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This paper presents a compilation of personal reflections from 66 contributors on the impact of, and responses to, COVID-19 in accounting education in 45 different countries around the world. It reveals a commonality of issues, and a variability in responses, many positive outcomes, including the creation of opportunities to realign learning and teaching strategies away from the comfort of traditional formats, but many more that are negative, primarily relating to the impact on faculty and student health and well-being, and the accompanying stress. It identifies issues that need to be addressed in the recovery and redesign stages of the management of this crisis, and it sets a new research agenda for studies in accounting education.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, regions were affected by a combination of economic crises: weak demand and constrained supply. Several studies have sought to analyse the heterogeneous effects of supply and demand shocks on the labour market, economic growth, and the environment. This study has a different focus, estimating both direct and indirect effects of demand and supply shocks adopted during the pandemic in Brazil and Chile. Afterwards, the paper compares the degree of regional absorption (leakage) of income resulting from each of these shocks, applying an interregional input–output model for each country. The results of this study show that income absorption by the poorest regions is relatively greater in the case of a supply shock. It can be said, therefore, that this type of shock improves the retention of income generated in the poorest regions, favouring the development of these localities and the reduction in regional inequalities. The main reason for this result is that supply policies have restricted essential sectors to a lesser extent, and these sectors are generally less concentrated in large urban centres in both Brazil and Chile. In other words, much of the interregional leakage is driven by the demand for non-essential products, mainly in the richest urban economy centres. Finally, the geographical dimension of regional inequalities leads to the economic benefit of prosperous areas in the country when shocks occur in vulnerable regions, highlighting the centre–periphery pattern in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fitting Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) models to incidence data is problematic when not all infected individuals are reported. Assuming an underlying SIR model with general but known distribution for the time to recovery, this paper derives the implied differential-integral equations for observed incidence data when a fixed fraction of newly infected individuals are not observed. The parameters of the resulting system of differential equations are identifiable. Using these differential equations, we develop a stochastic model for the conditional distribution of current disease incidence given the entire past history of reported cases. We estimate the model parameters using Bayesian Markov Chain Monte-Carlo sampling of the posterior distribution. We use our model to estimate the transmission rate and fraction of asymptomatic individuals for the current Coronavirus 2019 outbreak in eight American Countries: the United States of America, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Panama, from January 2020 to May 2021. Our analysis reveals that the fraction of reported cases varies across all countries. For example, the reported incidence fraction for the United States of America varies from 0.3 to 0.6, while for Brazil it varies from 0.2 to 0.4., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

In this paper, we group South American countries based on the number of infected cases and deaths due to COVID-19. The countries considered are: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The data used are collected from a database of Johns Hopkins University, an institution that is dedicated to sensing and monitoring the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. A statistical analysis, based on principal components with modern and recent techniques, is conducted. Initially, utilizing the correlation matrix, standard components and varimax rotations are calculated. Then, by using disjoint components and functional components, the countries are grouped. An algorithm that allows us to keep the principal component analysis updated with a sensor in the data warehouse is designed. As reported in the conclusions, this grouping changes depending on the number of components considered, the type of principal component (standard, disjoint or functional) and the variable to be considered (infected cases or deaths). The results obtained are compared to the k-means technique. The COVID-19 cases and their deaths vary in the different countries due to diverse reasons, as reported in the conclusions.

Background: Previous studies reported the negative impact of social isolation on mental health in people with dementia (PwD) and their caregivers, butlongitudinal studies seem scarcer. Objective: To describe a one-year follow-up impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on PwD and their caregivers in both Brazil and Chile. Methods: This study analyzed the impact of the pandemic on the psychological and physical health of PwD and their family caregivers after one year of follow-up in three outpatient clinics in Brazil (n = 68) and Chile (n = 61). Results: In both countries, PwD reduced their functional capacity after one year of follow-up (p = 0.017 and p = 0.009; respectively) and caregivers reported worse physical and mental health (p = 0.028 and p = 0.039). Only in Chile, caregivers reported more sadness associated with care (p = 0.001), and reduced time sleeping (p = 0.07). Conclusions: In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have had a long-lasting impact on PwD and their caregivers. However, it is essential to acknowledge that the inherent progression of dementia itself may also influence changes observed over a year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the COVID-19 pandemic, patients who are older and residents of long-term care facilities (LTCF) are at greatest risk of worse clinical outcomes. We reviewed discharge criteria for hospitalised COVID-19 patients from 10 countries with the highest incidence of COVID-19 cases as of 26 July 2020. Five countries (Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile and Iran) had no discharge criteria; the remaining five (USA, India, Russia, South Africa and the UK) had discharge guidelines with large inter-country variability. India and Russia recommend discharge for a clinically recovered patient with two negative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests 24 h apart; the USA offers either a symptom based strategy—clinical recovery and 10 days after symptom onset, or the same test-based strategy. The UK suggests that patients can be discharged when patients have clinically recovered; South Africa recommends discharge 14 days after symptom onset if clinically stable. We recommend a unified, simpler discharge criteria, based on current studies which suggest that most SARS-CoV-2 loses its infectivity by 10 days post-symptom onset. In asymptomatic cases, this can be taken as 10 days after the first positive PCR result. Additional days of isolation beyond this should be left to the discretion of individual clinician. This represents a practical compromise between unnecessarily prolonged admissions and returning highly infectious patients back to their care facilities, and is of particular importance in older patients discharged to LTCFs, residents of which may be at greatest risk of transmission and worse clinical outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Disabled people are particularly exposed to the risks of COVID-19, as well as to the measures taken to address it, and their impact. The aim of the study was to examine the disability-inclusiveness of government responses to COVID-19 in four South American Countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru. Methods: We conducted documentary research, using framework analysis to analyse reports, legislation, decrees, and other official documents that communicated measures taken in response to the pandemic, published from February 1st until May 22nd, 2020. We included documents reporting measures that affected disabled people either directly (measures specifically designed for disabled people) or indirectly (measures for the general population). We developed an analytical framework based on recommendations for disability-inclusive response to COVID-19 published by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Carribean, the World Health Organisation, and other international organisations. Results: We analysed 72 documents. The findings highlight that while some positive measures were taken, the needs of disabled people were not fully considered. Several countries published recommendations for a disability-inclusive response to COVID-19, without ensuring their translation to practice. All countries took at least some steps to ensure access to financial support, health, and education for disabled people, but at the same time they also implemented policies that had a detrimental impact on disabled people. The populations that are most exposed to the impacts of COVID-19, including disabled people living in institutional care, were protected in several cases only by recommendations rather by legislation. Conclusions: This study illustrates how the official government responses taken by four countries in the region – while positive, in several aspects – do not fully address the needs of disabled people, thus further disadvantaging them. In order to ensure response to COVID − 19 is disability inclusive, it is necessary to translate recommendations to practice, consider disabled people both in mainstream policy and in disability-specific measures, and focus on the long-term reconstruction phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]