Does the Air Quality Benefit from Lockdown Policy? Evidence from Major Cities in China

The lockdown policy, resulted from the fight against the spread of Covid-19, offers a unique chance to test the effect of urban human activities on air quality. The study employs the event study method to analyze data on air quality (particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) and Air Quality Index (AQI)) levels and economic activity (vehicle sales growth, construction area, industrial added value, crude oil production) from 31 major cities across China. It aims to examine whether the lockdown event affects economic activities, which in turn has an effect on air quality. The findings suggest that the lockdown has a significant positive effect on air quality nationwide. The air quality has been greatly improved during the lockdown period. The placebo test verifies that when there is no lockdown, the changes in air quality over the same period are smaller. The study results will help understand the factors of economic activity that have a significant impact on air quality during the lockdown period and provide a reference for the government to formulate corresponding air pollution control measures. © 2022 The authors and IOS Press.

Analysis and Research on the Characteristics of COVID-19 Epidemic in Urban Village and Its Prevention and Control Strategies in Primary Care Institutions

Background: For a period of time, the outbreak of the COVID-19 outbreak in many urban villages in our country had caused concern. The dense and complex population structure of urban villages, with their inter-regional mobility, posed a challenge to the prevention and control of the epidemic. Objective: Urban village areasare more prone to regional outbreaks of infectious diseases because of their spatial environment, demographic characteristics, cross-regional mobility and the characteristics of residents' medical treatment behavior. The purpose of this study was tounderstand the characteristics of the COVID-19 epidemic situation in urban villages and the current situation and difficulties of primary care institutions in carrying out COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control measures, in order to provide references for primary care institutions to deal with normalized prevention and control, social dynamic clearing work and future infectious disease prevention and control. Methods: By using public opinion analysis, literature retrieval, online interviews with epidemic prevention and control personnel and experts in urban village, the epidemic situation, prevention and control status of urban village were summarized, and the existing weak links and important loopholes were analyzed. Results: Based on the relevant information, a total of six points of concern were extracted: (1) The number of mapping and screening objects was large, which was the focus and difficulty of epidemic prevention and control work in urban villages.(2) There was not strict closed-loop management lead to virus carriers who were not timely controlled, which caused a risk of spreading the epidemic.(3) The prevention and control of nosocomial infection in primary care institutions was not in place.(4)There were loopholes in the inspection of close contacts in the principle of territorial management;close contacts who did not live and work in the same administrative area but only screened in their living places, which may lead to the spread of the epidemic in workplaces where secondary close contacts may be at risk of infection were not screened in a timely manner.(5) Overload had become the norm, highlighting the large gap in primary health care manpower.(6) During the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, residents were paralyzed and careless, and the phenomenon of not wearing masks in public places and crowd gathering was common. Health education still needs to be strengthened and emphasized that residents were the first responsible for their own health. Conclusion: Primary care providers played an important role in the prevention and control of COVID-19 in urban village by undertaking community management, outpatient treatment, public health services, health education, vaccination, quarantine hotel stationing, joint prevention and control, etc. It was recommended that additional fever sentinel clinics be set up for early detection and isolation to avoid further spread of the epidemic, rental houses be requisitioned to meet the demand for isolated medical observation, primary care institutions be strengthened for hospitalization and prevention, green relief channels be opened to protect special groups from medical treatment, volunteers be organized to reinforce primary care institutions, and health education emphasized that residents were the first to be responsible for maintaining their own health and raised personal awareness of the risk of COVID-19 prevention and control. Copyright © 2022 by the Chinese General Practice.

Economic impact of the COVID-19 epidemic and assessment of green economic recovery policy

China is now facing the double pressure of economic downturn brought by COVID-19 and low-carbon transition. The trade-off between short-term economic recovery and long-term green development makes it necessary to design the economic recovery policies under multiple objectives. This paper constructs a new Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, and analyses the process from the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic to its economic impact and then to government intervention. The results show that 1) the short-term economic recovery effects of all three economic stimulus policies are remarkable. Under the green economic stimulus policy, GDP grew by 3.3%, 5.3% and 6% in the second, third and fourth quarter of 2020. 2) the green economic stimulus policy reduced economic fluctuations, thus acting as an automatic stabilizer and contributing to a stable economic recovery. 3) in the long run, the green economic stimulus policy is conducive to achieving a green transition of the economy, and avoiding a high carbon lock-in effect in the future. More importantly, it is the preferred path to achieve the 2060 carbon neutrality target. We estimate that each 1 CNY increase in green investment will reduce future abatement costs by 1.5~2.6 CNY. © 2022, Editorial Board of Journal of Systems Engineering Society of China. All right reserved.

FCOSMask: Fully Convolutional One-Stage Face MaskWearing Detection Based on MobileNetV3

method against the worldwide Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID- 19). This paper proposes FCOSMask, a fully convolutional one-stage face mask wearing detector based on the lightweight network, for emergency epidemic control and long-term epidemic prevention work. MobileNetV3 is applied as the backbone network to reduce computational overhead. Thus, complex calculation related to anchor boxes is avoided in the anchor-free method, and Complete Intersection over Union (CIoU) loss is selected as the bounding box regression loss function to speed up model convergence. Experiments show that compared to other anchor-based methods, detection speed of FCOSMask is improved around 3 to 4 times on self-established datasets and mean average precision (mAP) achieves 92.4%, which meets the accuracy and real-time requirements of the face mask wearing detection task in most public areas. Finally, a Web-based face mask wearing system is developed that can support public epidemic prevention and control management.. © 2021 Association for Computing Machinery. All rights reserved.

Using AI to Create O2O Labor Law Consultation and Training Integration Scheme

In recent years, with the rapid development of economy, China's labor relations are constantly changing, and the demands of workers for interests are increasing. In addition, with the outbreak of COVID-19, enterprises are facing severe challenges under both external and internal pressure. In view of this, relying on AI technology and professional personnel, Wish Magic provides consultation and service of labor laws and regulations for people or enterprises in need of relevant help, mediates labor disputes and strives for legitimate interests through online AI keyword search and offline VIP face-to-face expert consultation. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2021.