• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.151-157
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• 2020

Objectives: The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is one of the main public health challenges currently facing the world. Because of its high transmissibility, COVID-19 has already caused extensive morbidity and mortality in many countries throughout the world. An accurate estimation of the basic reproduction number (R₀) of COVID-19 would be beneficial for prevention programs. In light of discrepancies in original research on this issue, this systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to estimate the pooled R₀ for COVID-19 in the current outbreak. Methods: International databases (including Google Scholar, Science Direct, PubMed, and Scopus) were searched to identify studies conducted regarding the R₀ of COVID-19. Articles were searched using the following keywords: "COVID-19" and "basic reproduction number" or "R₀." The heterogeneity among studies was assessed using the I² index, the Cochran Q test, and T². A random-effects model was used to estimate R₀ in this study. Results: The mean reported R₀ in the identified articles was 3.38±1.40, with a range of 1.90 to 6.49. According to the results of the random-effects model, the pooled R₀ for COVID-19 was estimated as 3.32 (95% confidence interval, 2.81 to 3.82). According to the results of the meta-regression analysis, the type of model used to estimate R₀ did not have a significant effect on heterogeneity among studies (p=0.81). Conclusions: Considering the estimated R₀ for COVID-19, reducing the number of contacts within the population is a necessary step to control the epidemic. The estimated overall R₀ was higher than the World Health Organization estimate.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.154-168
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• 2021

COVID-19 has been spreading all around the world, and threatening global health. In this situation, identifying and isolating infected individuals rapidly has been one of the most important measures to contain the epidemic. However, the standard diagnosis procedure with RT-PCR (Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction) is costly and time-consuming. For this reason, pooled testing for COVID-19 has been proposed from the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic to reduce the cost and time of identifying the COVID-19 infection. For pooled testing, how many samples are tested in group is the most significant factor to the performance of the test system. When the arrivals of test requirements and the test time are stochastic, batch-service queueing models have been utilized for the analysis of pooled-testing systems. However, most of them do not consider the false-negative test results of pooled testing in their performance analysis. For the COVID-19 RT-PCR test, there is a small but certain possibility of false-negative test results, and the group-test size affects not only the time and cost of pooled testing, but also the false-negative rate of pooled testing, which is a significant concern to public health authorities. In this study, we analyze the performance of COVID-19 pooled-testing systems with false-negative test results. To do this, we first formulate the COVID-19 pooled-testing systems with false negatives as a batch-service queuing model, and then obtain the performance measures such as the expected number of test requirements in the system, the expected number of RP-PCR tests for a test sample, the false-negative group-test rate, and the total cost per unit time, using the queueing analysis. We also present a numerical example to demonstrate the applicability of our analysis, and draw a couple of implications for COVID-19 pooled testing.

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.25-31
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• 2021

The purpose of this study was to keep the Security Control Center, which operates under a shift system, uninterrupted during the COVID-19 virus epidemic. Security facilities responding to cybersecurity threats are essential security facilities that must be operated 24 hours a day, 365 days a day in real time, and are critical to security operations and management. If security facilities such as infectious disease epidemic, system failure, and physical impact are closed or affected, they cannot respond to real-time cyberattacks and can be fatal to security issues. Recently, there have been cases in which security system facilities cannot be operated, such as the closure of facilities due to the COVID-19 virus epidemic and the availability of security systems due to the rainy season, and other cases need to be prepared. In this paper, we propose a plan to configure a security system facility as a multiplexing facility and operate it as an alternative in the event of a closed situation.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.265-296
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• 2020

Macao, a special administrative region of China, has been able to maintain the records of zero deaths and keep confirmed cases under 50 since the outbreak of COVID-19 for more than half a year as of July 2020, despite being the world's most densely populated city. The current paper utilizes the dialogic public relations theory to analyze the situation using both literature review on how the various government actions and strategies during the pandemic were corresponding to the theory, and a quantitative random digital dialing (RDD) telephone survey, with a sample of 502 Macao residents aged 18 or above, to study the public reactions towards the government pandemic prevention actions. Survey results show a high level of public satisfaction towards epidemic prevention performance, as well as some forms of collaborative information redissemination behavior in social media platforms. Literature review and analysis from dialogic theory found that spirit of mutual equality, collaboration with local community, immediacy of presence in crisis time, engagements with stakeholders through maximum media channels and networks, supportiveness to public with both useful information and practical social support like subsidy program, as well as commitment to transparent and genuine communication, are all the dialogic communications strategies that describe what the Macao government has done in the crisis of COVID-19. The dialogic strategies that could be learned from the Macao government may be used as a reference for similar urbanized and densely populated cities in other territories.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.81-103
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• 2022

It recognizes the importance of mental health and well-being worldwide and consistently records public happiness figures through the World Happiness Report. COVID-19, which occurred in China in 2019, has changed people's daily lives a lot. The accumulation of stress caused by the prolonged epidemic is affecting people's happiness. The present research has revealed negative mental health effects such as "depression" and "anxiety" after the pandemic. In this regard, it was revealed that the happiness index was also lowered numerically. It is insufficient to analyze specific issues about changes in the issue of happiness felt by the public in Korean society after the epidemic. Therefore, this study aims to identify changes in the happiness issue of Koreans after COVID-19 and find ways to improve happiness. Data were collected from various aspects by searching 32 sub keywords based on ERG theory by dividing the period before and after COVID-19. The results of topic modeling before and after COVID-19 were classified into seven areas of happiness index 2.0 published by the National Assembly Future Research Institute and compared and analyzed. Based on the results of comparing the results of the before and after topic from the perspective of each area, a plan to improve happiness was presented. The academic implications of this paper are that the research on psychological changes caused by COVID-19 was expanded by mining the opinions of the actual public on 'happiness'. In addition, it has practical implications in that it specifically presented measures to promote happiness by utilizing the area of objective happiness indicators based on the existing research on ways to reduce happiness promotion unhappiness.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.272-280
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• 2022

During last few years, pandemic of COVID-19 has been a global issue. Under the COVID-19, global events have been restricted or canceled to secure public hygiene and safety. Since one of the largest global events is Olympic Games, we selected recent Olympic Games as our case of analysis. Tokyo Olympic Games (TOG) was held in 2021, but it encountered a millennium disaster, the pandemic of COVID-19. In such a special period, it is of great significance to explore the emotional tendency of global views before and TOG via artificial intelligence. This paper vastly collects the TOG comment data of mainstream websites in South Korea, China, and the United States by implementing crawler program for sentiment analysis (SA). And we use a variety of sentiment analysis models to compare the accuracy of the experimental results, to obtain more reliable SA results. In addition, in the prediction results, to reduce the distortion of opinion by a minority, we introduce an algorithm called "Removing Biased Minority Opinions (RBMO)" and provide how to apply this method to the interpretation domain. Through our method, more authoritative SA results were obtained, which in turn provided a basis for predicting the sentiment tendency of countries around the world in TOG during the COVID-19 epidemic.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.27-59
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• 2022

During the past two decades, the Southeast Asian region has experienced a range of major crises. Service industries such as tourism and the marginal and migrant laborers who work in them have usually been at the sharp end of these testing events, from natural and environmental disasters, epidemics and pandemics, global financial slumps, terrorism, and political conflict. The latest challenge is the "Novel Coronavirus" (Covid-19/SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. It has already had serious consequences for Southeast Asia and its tourism development and these will continue for the foreseeable future. Since the SARS epidemic of 2002-2004, Southeast Asian economies have become integrated increasingly into those of East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong). This paper examines one of the most significant current crises, Covid-19, and its consequences for Southeast Asia, its tourism industry, and its workers, comparing experiences across the region, and the issues raised by the over-dependence of some countries on East Asia. In research on crises, the main focus has been on dramatic, unpredictable natural disasters, and human-generated global economic downturns. Not so much attention has been devoted to disease and contagion, which has both natural and socio-cultural dimensions in origins and effects, and which, in the case of Covid-19, evoke a pre-crisis period of normality, a liminal transition or "meantime" and a post-crisis "new normality." The transition is not straightforward; in many countries, it operates as a set of serial lockdowns and restrictions, and to predict an uncertain future remains difficult.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.82-91
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• 2023

In 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began in full-scale, the WHO Director-General warned of the dangers of an infodemic. The infodemic is a phenomenon in which false information spreads rapidly like an epidemic and causes chaos, and it was noted that the COVID-19 pandemic is not just limited to health problems, but also linked to a variety of issues such as human rights, economic inequality, various discrimination, hate speech, fake news, global governance etc. In the field of education, it is necessary to think about how to connect this global situation with school classes. Accordingly, this study suggested the direction for global citizenship education by analyzing how the infodemic spreads on Korean social media with the case of the recent global COVID-19 pandemic. According to the research results, the rate of negative emotions was higher than positive ones in the emotions that generate infodemic, while anxiety and anger were focused among negative emotions. In addition, the infodemic tended to spread widely with the feelings of anger rather than anxiety, and the feelings of anger led to advocating aggressive policies against certain country and regions. Therefore, global citizenship education is required to focus on a sense of duty and responsibility as a citizen, not on the level of national identity based on an exclusive sense of belonging. Furthermore, global citizenship education needs to lead to presenting a blueprint for education in a way that can enhance the awareness of the global community for joint response to global challenges and realize common prosperity based on sustainability and justice.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.327-335
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to examine the Kuwaiti Stock Exchange's (KDE) response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the precautions taken by Kuwaiti authorities to protect their citizens and other residents. To achieve this objective, daily data from four different indexes published by the Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) for the period between 24 February and 30 June 2020, as well as daily data on the number of people infected with COVID-19, the daily number of recovered people, the daily number of deaths, lockdown days, and days the country was under curfew. The findings show a significant positive association between the daily recovery of persons infected by COVID-19 and all indexes published by the KSE except for the Boursa Kuwait Main Market 50, where the association was positive but insignificant. A negative and significant association was also found between the closure of the country and each of the four indexes. Although the curfew imposed by the Kuwaiti authorities at an early stage of the pandemic appeared to have a negative effect on the four indexes, the level of association was statistically significant only in the cases of the Main Market index and Boursa Kuwait Main Market 50 index.

• Journal of Appropriate Technology
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.211-218
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• 2020

Since World Health Organization (WHO) declared Pandemic about COVID-19 at 11 March, 2020, 214 countries now have more than 5.8 million confirmed cases and 360 thousand deaths (29 March 2020). The pandemic of COVID-19 caused lockdown in numerous countries and cities. Strict social distancing also affects most of fields such as health, education, politics, religion, and economy. South Korea actively uses various digital technologies to fight against COVID-19, which is introduced internationally as a successful example. This article introduces the development background and functionalities of COVID-19 Epidemic Investigation Support System (EISS) as well as Smart City Datahub, the core technology that enables the rapid development and application of EISS. Moreover, based on this example, the role and importance of horizontal common platform, such as Datahub, are discussed in the view of future city.