One Ventilator, Multiple Patients

The emergence of the pandemic through the virus SARS-CoV-2 produced a disproportionate supply/demand of mechanical ventilation. To mitigate it, some authors proposed to use one ventilator for several patients at the same time based on the pilot study of Neyman 2006. Although it seems reasonable, based on the current evidence, the use of this technique does not guarantee a constant respiratory minute volume for each patient coupled to the ventilatory system. Thus, the use of such a circuit represents a threat to the individualized medicine approach. Finally, there are ethical issues. Although the ventilator can save the life of one patient, using it with more than one patient increases the risk of critical treatment failure in all of them. In the face of this, we must remember the four fundamental principles of medicine: non-maleficence, beneficence, autonomy, and justice. It is therefore advisable to develop scientific knowledge through further studies and the improvement of the health infrastructure in order to provide a practical solution applicable to different institutions, whether public or private, to optimize the use of this resource in crisis situations, without compromising the quality of care provided. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Speech Recognition and Neural Networks based Talking Health Care Bot (THCB): Medibot

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected healthcare in several ways. Some patients were unable to make it to appointments due to curfews, transportation restrictions, and stay-at-home directives, while less urgent procedures were postponed or cancelled. Others steered clear of hospitals out of fear of contracting an infection. With the use of a conversational artificial intelligence-based program, the Talking Health Care Bot (THCB) could be useful during the pandemic by allowing patients to receive supportive care without physically visiting a hospital. Therefore, the THCB will drastically and quickly change in-person care to patient consultation through the internet. To give patients free primary healthcare and to narrow the supply-demand gap for human healthcare professionals, this work created a conversational bot based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. The study proposes a revolutionary computer program that serves as a patient's personal virtual doctor. The program was carefully created and thoroughly trained to communicate with patients as if they were real people. Based on a serverless architecture, this application predicts the disease based on the symptoms of the patients. A Talking Healthcare chatbot confronts several challenges, but the user's accent is by far the most challenging. This study has then evaluated the proposed model by using one hundred different voices and symptoms, achieving an accuracy rate of 77%. © 2023 IEEE.

Research and Design of an Emergency Supply Assurance Monitoring System in the Post-epidemic Context

At present, the COVID-19 epidemic is still ravaging the world, and the domestic epidemic is still recurring and continues to affect people's life and work. The research and design of an emergency supply assurance monitoring system in response to the epidemic and other emergencies, which provides the competent authorities with monitoring alert and trend data of supply, demand and price of essential goods market, is of great significance to stabilize people's basic essential goods materials. Based on the data of essential goods under epidemic, the system carries out the construction and application of monitoring and warning model and RNN-SARIMA hybrid model. Through the research and design of the system, monitoring and warning of abnormal fluctuations of essential goods and predicting price trends are realized. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The Spatio-Temporal Evolution of Food Production and Self-Sufficiency in China from 1978 to 2020: From the Perspective of Calories.

Ensuring national food security is an eternal topic. We unified six categories of food with calorie content including grain, oil, sugar, fruits and vegetables, animal husbandry, and aquatic products on the basis of provincial-level data, and we dynamically evaluated caloric production capacity and the supply-demand equilibrium under the increase in feed-grain consumption as well as the food losses and waste in China from 1978 to 2020 at four different levels. The results show that: (1) From the perspective of food production, the total national calorie production showed a linear growth trend, with a growth rate of 31.7 × 1012 kcal/year, of which the proportion of grain crops has always exceeded 60%. Most provinces showed significant increasing trends in food calorific production, except for Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang, which showed slightly decreasing trends. The distribution pattern of food calories and their growth rate were high in the east and low in the west. (2) From the perspective of the food supply-demand equilibrium, the national food calorie supply has been in surplus since 1992, but significant spatial heterogeneity is detected, with the Main Marketing Region changing from a tight balance to a short surplus, North China always remaining in calorie shortage, and 15 provinces still presenting supply and demand gaps up to 2020, necessitating the establishment of a more efficient and faster flow and trade system. (3) The national food caloric center has shifted 204.67 km to the northeast, and the population center has shifted to the southwest. The reverse migration of the centers of food supply and demand will further aggravate the pressure on water and soil resources and cause higher requirements for ensuring the circulation and trade system of food supply. The results are of great significance for the timely adjustment of agricultural development policies, making rational use of natural advantages and ensuring China's food security and sustainable agricultural development.

Knowledge ecosystem of financial markets: a new perspective on alleviating the supply-demand contradiction of the rural finance in the post-COVID-19 era

Purpose: This paper aims to establish a systematic cognition to alleviate the supply–demand contradiction in rural financial markets from an integrated perspective of knowledge management and proposes the concept of rural financial knowledge ecosystem (RFKE) to encourage multifaceted solutions. Design/methodology/approach: The authors qualitatively describe the process that the knowledge management dilemmas cause the supply–demand contradiction in the rural finance and further summarize a systematic methodology from three dimensions: the knowledge subject, the knowledge environment and the knowledge ecology. Findings: The authors list four types of knowledge management dilemmas leading to the supply–demand contradiction in the rural finance, i.e. the weak knowledge sharing, the poor knowledge flow, the slow knowledge updating and the imperfect knowledge environment. Meanwhile, the RFKE model consisting of the ecological subject, the ecological environment and the ecological regulation is also presented. Research limitations/implications: The role of knowledge management in improving the allocation of financial resources to various rural financial market participants (government, rural financial institutions, farmers, agricultural enterprises, etc.). Originality/value: The authors creatively give the RFKE model, which complements and enriches the theory of knowledge management. Meanwhile, relevant management practices are urgently needed under the macro circumstance of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rural revitalization in China. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

How COVID-19 has affected supply and demand within tourism industry

There is no doubt that coronavirus has succeeded in crippling businesses and people worldwide. It has led to unprecedented economic crisis in countries around the world. The tourism sector isn't an exception to its devastating impacts. The virus has succeeded in affecting not just the economy. In addition to such, job opportunities, and regional developments in local communities have been greatly affected. Tourism throughout the world has been stagnant since the month of April 2020 due to the advent of COVID-19. Given this temporary problem, economies and employment rates have been affected to a great extent. Also, local communities around the world are struggling to survive. In most countries, 50% the revenue generated from exports is contributed by tourism. This means it is a major contributor of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as well as employment. The major aim of this paper is to carry out an objective review that can enable researchers and experts understand as well as manage the impacts of COVID-19 on tourism. For this to be achieved, this paper discussed the transformational opportunities presented by COVID-19 including questions that it raises. The paper attempts to identify pre-assumptions, institutions, and fundamental values which the tourism industry including other academia need to challenge for development to be achieved. Furthermore, the paper discusses the major impacts, experiences and behaviors being experienced by the 3 stakeholders in the tourism industry - social cost, supply, and demand. Just as measures have been adopted by countries to ameliorate the situation, recommendations have been put forward to ensure speedy recovery of the sector.

Analysis of the effects of COVID-19 outbreak on the rural economy of Nehbandan county in south Khorasan province

The sudden outbreak of Covid-19 has severely affected different sectors of the economy of each country, especially the agricultural sector, and has caused widespread disruptions in food systems, exports and imports of goods and agricultural production which shows the necessity to study these effects in order to adapt and deal with them. The study was aimed to analyze the effects of coronavirus outbreak on the rural economy of Nehbandan county in South Khorasan province. The statistical population of the study was all farmers in Nehbandan county which by calculating the Cochran's formula, about 232 farmers' households were determined as the sample population. To select cases through the county, the multi-stage sampling and among villages, random sampling was used and data collection was done through a questionnaire. Data analysis was done through exploratory factor analysis approach. The results showed that due to the outbreak of Corona virus, both supply and demand for agricultural products have decreased. In contrast, the purchase price of agricultural inputs, the selling price of products, labor wages and rents of agricultural land have increased, which indicates the increase in agricultural costs. On the other hand, the access to agricultural inputs such as machinery and especially agricultural labor has been greatly reduced, which has increased the time of planting and harvesting. Furthermore, agricultural and even non-agricultural incomes have decreased and along with increasing in living expenses and unemployment, have led to a decrease in the welfare and livelihood of rural households. It is suggested that government and officials provide credit and training packages to support farmers during the outbreak of the covid-19.

Functional food market analysis: Russian and international aspects

The modern food market is undergoing a period of rapid development following the changes in marketing technologies and consumer behavior patterns. Nowadays, people pay more attention to the quality and composition of food products, as well as their functional properties. The present article reviews the international and Russian market of functional foods in order to define the consumer demand for new specialized products. The methods included data comparison, grouping, and systematization. The analysis involved Russian and foreign papers published in 2018-2022 and registered in Scopus, eLibrary, Cyberleninka, and the Library of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. It also covered the National Demography Project, the Healthy Nutrition Project, and the Strategy for Improving the Quality of Food Products through 2030. Consumers' growing interest in improving their health and immune system proved to be the key factor in the functional food market. The COVID-19 pandemic intensified such trends as the priority of healthy, high-protein, and low-sugar foods. Japan and the USA are the current leaders on this market. Russia supports healthy food policy at the state level. The functional food market is likely to become the most promising and competitive sector of global food economy. Consumer demand for these products is steadily growing: the volume of demand for functional food products will reach 17 trillion rubles by 2027. However, Russian food science needs more research in this area to catalyze import substitution. The Omsk Agrarian University has numerous projects that are meant to increase the competitiveness of the domestic functional food industry.

PNAE and actions in the State of Rio de Janeiro during the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic brought impacts of several types, among them it affected the execution of the National School Feeding Program (PNAE), demanding adaptations of strategies and regulations for the continuity of food supply to Brazilian students enrolled in the public school network. This study aimed to recognize the strategies for implementing the PNAE in Rio de Janeiro (RJ), its limits and contributions to the promotion of Food and Nutritional Security for students from Rio de Janeiro, and to analyze the regulations related to the management of the program in the pandemic. A cross-sectional and descriptive study was carried out, with an online questionnaire being applied to the executing entities (EEx) of the PNAE in the state of RJ from March to July 2020. Most of the EEx continued the PNAE, adopting as a priority the delivery of food kits and the transfer of financial resources, carried out through intersectoral partnerships and with the participation of nutritionists, education workers and School Feeding Councils;however, sometimes violating the PNAE guidelines, regarding universality, equity and purchase of foodstuffs from family farming. It was concluded that many implementing entities did not fulfill or partially fulfilled the PNAE objectives in the first half of 2020, enhancing the high prevalence of food insecurity observed in the country.

Cluster analysis of marine toll service area to minimize price disparity to inprove the economy of the east Indonesian region in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic

High price disparity is an economic problem that causes the welfare level of the population to be low. The government through the Sea Highway program tries to reduce price disparities through subsidized and scheduled sea transportation to serve several ports in Indonesia, one of which is in the province of Riau Islands. The Strait of Lampa Port is one of the marine transportation nodes which is a stopover point for Sea Toll boats on the T-3 route serving Natuna Regency. This port has the status of a regional feeder port with the hinterland area of Natuna Regency with Ranai as the district capital. This study aims to provide input related to the clustering of the Marine Highway program in Natuna from several perspectives, namely from the potential of regional commodities and infrastructure for Sea Toll services in the Natuna region. The analysis method used is descriptive qualitative and comparative. The results showed that for the cluster of the western region of Indonesian waters, in this case represented by a sample of the T-3 Natuna Islands Sea Toll route service, in terms of supply and demand from the homebase of Tanjung Priok Port, it is sufficiently balanced even though there are several superior commodities in the Natuna archipelago that have not yet optimally distributed, due to the low development and increase in added value of commodities. Based on the sample Sea Toll service route that has been selected for the Western Region of Indonesia, namely the T-3 route for the Natuna Islands region, several criteria that need to be considered in the future regarding the Sea Toll service cluster include regional commodities, Port infrastructure facilities and infrastructure, hinterland transportation facilities and infrastructure, and ship type and capacity.

Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on livestock and poultry sectors: veterinary students perception and suggestions. (Special issue.)

The study was undertaken to know perception of veterinary students on impact of COVID-19 lockdown on livestock and poultry sectors and suggestions to manage the lockdown impact. Data were collected through google form from 73 veterinary undergraduate students on July 2021. The data was analysed by descriptive statistics, Rank Based Quotient (RBQ) and results were interpreted. Our results revealed that veterinary students strongly agreed with increased prices for concentrate feed and limited supply (50.70%), limited availability of veterinary doctors for private practices (39.70%), declined livestock sales owing to livestock transportation constraints (41.10%) and declined demand for meat/livestock due to consumer unreadiness (28.80%) toward the livestock sectors. Further, the study reported that veterinary students had greater perception on price drop of eggs and broiler chicken during lockdown's initial period (47.90%), rise in consumption of country chicken meat and eggs (61.60%) and farm labour shortages (47.90%) in the poultry sector. These participants suggested, expansion of milk collection centres;and sell milk and meat via a mobile van (RBQ 47.06);give COVID-19 vaccination priority to farm labour;employ family labour for farm maintenance (RBQ 36.76);and promote COVID-19 measures through prominent local leaders (RBQ 35.29) to manage COVID-19 impact on livestock.

Content analysis of tripadvisor reviews on safe tourism certified restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic

Covid-19 outbreak, which emerged in December 2019, deeply affected the economies. During the Covid-19 outbreak, there was a significant decline in restaurant revenues, foreign currency inflows and employment. Moreover, the outbreak has caused radical changes in lifestyles and consumer behaviors. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the user comments on the TripAdvisor website regarding Safe Tourism Certified restaurants in Turkey during the Covid-19 outbreak. The universe considered in this study comprised users who ate at Safe Tourism Certified restaurants in Turkey and commented on the Tripadvisor website. The content analysis method, which is used in qualitative research methodologies, was applied. In this context, a total of 922 reviews for 98 Safe Tourism Certified restaurants on the Tripadvisor website over the period of 11 March 2020- 20 April 2022 were examined with the help of Nvivo 12 program. It was revealed that 80.6% of the customer comments were positive. The most emphasized factors in the comments were taste, price, attitude and behavior of the employee, view, food and beverage quality, cleanliness, punctuality, employee care and Covid-19 security measures. These findings can assist in understanding the nature of consumer perceptions during pandemic.

The importance of China in Polish trade in agri-food products

The aim of the article is to present changes in the bilateral trade in agri-food products between Poland and China, and to identify the main opportunities and threats to the development of Polish agri-food exports to this market. The article is based on data received from the Central Statistical Office, WITS-Comtrade and Eurostat-Comext databases. The analysis covers the value and commodity structure of bilateral trade in agri-food products as well as indicators of the degree of adjustment of Polish agri-food exports to China's import demand. The research results indicate that Polish trade in agri-food products with China is characterized by a constant deficit, and the export of agri-food products from Poland to China focuses on several groups of products. Sales of Polish food on the Chinese market reached a record value of EUR 207 million in 2019, but it constituted only 0.7% of the total Polish agri-food exports. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic caused additional logistical difficulties, increased production and transport costs, which directly translated into lower profitability and a decrease in exports in the next two years.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on vertical price transmission in the U.S. fresh banana market

The U.S. imports about two billion dollars of fresh bananas, accounting for over 99 percent of domestic banana consumption annually. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the fresh banana supply chain and caused unexpected price movements along the marketing channel. This research investigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on price adjustments in the U.S. fresh banana market. A Vector Error Correction (VEC) model was employed to evaluate the speeds of price adjustments along the U.S. banana marketing channel at the import and retail levels, and historical decomposition graphs were used to investigate the magnitude of price adjustments caused by the COVID-19 shock. The results show that the deviation from the long-run equilibrium caused by the shock was corrected faster for the import prices than retail prices. Hence, the speeds of price adjustments were asymmetric in the period of the COVID-19 shock. Additionally, the magnitudes of price changes caused by the pandemic shock were different, leading to increased price margins. These results point to the inefficiency of the banana marketing channel with welfare, policy, and agribusiness implications.

The COVID-19 impact on supply chain operations of automotive industry: a case study of sustainability 4.0 based on sense-adapt-transform framework

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of global manufacturing companies to their supply chains and operating activities as one of the significant disruption events of the past two decades. It has demonstrated that major companies underestimate the need for sustainable and resilient operations. The pandemic has resulted in significant disruptions especially in the automotive industry. The goal of the study is to determine impact of the COVID-19 on supply chain operations in a Turkish automotive manufacturer and to develop a framework for improving operational activities to survive in the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) environment. The study identifies how the case study company has been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak and what challenges the company faced during the pandemic. A diagnostic survey and semi-structured interviews were used as data sources with qualitative and quantitative analysis. The results showed that the pandemic led to significant disruptions through various factors explained by shortage of raw materials/spare parts, availability of transportation, availability of labors, demand fluctuations, increase in sick leaves, new health and safety regulations. Findings also show the necessity to re-design resilience supply chain management by providing recovery plans (forecasting, supplier selection, simulation, monitoring) which consider different measures in different stages. In addition, the best practices were recommended for the case study by considering internal, external, and technological challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the given targeted guidelines and improvement for the automotive company might be applicable in the industrial practices for other organizations. The article concludes with future research directions and managerial implications for successful applications.

COVID-19 impacts on farmed species: focus on turbot and caviar

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the seafood supply chain were assessed, focusing in particular on the farmed turbot supply chain and the sturgeon caviar market in the EU. Overall, 2020 saw consistent export volumes of turbot in the EU. The sharp decline in trade at the initial impact of the pandemic, during March and April of 2020, has been offset by the peak export seasons of summer and Christmas. In Spain, turbot used to be sold to the HoReCa segment and other "premium" markets at international level (USA, Asia). As these traditional segments were closed during lockdown periods or experienced logistic problems, main Spanish producers almost completely shifted to the retail market in a few months. So far in 2021, an operator reports that a significant part of turbot production is still sold through retail despite lower sale prices, since the HoReCa sector is still impacted by the low level of tourism activities. This appears consistent with the growth of at-home consumption volumes in Spain in 2020 (+55% compared to 2019). However, this shift caused a slight drop of the average price. Overall, 2020 saw lower exports and imports of caviar. The sharpest decline in trade was seen during the initial impact of the pandemic, in March and April 2020. Logistical problems, as well as a decline in demand are the explanatory factors. As the year progressed and the peak season of Christmas drew closer, volumes increased to approach pre-pandemic levels. During the first half of 2021 the trade of caviar seemed to be higher than ever before. As there is no production data available it is unsure how production was affected, but several stakeholders report postponing their spring harvest.

Agricultural land prices in Poland during the COVID-19 pandemic

The article aims to estimate the dynamics of agricultural land prices in nominal and real terms and to assess their differentiation due to land localisation and land quality in the period of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the period preceding the pandemic in Poland. The results of the analysis, showed that during the five years before the pandemic the rate of growth of the arable land prices was high. In the first year of the pandemic, the prices were stable, but in the second one, the prices soared. The rate of growth was higher than the rates in the previous years. One of the reasons for the excessively high increase was inflation. The appearance of urban households on the land market was another reason. The restrictions imposed on society due to COVID-19, combined with the development of remote work opportunities, resulted in a rise in the interest in purchasing residential real estates in rural areas and increased demand for agricultural land. This phenomenon will have long term multidimensional effects for rural areas. Moreover, the quick growth of land prices, despite the existing legal barriers to trade, means that land is regarded more and more as an regular investment good. The rapid growth of agricultural land prices increases the attractiveness of agricultural land as a speculative good. In such circumstances, it is not surprising that during the pandemic, the relation of the prices of fertile land to prices of lower quality land decreased. Probably this phenomenon will be an important barrier to the improvement in the area structure of the Polish agriculture.

COVID-19 and climate: threat multipliers to Pacific food and nutrition security

Factors currently undermining food and nutrition security in Pacific Island Countries are discussed, namely: climate and water risk, associated loss of arable land and the adaptation gap;limited employment opportunities and reliance on remittances;significant dependence on food imports;persistent gender inequality;rapid population growth, intergenerational inequity, and urbanisation;persistent under-resourcing of biosecurity, animal and plant health;fragmented value chains and food governance systems;traditional farming practises and declines in agricultural productivity;increasing logistical costs and the future implications of greenhouse gas targets for shipping food to and from Pacific nations;and poorly adapted and underfunded education and risk communication. It is also indicated that the current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted exposures in Pacific security, with this shock resulting in significant loss of employment and incomes, disrupted value chains due to both local and international restrictions on logistics, and resultant increases in food prices and growing food insecurity.

Managing feed cost in a volatile market

The word 'unprecedented' is used liberally and often inappropriately. However, the current macro-economic and global political landscape is currently going through genuinely unprecedented flux. Economic recovery post-COVID-19 has driven strong inflationary pressures that are compounded by labor shortages and supply chain fragility. Global energy prices are extremely high, and many food staples are increasingly unaffordable for consumers. This article highlights the significance of using enzymes as feed additive to reduce feed costs.

The impact of COVID 19 on the Czech stock market

COVID-19 has increased suffering in various sectors of life and affected people's daily lives worldwide. It has significantly impacted the health, economic and social fields. The Czech Republic is one of the countries hit hard by the epidemic, which led to its closure several times. This paper empirically examines the impact of COVID-19 on stock prices in the Czech Republic with the help of the Autoregressive-Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bounds Test. The daily closing prices of the stock index, P.X., from 22/03/2020 to 21/02/2022 were used for the Analysis. The results reveal that the Czech stock market was negatively affected during the pandemic;this effect was short-term and long-term.