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Background and Purpose: Following the global coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and the recent spike in COVID-19 cases in Malaysia, the Malaysian government had imposed a Movement Control Order (MCO) on 16 March 2020 as a measure to curb the outbreak. Consequently, all non-essential affairs were suspended and operated fully on a work-from-home basis, when schools were temporarily closed, and citizens were urged to stay at home. Despite a high number of studies on the negative impacts of MCO to various sectors, there is a little concern noted for the potential impacts on vulnerable populations, including parents with special kids such as cerebral palsy (CP). The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the burdens and difficulties associated with the experience of caring for children with CP during the MCO Methodology: This study was designed as qualitative research. Twenty-six participants were selected using a purposive sampling method to involve in in-depth interviews. They were the parents who joined the Cerebral Palsy Support Group in Terengganu, Malaysia. The interview responses were thematically analyzed using a content analysis method. Findings: Four main themes were revealed from the thematic analysis, namely emotional distress, worry over postponement of therapy and medical consultation, burn out due to work from home, and conditions of the CP children themselves. The findings indicated that both mothers, either working or housewife, experienced depression and deterioration in physical health and psychosocial emotions. Contributions: Interventions in the forms of financial aids, guidance for CP children self-therapy at home, and emotional supports are urgently needed to ensure mothers and their CP children maintain their quality of life despite the MCO.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is raging across the globe, with the total active cases increas-ing each day. Globally over 63 million COVID-19cases and more than 1.4 million deaths have been reported to WHO. Throughout the world, academicians, clinicians and scientists are working tirelessly on developing a treatment to combat this pandemic. The origin of novel SARS-CoV-2 virus still remains foggy but is believed to have originated from a bat coronavirus RaTG13 with which it shares approximately 96% sequence similarity. In the present review, the authors have pro-vided an overview of the COVID-19 pandemic, epidemiology, transmission, developments related to diagnosis, drugs and vaccines, along with the genetic diversity and lifecycle of the SARS-CoV-2 based on the current studies and information available.Copyright © 2022 Bentham Science Publishers.
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The challenges smallholders face in agricultural management between developed and developing countries differ and can also impact the smallholder's well-being. The purpose of this study is to identify factors that affect the well-being of smallholders. We conducted a systematic literature by applying the Preferred Reported Item for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) and extracted 30 articles from Scopus and Web of Science. These articles show three main factors that drive well-being: technology, optimal resource, and insurance, and two additional factors: market pricing and tax policy. Findings show that all the above factors will first impact economic well-being and, sub-sequently, social well-being. When COVID-19 struck, the smallholder's well-being was also affected in addition to the destabilised food chain. Travel restrictions have led to a labour shortage. The smallholders had to turn to e-commerce to sell their products. They also incurred losses and experienced difficulties in procuring agricultural intermediate inputs. The absence of agricultural insurance worsened the impact on the well-being of the smallholders. To safeguard the well-being of these smallholders, the study suggests that stakeholders should encourage local labour participation, increase investment in human capital, adopt e-commerce in marketing, offer agricultural insurance schemes against various disasters and continuously provide or increase subsidies to smallholders. © The authors.
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Education plays a significant role in every country in this world. Nowadays, lecturers are burdened with many roles such as researcher, administrator, counsellor, and many others. The position of a lecturer is very important for the success of institutions. To provide a professional service, they should be mentally and physically fit. High levels of work stress were associated with lower work-life balance and increased conflicts in their jobs. The Covid-19 pandemic has made it tough for teachers duties of teaching online while working from home. So, it is important to see what factors matter to the lecturers in Malaysia in balancing their work and life. Therefore, this study seeks to identify the factors affecting work-life balance among lecturers in Malaysia. The dependent variable in this study was work-life balance while the independent variables were made up of three major factors;i.e., individual, organizational, and environmental with six sub-factors, namely emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, work overload, organizational support, technological advancement, and telecommuting. For this research, a total of 435 lecturers participated and were contacted by email for answering the online survey questionnaire, and the Statistical Package for Social Sciences Software (SPSS) was used to conduct multiple regression analysis in evaluating the relationships between the variables. The findings of this study revealed that the individual factors, organizational factors, and environmental factors were partially supported because only one sub-factor was significant in each factor. Work overload is the most influencing factor affecting the lecturer's work-life balance in Malaysia, while emotional intelligence is the least influencing factor. In addition, the result depicts that only emotional intelligence, work overload, and technological advancement made a significant impact on work-life balance. Whereas spiritual intelligence, organizational support, and significantly explain the variance in work-life balance significantly. The findings of the study provide the Ministry of Higher Education and policymakers with key information to increase and maintain the lecturers’ work-life balance. At the same time, this study improves their skills in managing their emotions and their time to meet their deadlines which can help foster and reinforce a separation between work and home environment. © 2022, Association Res Militaris. All rights reserved.
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The global COVID-19 pandemic has created many challenges and paralysed many industries worldwide. COVID-19 has created critical stress on local and global economies, as well as creating supply chain disruption to almost every sector. Among the sectors affected are food producers, pharmaceuticals, transportation industry, logistics organization, travel and tourism, hotel providers, automotive, oil and gas, and many more. The Halal industry is also identified as an industry affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter aims to explore key effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Halal economy, specifically focusing on the impact of the pandemic to the Halal industry in general, and to Halal logistics and supply chain as a main discussion. This study aims to explore how the Halal industry was affected from logistics and supply chain perspectives. This study is important to gain rich understanding on how this COVID-19 pandemic affected the Halal industry worldwide and locally. This study is among the pioneers that seeks ways to improve on the Halal supply chain and logistics context due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is based on generic review and content analysis on the published documents in the area of Halal supply chain and COVID-19 impacts. A number of research suggestions for future scholars are also provided. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Nor Aida Abdul Rahman, Azizul Hassan and Hajjah Zawiah Abdul Majid;individual chapters, the contributors.
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Introduction: Frontline Healthcare Workers (F-HCWs) are at the front position for medical care against Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic which has life-threatening potentials. Poor level of knowledge, practices and negative attitudes as well as high-risk of psychological distress among F-HCWs can directly lead to delayed diagnosis, treatment and poor infection control practices. Aim: To assess the level of Knowledge, Attitude and Practices (KAP) as well as risk of psychological distress among F-HCWs for COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and Methods: This descriptive, hospital-based, cross-sectional study was conducted at Government Medical College, Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, India, located in tertiary care centre in rural area) from October 2021 to December 2021 among 223 F-HCWs using convenient sampling technique. To assess the level of KAP as well as risk of psychological distress among F-HCWs a prevalidated structured questionnaire was used consisting 15 knowledge questions, six attitude questions, 15 practices questions and six questions on risk of psychological distress. Chi-square test was performed to examine the association between risk of psychological distress and level of KAP as well as with demographic characteristics of F-HCWs. Results: Out of total 223 participants more than half of physicians (52.9%) and one-third of staff nurses (35.9%) were from age group of 25-35 years, respectively. Majority of both physicians (57.1%) and staff nurses (87.6%) were married and had nuclear type of family as of 64.3% and 74.5%, respectively. Most of the physicians (92.9%) had good level of knowledge but they had less positive attitude (84.3%) compare to staff nurses (92.8%). Majority of both physicians (64.3%) and staff nurses (58.2%) had no or low risk of psychological distress while only few of them had its high level. Conclusion: In this study majority of F-HCWs reported overall 'good' level of knowledge, attitude and practices for prevention of COVID-19. As for as risk of psychological distress was concerned, majority of F-HCWs had its no or low risk.
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During the pandemic of covid-19, the government of Malaysia come up with a new alternative to ensure the young generations still can learn from home and no one is left behind by using E-learning. This study attempts to determine the critical factors that influence the satisfaction of E-learning in laboratory subjects, to identify the satisfaction of university students with the E-learning process of laboratory subjects, and to examine the relationship between the critical factors and the satisfaction of university students with E-learning. In this study, third-year undergraduate students from the Faculty of Technology Management and Business (FPTP), Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) were selected as the participants. The questionnaire was employed to collect data for this study. The data collected were analyzed quantitatively using SPSS software. The results showed that the system quality was the most critical factor that influence the satisfaction of E-learning of the students during the laboratory activities. Furthermore, the UTHM students were satisfied with learning laboratory subjects via E-learning. There was a positive relationship between the critical factors and the satisfaction of UTHM students. This study has been conducted to help the lecturer, university, and the developer of the E-learning application analyzes the critical factors that the student faced during E-learning and give some suggestions to improve students' satisfaction with E-learning. © 2022 ACM.
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Background COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2/2019-nCoV) is now a major public health threat to the world. Olfactory dysfunctions (ODs) are considered potential indicating symptoms and early case identification triaging for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The most common reported comorbidities are diabetes mellitus, chronic lung disease, and cardiovascular disease. The objective of this study was to evaluate prevalence of different types of smell disorders in patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection and impact of involved systemic diseases. Methodology A cross-sectional retrospective study has been done for patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection (mild-to-moderate). The data collected from patient’s files and developed online electronic questionnaire (WhatsApp) based on the patients most common and recurrent reported data including: a) symptoms of olfactory dysfunction and associated covid19 symptoms fever and headache, cough, sore throat, pneumonia, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, arthralgia and myalgia and taste dysfunction. b) Associated systemic diseases including: diabetes, hypertension, asthma, chronic renal disease, chorionic liver disease and hypothyroidism. Results Of 308 patients confirmed with Covid-19 infection, (72.4%) developed OD distributed as follows;complete anosmia (57.8%), troposmia (8.4%), hyposmia (2.9%), partial anosmia (2.6%) and euosmia (0.6%). Significantly increased prevalence of diabetes, hypertension asthma in the group with olfactory dysfunction (p < 0.001), chronic liver disease (p = 0.005), and hypothyroidism (p = 0.03). Conclusion The development of ODs after Covid-19 infection was associated with mild disease form and lower hospitalization. In addition, it showed significant relationship with preexisting systemic diseases. Anosmia is the common modality of ODs.
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Open and Distance Learning (ODL) is an online Teaching and Learning (T&L) method that has been implemented to all educational institutions in Malaysia to curb the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study is to identify the attitude level of Malaysian Technical University Network (MTUN) students towards the Mobile Learning (M-learning) usage in ODL methods during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. The total number of respondents involved was 481 engineering students from four MTUN institutions. The study design used is quantitative which uses a questionnaire as a research instrument. The questionnaire used measures three elements of students' attitudes in the aspect of affective, behavior and cognitive towards M-learning implementation. Results were analyzed using descriptive statistics involving the use of mean and standard deviation while inferential statistics involved One-way ANOVA analysis. Result shows that attitudes level of MTUN students towards M-learning was at moderate level for two (2) aspects of affective and cognitive while the behavior aspect was rated at high level. Meanwhile, the result of one-way ANOVA showed no significant difference between the attitudes of student towards ODL across year of studies. Therefore, it can be concluded that the students of MTUN institutions had positive attitudes towards the implementation of M-learning with year of study in the university does not have influence on student’s attitude towards M-learning environment. It is advisable that the use of M-learning in the future needs to be enriched with the features of 21st century learning as to enhance students learning experiences. © 2022 by the authors.
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This paper aims at investigating the academician behavioral intention on innovation commercialization through a comprehensive analysis of Systematic Literature Review (SLR). During the COVID-19 pandemic era, world economic had faced severe of impact with challengingly. In consequences, the commercialization of innovation outputs could lead significant benefits for nation especially while economic recovery period. One of the main active contributors of new innovation is a researcher among academician. Therefore, human behavior studies are needed to identify the influence factors that affect academicians in developing countries during this world pandemic era. This SLR analysis used three databases namely Scopus, Web of Science and EBSCOhost for selecting articles published starting 2014until 2021. There had 178 articles were identified, only 43 articles were selected as the final set based on the inclusion criteria. Majority of the articles (31/43) were adopted to determine the key drivers of academicians’ intention toward university technology commercialization, whereas the smaller portions of articles (12/43) were conducted meta-analysis among them. Based on the result of SLR, indicated that most often applied key drivers in past studies are personal attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control accordingly. The meta-analysis also found that all these factors gave low effect on academician commercialization intention. A few of recommendations toward university, government and future studies were purposed at the end of paper, which expect to enhance the success of university technology commercialization in Malaysia. © RIGEO ● Review of International Geographical Education
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In this paper, we examine the changes in the dependence structure of global stock markets amid the outbreak of COVID-19. We divide 56 stock markets into developed, emerging, and frontier markets and study their daily price data from 15 October 2019 to 17 August 2020 using the canonical vine (C-vine) copula approach. We observed significant changes in the dependence structure, the selection of the pair copula families, and the associated parameter estimates in the tree. In developed markets, during the COVID-19, the dependence of markets shifted from the Netherlands to France while the root node position of Hungary replaced the market of Poland. The frontier markets showed strong dependence signs with Mauritius before COVID-19 and Slovenia during the outbreak. Our findings are of interest to regulators and practitioners, particularly in monitoring the value at risk of portfolios and adopting appropriate strategies in light of the varying dynamics of stock markets during extreme events, such as COVID-19.
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The closure of Higher Education Institutions and Schools due to COVID-19 pandemic has affected the structure of Learning and Teaching (TL) from direct method at institutions to Open and Distance Education (ODE) completely. All face-to-face TL activities are not allowed except for certain categories of students who need to return to campus in stages to participante in TL activities in full compliance of the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) set by prioritizing safety measures and social distancing. This study used a quantitative approach by using online questionnaire as instrument (google form). A total of 73 Technical and Vocational Education (TVE) students from various backgrounds of respondents participated in the study. The findings of the study showed that there was a strong correlation between the aspects of interest and gender of TVE students in using learning videos during the COVID-19 pandemic period (r =.701). Therefore, all parties must prepare to face the new norm, namely the ODL method as a whole during the COVID-19 pandemic period to continue the TL process for students. © 2021 IEEE.
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Following the current outbreak of the novel pandemic COVID-19 or known as Coronavirus which started in Wuhan, China in December 2019, the virus has rapidly spreads to almost 120 countries around the world. COVID-19 outbreak is having a gigantic impact to the aviation players. The aviation and tourism industry worldwide are experiencing gloomy downturn of business. As reported by International Air Transport Association (IATA), the global revenue of airlines industry is estimated to reduce by around USD113 billion. For every 100 cases of COVID-19, it will lead to drop on passenger demand which cost universal airlines nearly USD113 billion. Apart from it, COVID-19 also hit shipping and air freight industry. The air freight business is dropped tremendously due to COVID-19 as a result from the cancellation of thousands of passenger flights from all countries across the globe, especially China. The cancellation of flights again results to lessening of belly capacity for cargo. With this background, this study aims to explore the impact of COVID-19 to the aviation players. This exploratory study opts for abductive research approach. Published secondary data were used to get key information about COVID-19 and its impact to the global aviation players. The analysis of the key challenges and the outcome are based on content analysis performed in this study. This study specifically explores key impact of COVID-19 to the wide spectrum aviation players namely the airlines, airport authority, the air cargo provider, in-flight food caterer, aircraft or spare parts manufacturers, as well as the MROs (maintenance, repair and overhaul organization). This study is among the pioneer that investigate COVID-19 in the aviation sector. The findings from this study would lead to big areas of research for future scholars. This study also offers a toolkit reference to the aviation practitioners, as well as policy makers to further improve the policy or guideline relating to epidemic or pandemic issue in transportation industry. © 2020 SERSC.