• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.288-302
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• 2022

Objective: Community pharmacists are frontline health care providers, but have been considered as underutilized professionals on a daily basis. The purpose of this scoping review was to identify information about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on community pharmacy services and to evaluate new services that could be applicable. Methods: We searched MEDLINE and EMBASE for studies published up to January 10, 2020. Search terms consisted of keywords relevant to this review, including "COVID-19", "community pharmacy", and "community pharmacist". This review targeted studies of pharmacist services provided by community pharmacies in OECD member countries during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Results: Twenty-seven studies were included in this review. Changes in community pharmacist services due to the COVID-19 pandemic were broadly classified into four categories. First, as the face-to-face services became challenging, various non-face-to-face services were being tried. Second, community pharmacists directly participated in the services to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Third, community pharmacists made efforts to support continuity of care for patients who experienced difficulties due to the reduced professional care as health and medical resources are concentrated in response to COVID-19. Fourth, community pharmacist services were emerging, targeting patients suffering from greater health inequality during the pandemic. Patients expressed high demand and satisfaction for the service of the community pharmacist, and pharmacists reported self-efficacy and professional pride. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, various community pharmacist services have been tried and received positive evaluations from patients in several OECD countries.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.212-222
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• 2021

Multiple waves of COVID-19 highlighted one crucial aspect of this pandemic worldwide that factors affecting the spread of COVID-19 infection are evolving based on various regional and local practices and events. The introduction of vaccines since early 2021 is expected to significantly control and reduce the cases. However, virus mutations and its new variant has challenged these expectations. Several countries, which contained the COVID-19 pandemic successfully in the first wave, failed to repeat the same in the second and third waves. This work focuses on COVID-19 pandemic control and management in Saudi Arabia. This work aims to predict new cases using deep learning using various important factors. The proposed method is called Deep Learning and Dynamic Weighing-based (DLDW) COVID-19 cases prediction method. Special consideration has been given to the evolving factors that are responsible for recent surges in the pandemic. For this purpose, two weights are assigned to data instance which are based on feature importance and dynamic weight-based time. Older data is given fewer weights and vice-versa. Feature selection identifies the factors affecting the rate of new cases evolved over the period. The DLDW method produced 80.39% prediction accuracy, 6.54%, 9.15%, and 7.19% higher than the three other classifiers, Deep learning (DL), Random Forest (RF), and Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM). Further in Saudi Arabia, our study implicitly concluded that lockdowns, vaccination, and self-aware restricted mobility of residents are effective tools in controlling and managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.777-784
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• 2021

This study explores the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown policies that are used to tackle the pandemic on stock market returns in Indonesia. This study uses fixed-effects panel-data regression method to evaluate the impact of the growth in COVID-19 total confirmed cases and death as well as the lockdown policies on daily stock returns of 272 firms that are listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange's main board and operate in the real sector from 2 March 2020 to 27 November 2020. The study confirms the significantly adverse impact of growth in the total of confirmed cases and death due to COVID-19 on Indonesia's daily stock returns. Moreover, the lockdown policies regardless how strict they are, have a positive and significant impact on the Indonesia's daily stock returns. This study further considers the different impact of COVID-19 pandemic on each of eight observed sectors; where the sector of property as well as trade, service and investment have a significantly negative performance; while the sector of basic industry, consumer goods and mining have a significantly better performance. This study suggests that COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown policies have a mixed impact on the Indonesia's stock market returns.

• Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.344-349
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• 2021

Background: Cancer patients have been disproportionally affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, with high rates of severe outcomes and mortality. Fever is the most common symptom in COVID-19 patients. During the COVID-19 pandemic, physicians may have difficulty in determining the cause of fever (COVID-19, another infection, or cancer fever) in cancer patients. Furthermore, there are no specific guidelines for managing cancer patients with fever during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, this study evaluated the clinical characteristics and outcomes of cancer patients with fever during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: This study retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 328 cancer patients with COVID-19 symptoms (fever) admitted to five hospitals in Daegu, Korea from January to October 2020. We obtained data on demographics, clinical manifestations, laboratory test results, chest computed tomography images, cancer history, cancer treatment, and outcomes of all enrolled patients from electronic medical records. Results: The most common COVID-19-like symptoms were fever (n=256, 78%). Among 256 patients with fever, only three (1.2%) were diagnosed with COVID-19. Most patients (253, 98.8%) with fever were not diagnosed with COVID-19. The most common solid malignancies were lung cancer (65, 19.8%) and hepatobiliary cancer (61, 18.6%). Twenty patients with fever experienced a delay in receiving cancer treatment. Eighteen patients discontinued active cancer treatment because of fever. Major events during the treatment delay period included death (2.7%), cancer progression (1.5%), and major organ dysfunction (2.7%). Conclusion: Considering that only 0.9% of patients tested for COVID-19 were positive, screening for COVID-19 in cancer patients with fever should be based on the physician's clinical decision, and patients might not be routinely tested.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.187-198
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• 2022

This study attempted to examine whether the spread of infectious diseases and quarantine measures such as border blockade and restrictions on movement due to the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic is the cause of a decrease in product trade. To this end, a gravity model analysis was conducted using commodity trade statistics from Korea and major trading partners. As a result of the analysis, it was empirically confirmed that in 2020, the time of the spread of COVID-19, the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic was an obstacle to reducing Korea's trade. However, in the case of 2021, it was not possible to confirm whether the impact of the pandemic had a significant effect on commodity trade. As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 is different, the commodity trade situation in 2022 when the COVID-19 epidemic is stably managed is also likely to change. Since factors such as response to COVID-19 and the spread of vaccines vary from country to country, it is thought that such various factors should be fully considered in the process of establishing policies to end the COVID-19 era

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.137-154
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• 2024

This study aimed to determine the characteristics of maternal stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. This review collected data from May 1 to August 10, 2023, focusing on literature published from 2020 on wards in English or Korean using key biomedical (PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and CINAHL) and major Korean databases (RISS, KISS, and the National Library of Korea). The searched terms were "pregnan*," "maternity," "COVID," "corona," "pandemic," "infection," and "stress," as well as their Korean equivalents. In total, 13 papers were selected. The maternal stress level generally increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary factors affecting maternal stress were the medical, psychological, and socio-economic factors. Interventions for stress reduction in pregnant women during the pandemic were found to be effective, such as online education and training This study can be used as a reference for developing stress reduction programs to prepare for novel infectious disease emergencies.

• Journal of Dental Anesthesia and Pain Medicine
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.237-244
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• 2021

Background: This study aimed to analyze Twitter users' emotional tendencies regarding oral surgery procedures before and after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic worldwide. Methods: Tweets posted in English before and after the COVID-19 pandemic were included in the study. Popular tweets in 2019 were searched using the keywords "tooth removal", "tooth extraction", "dental pain", "wisdom tooth", "wisdom teeth", "oral surgery", "oral surgeon", and "OMFS". In 2020, another search was conducted by adding the words "COVID" and "corona" to the abovementioned keywords. Emotions underlying the tweets were analyzed using CrystalFeel - Multidimensional Emotion Analysis. In this analysis, we focused on four emotions: fear, anger, sadness, and joy. Results: A total of 1240 tweets, which were posted before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, were analyzed. There was a statistically significant difference between the emotions' distribution before and after the pandemic (p < 0.001). While the sense of joy decreased after the pandemic, anger and fear increased. There was a statistically significant difference between the emotional valence distributions before and after the pandemic (p < 0.001). While a negative emotion intensity was noted in 52.9% of the messages before the pandemic, it was observed in 74.3% of the messages after the pandemic. A positive emotional intensity was observed in 29.8% of the messages before the pandemic, but was seen in 10.7% of the messages after the pandemic. Conclusion: Infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, may lead to mental, emotional, and behavioral changes in people. Unpredictability, uncertainty, disease severity, misinformation, and social isolation may further increase dental anxiety and fear among people.

• Journal of Korean Biological Nursing Science
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.95-104
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• 2023

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the trends and characteristics of infection-related patient safety incident reporting before and during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Korea, and to provide basic data for preventing infection-related patient safety incidents and improving their management. Methods: A cross-sectional analysis of secondary national data (Patient Safety Reporting Data) was conducted. In total, 517 infection-related patient safety incidents reported from 2018 to 2021 were analyzed. Changes in the number of reports before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and differences in variables related to infection-related patient safety incidents were analyzed using the chi-square test and independent t-test in SPSS 29.0. Results: This study found that infection-related patient safety incidents decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to before the pandemic. Furthermore, incident-related characteristics, such as the type of healthcare organization, severity of harm, and post-incident actions, changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusion: The many changes in the infection control system and practices during the COVID-19 pandemic may have contributed to a decrease in the reporting of infection-related patient safety incidents. It is hoped that longitudinal studies on patient safety incidents related to the pandemic and analytical studies on factors influencing patient safety incidents will continue to be conducted to prevent and improve patient safety incidents.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.67-78
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• 2023

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the COVID-19 pandemic-driven effect changes of quality factors on customer satisfaction in Korean Police Civil Affairs Service. Methods: This study fitted a regression model to the data collected by Korean National Police Agency from 2019 (before COVID-19 pandemic) to 2020 (during COVID-19 pandemic). In order to simultaneously estimate the effects of major seven quality factors on customer satisfaction for 'before the pandemic' and for 'during the pandemic', the regression model included not only customer satisfaction as the dependent variable, but also the fourteen independent variables consisting of the seven quality factors and their seven interaction terms. The interaction terms were defined by multiplying each quality factor by a dummy variable indicating either before or during the pandemic. Therefore, the coefficient estimates of the interaction terms indicate the changes of their corresponding quality factor effects on customer satisfaction between before and during the pandemic. The double bootstrap method was applied to test the significance of coefficient estimates. Results: Both before and during the pandemic, all quality factors had positive effects on customer satisfaction. However, these effects changed differently from before to during the pandemic: (increased) supportability, sincerity, and convenience; (decreased) integrity, professionalism, and fairness; (unchanged) promptness. Conclusion: This study found that the pandemic caused significant effect changes of quality factors on customer satisfaction in Korean Police Civil Affairs Service. This finding suggests the necessity of carefully monitoring such effect changes to effectively and efficiently improve customer satisfaction. This study also identified that from before to during the pandemic, supportability, sincerity, and convenience become more important and hence, need to be better managed.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.180-189
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• 2023

Objectives: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to a global shortage of medical resources; therefore, we investigated whether COVID-19 impacted the quality of non-COVID-19 hospital care in Korea by comparing hospital standardized mortality rates (HSMRs) before and during the pandemic. Methods: This retrospective cohort study analyzed Korean National Health Insurance discharge claim data obtained from January to June in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. Patients' in-hospital deaths were classified according to the most responsible diagnosis categories. The HSMR is calculated as the ratio of expected deaths to actual deaths. The time trend in the overall HSMR was analyzed by region and hospital type. Results: The final analysis included 2 252 824 patients. In 2020, the HSMR increased nationwide (HSMR, 99.3; 95% confidence interval [CI], 97.7 to 101.0) in comparison to 2019 (HSMR, 97.3; 95% CI, 95.8 to 98.8). In the COVID-19 pandemic zone, the HSMR increased significantly in 2020 (HSMR, 112.7; 95% CI, 107.0 to 118.7) compared to 2019 (HSMR, 101.7; 95% CI, 96.9 to 106.6). The HSMR in all general hospitals increased significantly in 2020 (HSMR, 106.4; 95% CI, 104.3 to 108.5) compared to 2019 (HSMR, 100.3; 95% CI, 98.4 to 102.2). Hospitals participating in the COVID-19 response had a lower HSMR (HSMR, 95.6; 95% CI, 93.9 to 97.4) than hospitals not participating in the COVID-19 response (HSMR, 124.3; 95% CI, 119.3 to 129.4). Conclusions: This study suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic may have negatively impacted the quality of care in hospitals, especially general hospitals with relatively few beds. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is necessary to prevent excessive workloads in hospitals and to properly employ and coordinate the workforce.