Investigating the impacts of COVID-19 safety measures and related uncertainties among socially vulnerable groups in Lagos megacity.

The emergence of the unique coronavirus disease (COVID-19), associated safety measures and impacts have been experienced differently across various sociodemographic and livelihood groups. As a result of the impacts of the COVID-19 restrictions, this study examined experiences and livelihood uncertainties from socially vulnerable groups. One hundred and fifty responses (150) were recorded from residents in Iwaya, and Makoko areas within Lagos Mainland Local Government Area of Lagos state. Complete lockdown or stay-at-home orders, compulsory face masks in public spaces, curfews, physical and social distancing and restriction of inter-state movements are some of the precautionary/safety measures introduced by the Government and enforced by security agents. The findings show that curfews and restriction of inter-state movements were two of the safety measures that had no or reduced impact (p-values > 0.01) on the respondents' means of livelihood. Our results reveal that because a larger percentage of male participants are self-employed and owned personal businesses they were more affected by COVID-19 restrictions than females. 42.7% (64) of females and 57.3% (86) of males reported COVID-19-related anxieties and stress from fear of starvation, and contracting the virus, to impacts on money/finances, slow sales and businesses, food supply, job loss, erratic power supply affecting work from home options. 54.7% of respondents had more than 5 people living together, while 84.7% of housing types (128) are bungalows with several rooms inhabited by an average of three to four people per household. Increased stress, fear of hunger, loss of jobs and source of income were some of the negative impacts resulting from the introduction of the COVID-19 safety measures which adversely affected occupations like traders, people engaged in fishing activities, painters, carpenters, hairdressers and barbers, printers and bricklayers. Our work provides insights into the effects of the COVID-19-safety measures and subjective impact across vulnerable groups and occupations.

Mobilizing Digital Volunteers to Support Underserved Communities in India During COVID-19 Lockdowns

As community-driven organizations sought to support their constituents through the COVID-19 crisis, many drew on digital volunteers to expand their capacity and reach. However, coordinating the efforts of virtual volunteers is a challenging task with few empirical studies of the associated risks and best practices. In this paper, we report on the activities of CGNet Swara, a citizen journalism platform that published 401 distress calls from vulnerable communities stranded in India due to the imposition of a nationwide lockdown. CGNet mobilized 11 digital volunteers to help these contributors over a period of nearly 2 months. We found that a lack of proper guidance to digital volunteers and outdated organizational policies resulted in demonstrable harms to vulnerable communities. We discuss risks that are inherent in collaborations between organizations extending themselves to crisis response and emergent groups of digital volunteers, and how they can be mitigated by real-time monitoring and development of standard operating procedures relating to impact metrics, verification standards and disclosure policies. © 2022 ACM.

Accost, Accede, or Amplify: Attitudes towards COVID-19 Misinformation on WhatsApp in India

Social media has witnessed an unprecedented growth in users based in low-income communities in the Global South. However, much remains unknown about the drivers of misinformation in such communities. To fill this gap, we conducted an interview-based study to examine how rural and urban communities in India engage with misinformation on WhatsApp. We found that misinformation led to bitterness and conflict - rural users who had higher social status heavily influenced the perceptions and engagement of marginalized members. While urban users relied on the expertise of gatekeepers for verification, rural users engaged in collective deliberations in offline spaces. Both rural and urban users knowingly forwarded misinformation. However, rural users propagated hyperlocal misinformation, whereas urban users forwarded misinformation to reduce their efforts to assess information credibility. Using a public sphere lens, we propose that the reactions to misinformation provide a view of Indian society and its schisms around class, urbanity, and social interactions. © 2022 ACM.

Disparate air pollution reductions during California’s COVID-19 economic shutdown

Minority communities in the United States often experience higher-than-average exposures to air pollution. However, the relative contribution of institutional biases to these disparities can be difficult to disentangle from other factors. Here, we use the economic shutdown associated with the 2020 COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders to causally estimate pollution exposure disparities caused by the in-person economy in California. Using public and citizen-science ground-based monitor networks for respirable particulate matter, along with satellite records of nitrogen dioxide, we show that sheltering in place produced disproportionate air pollution reductions for non-White (especially Hispanic and Asian) and low-income communities. We demonstrate that these racial and ethnic effects cannot be explained by weather patterns, geography, income or local economic activity as measured by local changes in mobility. They are instead driven by regional economic activity, which produces local harms for diffuse economic benefits. This study thus provides indirect, yet substantial, evidence of systemic racial and ethnic bias in the generation and control of pollution from the portion of the economy most impacted in the early pandemic period. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.

TheWorksheet School: COVID-19 Lockdown and Online Schooling in Public Schools of Delhi

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure of educational institutions across India, which meant that all schooling activities shifted overnight to online platforms. This posed a problem for students from low-income communities who may not have the necessary infrastructure to participate fully in online school. To mitigate this, the Government of Delhi introduced a worksheet based education system for all public schools in the national capital to ensure no student was denied education. This paper discusses a qualitative study conducted between July to December 2020 with grade 10 students from Delhi public schools, their teachers and parents to understand: (1) the effect of a new shared home-school context and (2) the emergence of a 'Worksheet School' infrastructure created to facilitate learning and teaching in low-resourced schools. We reveal how the home as a new site for learning affected students' participation in online school, how the worksheets were re-purposed to support schooling activities and how WhatsApp was used for delivering educational instructions and the fostering of community learning. We discuss implications for equitable access to online learning materials and future work that aims to further study online learning environments in low-resource communities. © 2021 ACM.

School Parks as a Community Health Resource: Use of Joint-Use Parks by Children before and during COVID-19 Pandemic.

Parks are settings for physical activity that can support the physical and mental health of children during the COVID-19 pandemic. We determined the impact of the pandemic on the use of joint-use parks outside of school hours by children in Austin, TX, United States. In autumn of 2019 and autumn of 2020 (i.e., before and during the COVID-19 pandemic), we used an adapted version of the System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities to observe whether children aged 1-12 participated in physical activity (i.e., sedentary, light and moderate, vigorous) at three parks located at schools serving mostly economically disadvantaged Latinx families. In 2020, we also observed whether children maintained social distance and wore face coverings. Results of negative binomial regression modeling revealed the pandemic was associated with a 46% [95% CI: 20-63%] and 62% [95% CI: 39-76%] decrease in the number of girls and boys at parks, respectively, and a 42% [95% CI: 16-59%] and 60% [95% CI: 36-75%] decrease in the number of girls and boys engaging in physical activity, respectively (p < 0.01). In total, 60.6% of girls and 73.6% of boys were not social distancing, and 91.8% of the time no children wore masks. Interventions should be considered to safely reintroduce children to parks for health benefits during pandemics.

Assessing the effect of socio-economic features of low-income communities and COVID-19 related cases: An empirical study of New York City.

This study examined the effect of socio-economic features of low-income communities and COVID-19 related cases in New York City. The study developed hypotheses and conceptual framework of low-income communities and COVID-19 associated cases based on literature and theoretical review. The proposed framework was then tested using Structural Equation Model (SEM) with secondary data collected from New York Health and Mental Hygiene Department, US Census Bureau, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings revealed that unfavourable working conditions, underlying health conditions, and poor living conditions significantly and positively affects the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases. The study further revealed a positive and significant relationship between confirmed COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 related deaths. Theoretically, this study provides empirical results and a conceptual framework that could be used by other researchers to investigate low-income communities and COVID-19 related topics. Practically, this study called on the federal and state governments to effectively apply the health justice approach to eliminate healthcare discrimination for people living in low-income and marginalised communities as well as providing accessible, safe housing for the more vulnerable who need a place to self-quarantine due to COVID-19 exposure. Further practical and theoretical implications policies are discussed.