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This paper examines whether environmental and social (ES) activities affect the resiliency of firms during the COVID-19 crisis. We study a sample of 330 firms operating in five developed countries: Canada, France, Japan, the UK and the US. Our analysis shows that US firms with a high ES ranking experienced a significantly lower stock price range volatility during the Covid stock market rundown of February-March 2020. Such findings also hold for Japanese firms but only later on after the introduction of government support. In terms of returns, compared to their peers with a low ES ranking, Japanese and UK stock prices with a high ES ranking suffered more during and after the market rundown. For other countries, we do not find significant differences in stock price behavior based on ES ratings. Our findings suggest that engaging with ES activities is not associated with a better or worse performance during crisis times, which has important implications for investors and managers. Publisher PDF Peer reviewed

International audience; Daily pandemic surveillance, often achieved through the estimation of the reproduction number, constitutes a critical challenge for national health authorities to design countermeasures. In an earlier work, we proposed to formulate the estimation of the reproduction number as an optimization problem, combining data-model fidelity and space-time regularity constraints, solved by nonsmooth convex proximal minimizations. Though promising, that first formulation significantly lacks robustness against the Covid-19 data low quality (irrelevant or missing counts, pseudo-seasonalities,.. .) stemming from the emergency and crisis context, which significantly impairs accurate pandemic evolution assessments. The present work aims to overcome these limitations by carefully crafting a functional permitting to estimate jointly, in a single step, the reproduction number and outliers defined to model low quality data. This functional also enforces epidemiology-driven regularity properties for the reproduction number estimates, while preserving convexity, thus permitting the design of efficient minimization algorithms, based on proximity operators that are derived analytically. The explicit convergence of the proposed algorithm is proven theoretically. Its relevance is quantified on real Covid-19 data, consisting of daily new infection counts for 200+ countries and for the 96 metropolitan France counties, publicly available at Johns Hopkins University and Santé-Publique-France. The procedure permits automated daily updates of these estimates, reported via animated and interactive maps. Open-source estimation procedures will be made publicly available.

Background: Reliable information is an essential component for responding to the COVID-19 epidemic, especially regarding the availability of critical care beds (CCBs). We propose three contributions: a) ICUBAM (ICU Bed Availability Monitor), a tool which both collects and visualizes information on CCB availability entered directly by intensivists. b) An analysis of CCB availability and ICU admissions and outcomes using collected by \ICUBAM during a 6-week period in the hard-hit Grand Est region of France, and c) Explanatory and predictive models adapted to CCB availability prediction, and fitted to availability information collected by ICUBAM. Methods: We interact directly with intensivists twice a day, by sending a SMS with a web link to the ICUBAM form where they enter 8 numbers: number of free and occupied CCBs (ventilator-equipped) for both COVID-19 positive and COVID-19- negative patients, the number of COVID-19 related ICU deaths and discharges, the number of ICU refusals, and the number of patients transferred to another region due to bed shortages. The collected data are described using univariate and multivariate methods such as correspondence analysis and then modeled at different scales: a medium and long term prediction using SEIR models, and a short term statistical model to predict the number of CCBs. Results: ICUBAM was brought online March 25, and is currently being used in the Grand-Est region by 109 intensivists representing 40 ICUs (95% of ICUs). ICUBAM allows for the calculation of CCB availability, admission and discharge statistics. Our analysis of data describes the evolution and extent of the COVID-19 health crisis in the Grand-Est region: on April 6th, at maximum bed capacity, 1056 ventilator-equipped CCBs were present, representing 211% of the nominal regional capacity of 501 beds. From March 19th to March 31st, average daily COVID-19 ICU inflow was 68 patients/day, and 314 critical care patients were transferred out of the Grand-Est region. With French lockdown starting on March 17th, a decrease of the daily inflow was found starting on April 1st: 23 patients/day during the first fortnight of April, and 7 patients/day during the last fortnight. However, treatment time for COVID-19 occupied CCBs is long: 15 days after the peak on March 31st, only 20% of ICU beds have been freed (50% after 1 month). Region-wide COVID-19 related in-ICU mortality is evaluated at 31%. Models trained from ICUBAM data are able to describe and predict the evolution of bed usage for the Grand-Estregion. Conclusion: We observe strong uptake of the ICUBAM tool, amongst both physicians and local healthcare stakeholders (health agencies, first responders etc.). We are able to leverage data collected with ICUBAM to better understand the evolution of the COVID-19 epidemic in the Grand Est region. We also present how data ingested by ICUBAM can be used to anticipate CCB shortages and predict future admissions. Most importantly, we demonstrate the importance of having a cross-functional team involving physicians, statisticians and computer scientists working both with first-line medical responders and local health agencies. This allowed us to quickly implement effective tools to assist in critical decision-making processes.

The year 2021 marked the 200th anniversary of the 1821 Revolution against the Ottomans, which eventually led to the formation of the modern Greek state. In order to celebrate the momentous occasion, a special committee called Greece 2021 was formed to organize the national festivities of the bicentenary commemoration in March 2021. Greek businesswoman Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, best known as the president of the bidding and organizing committees for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, served as the head of Greece 2021. Many prominent business people, mainstream academics, cultural figures, and historians participated in the committee. For the right-wing government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis that organized the celebration, as well as for the economic elite connected to it, this was a great opportunity to stage a series of events that would boost its popularity and occupy the news agenda. But things didn't go as expected because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the social, economic and political tensions that it triggered. The majority of the planned events were cancelled, leaving plenty of room for the dissemination of controversies around the 1821 bicentenary in social media that largely countered the official agenda. In this paper we propose an original method combining large scale network and lexicometric analysis in order to link identifiable communities of Twitter users with the main discursive themes they used around the 1821 revolution bicentenary. This in order to distinguish the political and cultural issues and cleavages within Greek society that were made visible on Twitter on the occasion of this event.

This paper questions whether firms’ internet connectivity and adoption helped them cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data on 31,387 firms from 39 developing and developed economies, our results stress that businesses using website before the crisis showed higher absorption capacities than other firms during the crisis. The positive role of website use was mainly through the adoption of coping strategies, in particular home-delivery services, online sales or remote work. In contrast, the positive effect played by the prior use of internet is not explained by better access to external public (government support) or private (bank loan) financial resources. If prior internet use had a role on the resilience of firms, this is not the case for internet access. A negative effect of firm survival and labour adjustments is indeed found, but further analysis shows that this finding is explained by the mediating effect of 4G coverage on COVID policies’ stringency, suggesting that these policies were more effective in places with better internet coverage.

Using the United Nations Comtrade database, we perform the Google matrix analysis of the multiproduct World Trade Network (WTN) for the years 2018-2020 comprising the emergence of the COVID-19 as a global pandemic. The applied algorithms -- the PageRank, the CheiRank and the reduced Google matrix -- take into account the multiplicity of the WTN links providing new insights on the international trade comparing to the usual import-export analysis. These algorithms establish new rankings and trade balances of countries and products considering every countries on equal grounds, independently of their wealth, and every products on the basis of their relative exchanged volumes. In comparison with the pre-COVID-19 period, significant changes in these metrics occur for the year 2020 highlighting a major rewiring of the international trade flows induced by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. We define a new PageRank-CheiRank product trade balance, either export or import oriented, which is significantly perturbed by the pandemic. Comment: 22 pages, 2 tables, 13 figures, 2 appendices

AIMS. To determine the contribution of social distancing and face mask wearing in the prevention of COVID-19 infections in Argentina. METHODS. Attendance to the funeral of ex-soccer star Diego Maradona was estimated by the area occupied by the mourners and their density. The people congregated to celebrate the America's Cup victory was deduced mainly from TV ratings. The proportion of individuals wearing or not face masks was calculated from photographs taken at both events. The COVID-19 epidemiological data used was released by the Argentinean Ministry of Health from March 3 rd 2020 to August 31 st 2021. RESULTS. We estimated that Maradona's funeral was attended by approximately 250,000 mourners. Approximately 5.083.958 followed by television the America's cup final in Buenos Aires alone. Extrapolating to the whole country suggests that over 4 million individuals congregated in person to celebrate the victory. The percentage of individuals not wearing face masks at the funeral was 54.0% ± 5.2 % and at the soccer victory celebrations 84.5 % ± 6.9 %, both estimates with a confidence of 99%. Daily COVID-19 infections in Buenos Aires remained at less than 5,000 per day during 30 days before-as well as during 24 days following-the funeral. New infections in Argentina remained less than 21,000 during 10 days before as well as 30 days following the soccer cup celebrations. CONCLUSIONS. Considering that SARS-CoV-2 median incubation is 5.1 days, the time periods following Maradona's funeral and the America Soccer Cup celebrations provided ample time for COVID-19 to flare up if significant contagion would have proliferated amongst the crowds. The lack of an increase in COVID-19 infections after two independent and large gatherings with people in close proximity and limited wearing of face masks, raises questions about any beneficial effect of social distancing and of mask wearing during the pandemic.

Prix du meilleur second choix dans la catégorie recherche lors de la conférence UIIN.; International audience; To leverage the emerging potential of new technologies, digital transformation has been a clear priority for most large- and mid-sized organizations for over a decade now (Vial, 2019). However, COVID-19 pandemic has recently pushed several microbusinesses (MBs) to hurriedly initiate digital transformation (DT) efforts and keep their businesses afloat (Mandviwalla & Flanagan, 2021). MBs comprise a class of small and medium enterprise category (SMEs) that typically have fewer than 10 employees and lesser resources (OECD, 2021). They represent about 93 percent of all businesses in the Europe (European Commission, 2019). Their economic significance is also shown through ha survey which predicted that by 2024 small businesses through their DT efforts have the potential to add over 2.3 trillion USD to the global GDP, which would be key for the post pandemic economic recovery (CISCO, 2020). Prior research has shown that DT effectiveness varies significantly with firm size (Mandviwalla & Flanagan, 2021). Following these, the aim of our study is to examine to identify the enablers and inhibitors of digital transformation within the MB sector in Ireland.

Objectives In the early stages of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, chloroquine and its derivatives such as hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) were widely commented upon both within the scientific community and in the media. This paper explores the different factors that influenced public perceptions in France of the efficacy of HCQ as well as their evolution between April 2020 and June 2021. Methods This article draws on 5 surveys conducted among representative samples of the French population (projects COCONEL and TRACTRUST; quota method, n = 1006; 1004; 2006; 1014 and 1005). We asked questions on the effectiveness of chloroquine against COVID-19. We also collected sociodemographic variables and attitudes toward politics and science. Results Between April and June 2021, the proportion of respondents who believed in the efficacy of HCQ decreased rapidly from 35% to 14%. The proportion of respondents who believed that HCQ is ineffective rose gradually from 6% to 21%. After adjusting for the temporal effect, the logistic regression showed a very strong association between political orientation and the belief in the efficacy of HCQ. Respondents who felt closest to the more radical parties (far-right and far-left) were more likely to believe in the efficacy of HCQ than those who felt closest to the political center (O.R. 2.48 [1.95–3.15] and 1.87 [1.44–2.43]). The role of trust in the government and in science and of the degree of political engagement were investigated in the two waves conducted after the scientific consensus was established during the summer of 2020. High levels of trust in the government and in science and of politicization are associated with belief of HCQ proven inefficacy. Across the whole period, a majority of respondents were uncertain. Even in 2021, 41.5% stated that the data were insufficient to decide whether or not HCQ is effective and 25.2% stating that they did not know. Conclusion Because media coverage of scientific controversies is higher in times of uncertainty than after these controversies have died down, the publicization of therapeutic promises can have lasting consequences on attitudes towards science and medicine.

After having carried out the analysis of numerous intercultural comparative studies and my theoretical-empirical studies on the state of mental health in the academic spheres of different countries, the purpose of my article is to describe the major causes and consequences of the mental health of students, teachers and researchers in recent years and in particular during the Covid 19 epidemic, then synthesize the main reflections on the effectiveness of medicalpsychological centers for their optimization.; Après avoir réalisé l’analyse de nombreuses études comparatives interculturelles et mes études théoriques-empiriques sur l’état de santé mentale dans les sphères académiques de différents pays, le but de mon article est de décrire les causes et conséquences majeures de la santé mentale des étudiants, enseignants et chercheurs ces dernières années et en particulier pendant l’épidémie de Covid 19, puis synthétiser les principales réflexions sur l’efficacité des centres médico-psychologiques pour leur optimisation. Mots-clés : santé mentale, dépression, anxiété, stress, burn-out, épidémie de coronavirus (Covid 19), soins médico-psychologiques.