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Background: This study examined manual therapy business owners' perception of official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact on their clinics' economic performance, including clinic activity hours and business turnover., Materials and Methods: In a longitudinal study design, data were collected in November 2021 (baseline), and after three months, six months, and 12 months. Participants were manual therapists who were business owners. A growth curve model was used to analyze differences in clinical activity trajectories. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to assess the relationship between perceived disruptions in business and turnover. Qualitative text analysis was used to examine participants' responses to open-ended questions concerning economic measures taken to sustain their business during the pandemic., Results: This study of 443 manual therapy business owners found that clinics were initially active with minimal variation, but activity changed following COVID-19 recommendations. Business owners perceived that the disruptions had no significant impact on turnover during the initial stages of the official recommendations. Economic support and the previous decrease in turnover increased the likelihood of experiencing a decreased turnover at 12 months. Business owners implemented cost-cutting measures and diversified income sources to navigate COVID-19 challenges and sustain their businesses., Conclusion: The official recommendations in Sweden had an impact on manual therapists' businesses as the COVID-19 pandemic lingered. Some business owners were concerned at the early stages about lower turnover but showed financial resilience by cutting costs and finding new revenue sources to overcome COVID-19 challenges., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Aboagye et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Social lockdowns improved air quality during the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments had previously spent a lot of money addressing air pollution without success. This bibliometric study measured the influence of COVID-19 social lockdowns on air pollution, identified emerging issues, and discussed future perspectives. The researchers examined the contributions of countries, authors, and most productive journals to COVID-19 and air pollution research from January 1, 2020, to September 12, 2022, from the Web of Sciences Core Collection (WoS). The results showed that (a) publications on the COVID-19 pandemic and air pollution were 504 (research articles) with 7495 citations, (b) China ranked first in the number of publications (n = 151; 29.96% of the global output) and was the main country in international cooperation network, followed by India (n = 101; 20.04% of the total articles) and the USA (n = 41; 8.13% of the global output). Air pollution plagues China, India, and the USA, calling for many studies. After a high spike in 2020, research published in 2021 declined in 2022. The author's keywords have focused on "COVID-19," "air pollution," "lockdown," and "PM 25 ." These keywords suggest that research in this area is focused on understanding the health impacts of air pollution, developing policies to address air pollution, and improving air quality monitoring. The COVID-19 social lockdown served as a specified procedure to reduce air pollution in these countries. However, this paper provides practical recommendations for future research and a model for environmental and health scientists to examine the likely impact of COVID-19 social lockdowns on urban air pollution., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic created the need for the use of dissimilar remote teaching methods and strategies in many subject areas including Physical Education (PE). While this was somewhat successful in developed countries, little is known about the use of technological tools to deliver PE lessons online in developing countries. This study examined the perceptions and experiences of colleges of education PE tutors in adopting technological tools for remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from 12 tutors (4 females and 8 males) in Ghana. Content analysis was employed as the tool for the analysis of the data. Based on the results, the PE tutors perceived that accessibility was a major challenge to the successful teaching of practical PE lessons online. The tutors further posited that they were motivated to deliver practical lessons online because of the COVID-19 pandemic as they don't want students to be left idle. In furtherance, the participants recommended Transforming Teaching, Education and Learning and colleges' management for assisting them to participate in an online course and providing them with ICT support and data. Again, the participants agreed that they prefer face-to-face to online lessons as the latter do not promote socialisation, develop only the cognitive domain and even certificates acquired online are not given due recognition. It is recommended that theory lessons should be held online while face-to-face interaction is better for practical lessons in PE due to accessibility issues connected to poor internet connectivity and difficulty in performing some of the skills online.

People with Disabilities (PwDs) suffer and are susceptible to social inequalities, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. In West Africa, these are influenced by how services geared towards PwDs are administered. This study explores the government policies implemented in West Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic and their impact on PwDs in line with the SDGs with disability targets. Thematic analysis was adopted to analyze eighty-one (81) documents, including legislation, reports and official documents that communicated measures taken in response to Covid-19 and SDGs with disability targets. The study found that various governments outlined pragmatic steps to address the needs of PwDs. It was unraveled that the policies and recommendations that the governments have published on disability inclusiveness in response to Covid-19 did not reflected in the lives PwDs. This is evident based on the difficulty PwDs have to go through to access all the available benefits. It takes a while to see such policies and recommendations reflected in the lives of PwDs. Measuring the expected improvements in the lives of PwDs relative to the SGD's attainment can not happen overnight. This study is the first of its kind in West Africa and urges various governments to pay close attention to their policies to improve their policies toward PwDs. The study recognizes governments' vital role in ensuring that PwDs are better off, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the government needs to provide adequate education on how PwDs will readily access policies to better their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]