Analysing the factors affecting medical waste generation in China

Medical waste deserves particular attention due to its potential for causing serious damage to people and the environment. Although the factors influencing the generation of medical waste are critical for designing policies aimed at effectively reducing medical waste and improving medical waste management, they have not been extensively studied. The rapid development of China's medical and health services and the sudden outbreak of Covid-19 have brought significant challenges to managing medical waste in China. Therefore, based on panel data from eight cities in China from 2013 to 2019, this study used a fixed-effects model to investigate the influencing factors of medical waste generation (MWG) in China, and tested the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. The results show that there is a non-linear N-shaped curve relationship between MWG and per capita gross domestic product (GDP);MWG will continue to increase with economic growth, but the growth rate will slow down from fast to slow, and then from slow to fast with economic growth. The analysis also reveals that implementing a tiered diagnosis and treatment policy may negatively affect MWG by reducing the waste of medical resources and thus reducing the generation of medical waste. The positive effect of population size on MWG is also highly significant, so when the aging of the population increases, the generation of medical waste also increases. The three policy suggestions are provided: 1) improve the disposal capacity and efficiency of medical waste;2) give full play to the advantages of hierarchical diagnosis and treatment policy;3) improve the management level of medical waste in primary medical institutions. © 2023

Implementation of Mask Wearing Recognition

Because of the pandemic of COVID-19 since 2020, it seriously affects people's daily life and causes huge economic loss. Recently, the international community has mostly adopted an attitude of coexisting with Covid-19. We cannot ignore the harm the virus can bring to us. In order to effectively protect everyone from the virus, the most basic and effective way is to wear a mask to keep you away from exposure to the virus when going to public areas. Vision intelligence can play an important role in public health issues. In this paper, we utilize the object detection method to implement an actual mask wearing recognition system which can detect if people have a face mask on their face, and send a warning message if not wearing a mask. YOLOv3 is the basic framework for our implementation. After training and fine-tuning processes, the implemented model can perform effectively and correctly. © 2022 IEEE.

Building public trust in COVID-19 vaccines through the Catholic Church in the Philippines.

Due to the expedited production of the COVID-19 vaccines and other issues related to it, many Filipinos are hesitant to receive the inoculation program set by the government. Because of this, it is crucial to gain public trust for the COVID-19 vaccines. This paper argues that the Catholic Church, being an influential institution in the Philippines, can help in building public trust in COVID-19 vaccines in the country.

An ayuda to the least advantaged: providing a program for those who were hit the hardest during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a recent article, it was reported that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the economic situation of some countries. It led to some people losing jobs amidst the difficult situation that the pandemic caused. Thus, this paper discusses the need to provide a program for the least advantaged citizens so that they can still experience their basic liberties. The least advantaged citizens, as Rawls deem them, are the ones who lost jobs and incomes were hit the hardest during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Solidarity as a companion virtue in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper establishes that there is a need to turn to virtue ethics in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. It argues that the virtue of solidarity can be a companion virtue to compassion for medical frontline workers and other individuals involved. Like compassion, the virtue of solidarity is a reminder that everyone is in this crisis together and that each is responsible for all.