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In this paper, we explore what the travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic reveal about the changing geographies of mobilities and the making of homo sacer, the latter constituted through differentiated control of mobilities. Implemented to protect U.S. public health, travel restrictions imposed on travelers from Mainland China during the early days of the pandemic exemplify how sovereign power that declares a state of emergency and creates bare life can be readily applied to groups of people who previously had privileged access to global mobility. In this sense, bare life does not refer to fixed and disadvantaged social categories but is rather contingently and contextually constituted, through the works of hybrid sovereign regimes. At the same time, however, these travelers are not reduced to a state of zero-agency but reside within a liminal space between soft and hard cosmopolitanisms, as they can still deploy agency and cosmopolitan capital to achieve certain degrees of mobility. By examining how Chinese travelers navigated various travel restrictions and the constantly changing policies to travel to the U.S., this paper explores new spaces of exception and forms of bare life, and argues that homo sacer is dynamically, relationally and recursively constructed, both through apparatus of control and the agency of travelers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the current global COVID-19 crisis Taiwan has portrayed itself as both an example for other countries to follow and as a country willing to assist others in their own efforts with the virus. Taiwan has also renewed efforts to participate in the World Health Organization (WHO), an organisation from which it is currently excluded. Although some countries have supported Taiwan's efforts to participate in the WHO or have praised its COVID-19 response, others have been silent or even critical, sometimes citing commitments to a "one China policy." In this paper, we use newly collected data to explore cross-national variation in support for Taiwan during the current pandemic. We find that a country's level of economic development and security ties with the US are strongly correlated with support for Taiwan while a country's economic ties to China is a less consistent predictor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a serious global public health problem. The mystery around the causative agent was revealed on 7 January 2020 when the pathogen was isolated by Chinese scientists and named as novel coronavirus-2019 (2019-nCoV). With quicker reaction to the contagion, the number of scholarly research publications have increased exponentially, which calls for bibliometric analysis and review of the incipient studies. Therefore on 7 Feb 2020, the English language and Chinese publications on COVID-19 were retrieved from PubMed and CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure). A retrospective bibliometric analysis was performed to gauge the output, language, document type, journal, authorship, geographical distribution, research focus, resulting in a total of 154 papers comprising 100 papers in English and another 54 in Chinese. There were 30 journals published at least 2 papers, and the Journal of Medical Virology published the most papers (11). China and USA were the most productive countries, and there were 24 international collaborative papers. Fudan University contributed the most papers. Isaac I. Bogoch, Kunling Shen, Xingguang LI, Hongzhou Lu were the most active authors as first authors, with 2 papers respectively. Among the 154 publications, 35 were opinions papers, and 30 were research articles. Papers were categorized by research areas, and five research foci were identified. Our study offers an overview of the incipient publications and quantitative information for future research on coronavirus. Besides, Chinese publications were also retrieved for an integrated data analysis and diversity comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold, the approach of the Chinese government remains under the spotlight, obscuring the complex landscape of responses to the outbreak within the country. Drawing upon the author's social media experiences as well as textual analysis of a wide range of sources, this paper explores how the Chinese public responded to the outbreak in complex and nuanced ways through social media. The findings challenge conventional views of Chinese social media as simply sites of self-censorship and surveillance. On the contrary, during the COVID-19 outbreak, social media became spaces of active public engagement, in which Chinese citizens expressed care and solidarity, engaged in claim-making and resistance, and negotiated with authorities. This paper situates this public engagement within a broader context of China's health-care reforms, calling attention to persistent structural and political issues, as well as the precarious positionalities of health-care workers within the health system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Many models are published which predict outcomes in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The generalizability of many is unknown. We evaluated the performance of selected models from the literature and our own models to predict outcomes in patients at our institution.Methods: We searched the literature for models predicting outcomes in inpatients with COVID-19. We produced models of mortality or criticality (mortality or ICU admission) in a development cohort. We tested external models which provided sufficient information and our models using a test cohort of our most recent patients. The performance of models was compared using the area under the receiver operator curve (AUC).Results: Our literature review yielded 41 papers. Of those, 8 were found to have sufficient documentation and concordance with features available in our cohort to implement in our test cohort. All models were from Chinese patients. One model predicted criticality and seven mortality. Tested against the test cohort, internal models had an AUC of 0.84 (0.74-0.94) for mortality and 0.83 (0.76-0.90) for criticality. The best external model had an AUC of 0.89 (0.82-0.96) using three variables, another an AUC of 0.84 (0.78-0.91) using ten variables. AUC's ranged from 0.68 to 0.89. On average, models tested were unable to produce predictions in 27% of patients due to missing lab data.Conclusion: Despite differences in pandemic timeline, race, and socio-cultural healthcare context some models derived in China performed well. For healthcare organizations considering implementation of an external model, concordance between the features used in the model and features available in their own patients may be important. Analysis of both local and external models should be done to help decide on what prediction method is used to provide clinical decision support to clinicians treating COVID-19 patients as well as what lab tests should be included in order sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, the Philippines has experienced an escalation of anti-Chinese sentiment due to many factors, founded and unfounded. The growing presence of illegal immigrants and crimes associated with them; an increase in the number of Chinese workers, who are perceived as competing with Filipino workers; an increase in Chinese businesses, especially in retail, some operating without permits; the continuing dispute between China and the Philippines over the islands in the West Philippine Sea; President Rodrigo Duterte's China pivot policy and what has been deemed as favoring China to the detriment of the Philippines. This confluence of events has served to worsen the image of China. The COVID-19 pandemic and the way the government responded to it worsened the sinophobia directed at anyone considered "Chinese," including Filipinos of Chinese ancestry. This paper explores the racism vented against the Chinese and how the local Chinese-Filipino community has responded with positive action to help mitigate the anti-Chinese wave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a new concept called virus-combat social capital and presents relevant findings from a survey of 3009 Chinese WeChat networkers. Virus-combat social capital is defined by the intensity and extensity of social connectedness under conditions of physical isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey shows that as compared to their counterparts, Chinese people with higher virus-combat social capital consistently do better in both behavioral responses and measures of quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The Corona Virus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic has evolved into the largest public health event in the world. Earlier COVID-19 studies have reported that the pandemic caused widespread impacts on mental health and sleep in the general population. However, it remains largely unknown how the prevalence of mental health problems and sleep disturbance developed and interacted in adolescents at different times in the epidemic.Methods: 831 teenagers (aged 14-19) underwent a longitudinal follow-up study to evaluate the prevalence of mental health problems and sleep disturbance among adolescents before, during, and after the COVID-19 breakout in China and to explore the interaction between mental health and sleep across the three measurements. The chronotype, anxiety and depression level, sleep quality, and insomnia were investigated during each measurement.Results: The adolescents had delayed sleep onset and sleep offset time, longer sleep duration during the quarantine than before and after the epidemic, whereas their chronotype tended to morning type during the epidemic. Yet, the highest prevalence of anxiety, depression, poor sleeper, and insomnia symptoms were observed before but not during the COVID-19 breakout. The females and adolescents who were eveningness type showed significantly higher anxiety and depression levels, poorer sleep quality, and severe insomnia status than the males and the intermediate and morning types. Sleep disturbance was positively associated with mental problems among three measurements. Pre-measured depression level significantly predicted sleep disturbance level at follow-ups.Conclusion: These findings suggested that adolescents' high prevalence of mental health and sleep problems occurred before the COVID breakout and decreased during and after the epidemic. Gender and chronotype were significant risk factors associated with affective and sleep disturbances. Depression positively predicted later sleep problems, but not vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]