ABSTRACT
Purpose Given the scarcity of data during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in China, the decision-making for non-pharmaceutical policies was mostly based on insufficient evidence. The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of these policies, such as lockdown and government subsidies, on rural households and identify policy implications for China and other countries in dealing with pandemics. Design/methodology/approach The authors survey 2,408 rural households by telephone from 101 counties across 17 provinces in China during the first stage of the pandemic (March 2020). The authors use the ordered probit model and linear regression model to study the overall impact of policies and then use the quantile regression model and sub-sample regression method to study the heterogeneity of the effects of government policies. Findings The authors find that logistics disruption due to lockdown negatively affected rural households. Obstructed logistics is associated with a more significant loss for high-income households, while its impact on the loss expectation of low-income households is more severe. Breeding and other industries such as transport and sales suffer more from logistics than cultivation. The impact of logistics on intensive agricultural entities is more serious than that on professional farms. The government subsidy is more effective at reducing loss for low-income households. Lockdown and government subsidies have shown heterogeneous impacts on rural households. Practical implications The overall economic losses experienced by rural households in the early stages of the pandemic are controllable. The government policies of logistics and subsidies should target specific groups. Originality/value The authors evaluate the economic impacts of lockdown and government subsidies on rural households and show their heterogeneity among different groups. The authors further demonstrate the policy effectiveness in supporting rural households during the early stages of the pandemic and provide future policy guidance on major public health event.
ABSTRACT
Background: The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 lead to a worldwide pandemic which poses substantial challenges to public health. Methods: We enrolled 102 consecutive recovered patients with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. Epidemiological and demographic characteristics, temporal dynamic profiles of laboratory tests and findings on chest CT radiography, and clinical outcomes were collected and analyzed. Results: Independent risk factors for prolonged fever, viral RNA shedding or radiologic recovery included age of more than 44 years, female gender, having symptoms of cough and fever, a delay from the symptom onset to hospitalization of more than 3 days, a lower CD4 count of less than 500/mu L on admission, and severe or critical illness in hospitalization. The estimated median time from symptom onset was 6.4 (5.5 -7.4) days to peak viral load, 9.1 (7.9 -10.4) days to afebrile, 8 (6.7 -9.4) days to worst radiologic finding, 12.7 (11.2 -14.3) days to viral RNA negativity, and 26.7 (23.8 -29.9) days to radiologic resolution. This study included the entire cross-section of patients seen in our clinical practice and reflected the real-world situation. Conclusions: These findings provide the rationale for strategies of active symptom monitoring, timing of quarantine and antiviral interventions, and duration of radiologic follow-up in patients with COVID-19.
ABSTRACT
In post-COVID-19 pandemic era, students' learning effects and experience may sharply decrease when teaching is transferred from offline to online. Several tools suitable for online teaching have been developed to guarantee and promote students' learning effects. However, they cannot fully consider teacher-student interaction in online teaching. To figure out this issue, this paper proposes integrated media platform-based virtual office hours implementation for online teaching. Specifically, an integrated media platform (IMP) is first constructed. Then, virtual office hours (VOH) is implemented based on the IMP, aiming at increasing student-teacher interactions. For evaluating the effectiveness of this scheme, 140 undergraduate students using IMP are divided into one control group and three experimental groups that respectively contain text, voice and video modes. The experiment results indicate that applying VOH in the IMP can improve students' online presence and test scores. Furthermore, students' participating modes during VOH implementation can largely affect their degree of presence, which can be well classified by using principal component analysis. The implication of this work is that IMP-based VOH is an effective and sustainable tool to be continuously implemented even when the COVID-19 pandemic period ends.