, inspired by the propositions found in Çırakoğlu's (2011) paper published in the Turkish Psychology Journal. Purposeful sampling method was used. A questionnaire to learn their feelings and thoughts about the COVID-19 outbreak was sent to 67 participants. The data was analyzed with the Maxqda Analytics Pro 2018 software, and the results were discussed. The contagiousness of the virus is at the top of the discourse of the healthcare professionals participating in the study regarding the COVID-19 outbreak. Due to the lack of a vaccine or preventive treatment to stop or reduce the transmission, as of the research period, attention is drawn to the fact that individuals maintain distance in isolation and collective areas in order to avoid the contagiousness of the virus. Participants emphasize that the epidemic causes concern to both the society and healthcare workers, and that the studies conducted in the world are delayed in combating the virus. It is thought to give insight into the symbolic representations of the words most frequently used by healthcare professionals regarding the COVID-19 virus. In addition to the prominence of social distance, isolation, quarantine and curfew methods in the fight against the virus, visualization of these methods in social media sharing also constitutes the symbolic representation of the virus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid spread of the virus named Covid-19, which emerged in Wuhan (China) at the end of 2019, caused a global epidemic all over the world. On March 16, 2020, a state of emergency was declared in Kazakhstan and measures were taken in Kazakhstan like the rest of the world. In the meantime, intangible cultural heritage such as aitys, which is a contest on improvised oral poetry, got a great attention in Kazakh society. This article presents the results of an analysis on organizing aitys contests and the poems on COVID-19. The main cause of pandemic is that it changed conventional improvised poetry contest into virtual environment. As a result of the study, it was revealed that four types of aitys contests were held since the state of emergency was declared in Kazakhstan, where three of them were oral and one in written form. The first type of oral aitys contest took place online through video chatting service between two contestants from different places. The second type of the contest was offline at the same place and their contest was streamed via social media. These two contests are streamed on Skype, Instagram, Facebook and the records of the contest are posted on Youtube platform. The third is a radio-talk contest. In an aitys, a man can only listen to his voice to see what he sees in person. Finally, Instagram can be mentioned on paper, as well as on visual and print media such as Facebook. The article states that in the period from March to September 2020, more than one hundred aitys was conducted with the participation of more than one hundred minstrels. Covid-19-themed calls and responses of minstrels were evaluated around Bascom's "Four Functions of Folklore" and Performance Theory. The poems during the aitys proves that the Kazakh people during the outbreak try to safeguard the world's vision and traditions, as well as important advice for oral history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout human history, many pandemics have broken out and caused great numbers of deaths. As the technological development made quite a huge advancement by the twentieth century, the medical treatment armamentarium had widened its facilities and resources. This brought with sophisticated and competent health care services for people which provided the medical practitioners with higher success rates when fighting against diseases and improved recovery and survival rates. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the high transmission rate of the novel SARS-Cov-2 virus has led to the paralysis of the health system and running out of the resources and healthcare workers. Thus, local government healthcare service regulators have begun building up plans to create management algorithms to use the limited resources more efficiently. This paper presents preliminary practical instructions for healthcare providers as a basic foundation for COVID-19 and potential future pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The SARS-CoV-2, agent of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is a member of the Coronaviridae family leading to severe acute respiratory illness. It is enveloped RNA virus. WHO declared the outbreak of Covid-19 as a pandemic on 11 February 2020. After the emergence of the outbreak in the world and in our country, COVID-19 virology laboratory has been designed and diagnostic tests have been established for the early diagnosis of the SARS-CoV-2. The routine diagnosis of COVID-19 is achieved by the detection of viral RNA in clinical samples using the nucleic acid amplification tests like real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The rapid diagnosis during the early phases of the infection is critically important for the isolation of the patients and for the development of preventive measures to control the infection in the community. In this context, after the emergence of the pandemic, different diagnostic techniques (real-time PCR tests, rapid antibody tests, and ELISA tests) have been used for the early diagnosis of COVID-19 in our hospital. In this paper, we want to emphasize the role and importance of the medical laboratories for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2, for tracking of the patients, and for epidemiologic studies during COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing pandemic due to SARS CoV2 is really a big one, which would never welcomed from any countries anytime, but knocked the door all of a sudden! The SARS CoV-2 first appeared in China in late December 2019. The virus isolated on January 7, 2020; the disease named as COVID-19 afterwars. Since this was a SARS virus not an influenza, nobody seem to expect it as a pandemic agent, spread so fast and so globally. But actually it did spread to many countries and declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. The pandemic hit the universities hard. The most important topic for universities during the pandemic was of course distance and remote learning, which become widespread already. The pandemic will cause profound impacts and changes on the higher education system around the world in terms of education-teaching methods, research, internationalization and mobility. The response of Council of Higher Education of Turkey to pandemic could be evaluated in four phases: 1) Close monitoring, 2) Preparing, 3) Action, 4) New normalization. In this paper we will review the response of Turkish higher education institutions and Council of Higher Education to the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]