Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food prices: Evidence from storable and perishable commodities in India.

The supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 outbreak have led to changes in food prices globally. The impact of COVID-19 on the price of essential and perishable food items in developing and emerging economies has been lacking. Using a recent phone survey by the World Bank, this study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the prices of the three essential food items in India. The results indicate that price of basic food items such as atta (wheat flour) and rice increased significantly during the pandemic compared to the pre-pandemic period. In contrast, during the same period, the price of onions declined significantly. The findings may suggest panic-buying, hoarding, and storability of food items. The results further reveal that remittance income and cash transfers from the government negatively affected commodity prices. Thus, this study's findings suggest that families may have shifted the demand away from essential foods during the pandemic.

Trends in interventional stroke device utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVES: The collateral effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on interventional stroke care is not well described. We studied this effect by utilizing stroke device sales data as markers of interventional stroke case volume in the United States. METHODS: Using a real-time healthcare device sales registry, this observational study examined trends in the sales of thrombectomy devices and cerebral aneurysm coiling from the same 945 reporting hospitals in the U.S. between January 22 and June 31, 2020, and for the same months in 2018 and 2019 to allow for comparison. We simultaneously reviewed daily reports of new COVID-19 cases. The strength of association between the cumulative incidence of COVID-19 and procedural device sales was measured using Spearman rank correlation coefficient (CC). RESULTS: Device sales decreased for thrombectomy (- 3.7%) and cerebral aneurysm coiling (- 8.5%) when comparing 2019-2020. In 2020, thrombectomy device sales were negatively associated with the cumulative incidence of COVID-19 (CC - 0.56, p < 0.0001), with stronger negative correlation during April (CC - 0.97, p < 0.0001). The same negative correlation was observed with aneurysm treatment devices (CC - 0.60, p < 0.001), with stronger correlation in April (CC - 0.97, p < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: The decline in sales of stroke interventional equipment underscores a decline in associated case volumes. Future pandemic responses should consider strategies to mitigate such negative collateral effects.

Business disruptions from social distancing.

Social distancing interventions can be effective against epidemics but are potentially detrimental for the economy. Businesses that rely heavily on face-to-face communication or close physical proximity when producing a product or providing a service are particularly vulnerable. There is, however, no systematic evidence about the role of human interactions across different lines of business and about which will be the most limited by social distancing. Here we provide theory-based measures of the reliance of U.S. businesses on human interaction, detailed by industry and geographic location. We find that, before the pandemic hit, 43 million workers worked in occupations that rely heavily on face-to-face communication or require close physical proximity to other workers. Many of these workers lost their jobs since. Consistently with our model, employment losses have been largest in sectors that rely heavily on customer contact and where these contacts dropped the most: retail, hotels and restaurants, arts and entertainment and schools. Our results can help quantify the economic costs of social distancing.

The Study of Factors on the Small and Medium Enterprises' Adoption of Mobile Payment: Implications for the COVID-19 Era.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic pushes people looking for shopping alternatives, seeking to avoid handling cash in favor of a safe and quick mobile payment. At this juncture, this paper examines the determinants of the adoption of mobile payment services among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in China. The study proposes four-dimensional factors (business factors, technological competence, environment, and consumers' intentions) based on the literature review findings to understand the challenges of adopting mobile payment. A questionnaire is designed to solicit information from the participants. The findings reveal that business factors, technological competencies of SMEs in China, and the environment positively influence mobile payment adoption. Consumer intention has almost no influence on the adoption of mobile payment. Potential implications for the COVID-19 era are also discussed.

Alcohol sales during COVID-19 social restrictions: Initial evidence from Alcoholic Beverage Control states.

Background: The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has disrupted life around the globe and has the potential to seriously impact alcohol consumption for individuals experiencing social isolation and pandemic-related stress. Evidence from prior epidemics suggests increased alcohol consumption during quarantine and times of high stress are associated with a greater chance of developing an alcohol use disorder (AUD). This study examines alcohol sales data to ascertain how individuals are interacting with alcohol during the pandemic.Materials and method: Monthly off premises alcohol sales data for select US alcoholic beverage control states were used to construct monthly sales patterns from 2015 to 2020. An independent samples t-test was used to determine if COVID-19 era alcohol sales were higher than those that occurred from 2015 to 2019.Results: Alcohol sales from March to August 2020 were significantly higher than sales from the same span of months from 2015 to 2019 (t=-2.47, p<.05). The associated monthly percentage increase in sales ranged from 14 to 44% with the overall trend indicating a move toward pre-pandemic sales totals.Conclusion: As COVID-19 continues to disrupt typical ways of being across the globe, the implications of increased sales of alcohol should not be overlooked. Taken together, the evidence on increased use during isolation and later AUD diagnosis coupled with the ABC state sales figures here, point to a potential increase in the development of AUD and an increase in alcohol-related harms.

COVID-19 and the collapse of global trade: building an effective public health response.

The scale of the COVID-19 pandemic is a consequence of international trade and globalisation, with the virus spreading along established trade and travel routes. However, the pandemic also affects international trade through reductions in both supply and demand. In this Viewpoint we describe the many implications for health and propose ways to mitigate them. Problems include reduced access to medical supplies (in particular, personal protective equipment and tests), budgetary shortfalls as a result of reduced tariffs and taxes, and a general decline in economic activity-leading, in many cases, to recessions, threats to social safety nets, and to increased precariousness of income, employment, and food security. However, in exceptional cases, the pandemic has also brought some transient benefits, including to the environment. Looking ahead, there will be great pressure to further liberalise rules on trade to encourage economic recovery, but it is essential that trade policy be informed by its many consequences for health to ensure that the benefits are maximised and threats are minimised through active identification and mitigation.

How Does the Pandemic Facilitate Mobile Payment? An Investigation on Users' Perspective under the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Owing to the convenience, reliability and contact-free feature of Mobile payment (M-payment), it has been diffusely adopted in China during the COVID-19 pandemic to reduce the direct and indirect contacts in transactions, allowing social distancing to be maintained and facilitating stabilization of the social economy. This paper aims to comprehensively investigate the technological and mental factors affecting users' adoption intentions of M-payment under the COVID-19 pandemic, to expand the domain of technology adoption under the emergency situation. This study integrated Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) with perceived benefits from Mental Accounting Theory (MAT), and two additional variables (perceived security and trust) to investigate 739 smartphone users' adoption intentions of M-payment during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. The empirical results showed that users' technological and mental perceptions conjointly influence their adoption intentions of M-payment during the COVID-19 pandemic, wherein perceived benefits are significantly determined by social influence and trust, corresponding with the situation of pandemic. This study initially integrated UTAUT with MAT to develop the theoretical framework for investigating users' adoption intentions. Meanwhile, this study originally investigated the antecedents of M-payment adoption under the pandemic situation and indicated that users' perceptions will be positively influenced when technology's specific characteristics can benefit a particular situation.

Time-trend analysis of medicine sales and shortages during COVID-19 outbreak: Data from community pharmacies.

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 is a worldwide public health concern. Disruptions in the drug market are expected and shortages might worsen. Community pharmacies can contribute to early identification and report of medicines' supply and demand issues. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to characterize the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on outpatient medicines' sales and shortages. METHODS: A retrospective, time-trend analysis of medicine sales, shortages and laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases was performed from February 1st to April 30th, 2020, and its homologous period (regarding sales only). A detailed analysis of 6 pharmaceutical substances was performed. All data were subjected to rescaling using the min-max normalization method, in order to become comparable. Data analysis was performed using Microsoft® Excel. RESULTS: The pandemic resulted in an increase in medicines' demand and reported shortages during the early stage of the outbreak. The maximum proportion of medicine sales was registered on March 13th, 2020, 4 days after the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. By the end of March, sales have already dropped to proportions similar to those of 2019. The maximum proportion of drug shortages was reached about one week after the sales peak and by the end of the study period were below those recorded in the pre-COVID-19 period. The analyzed drugs were paracetamol, ascorbic acid, dapagliflozin plus metformin, rosuvastatin plus ezetimibe, formoterol, and hydroxychloroquine, as these pharmaceutical substances registered the highest growth rate in sales and shortages when compared to the same period in the previous year. Hydroxychloroquine showed the most different pattern trends on sales and shortages of these medicines. CONCLUSIONS: Pharmacies can provide timely and real-world data regarding sales and shortages. The adopted measures to guarantee the continuous supply of the medicine market seem to have worked. The long-term impacts of this pandemic are unknown and should continue to be closely monitored.

Environmental perspective of COVID-19.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused concerns globally. On 30 January WHO has declared it as a global health emergency. The easy spread of this virus made people to wear a mask as precautionary route, use gloves and hand sanitizer on a daily basis that resulted in generation of a massive amount of medical wastes in the environment. Millions of people have been put on lockdown in order to reduce the transmission of the virus. This epidemic has also changed the people's life style; caused extensive job losses and threatened the sustenance of millions of people, as businesses have shut down to control the spread of virus. All over the world, flights have been canceled and transport systems have been closed. Overall, the economic activities have been stopped and stock markets dropped along with the falling carbon emission. However, the lock down of the COVID-19 pandemic caused the air quality in many cities across the globe to improve and drop in water pollutions in some parts of the world.