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The global COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a trend underway for the last decade: the enlistment of private-sector commercial finance for development. This finance can be brought in through (1) regular cross-border flows, (2) blended finance, and (3) impact bonds. This briefing argues that intensified foreign financial inflows are likely to draw African economies further into financialization, which increases financial instability and can undermine the democratic process, jeopardizing just socio-economic development. Specifically, the short-termism of portfolio flows requires costly reserve accumulation; FDI exposes firms to demands for shareholder value generation; and external debt introduces exchange rate risk for domestic borrowers. Peer reviewed

What is the future of technocracy, after COVID-19, asks Jonathan White (LSE)? Current crisis management only blurs ever more the boundary between politics and technical expertise, he argues.

Background: International travel is a major driver of the introduction and spread of SARS-CoV-2. Aim: To investigate SARS-CoV-2 genetic diversity in the region of a major transport hub in Germany, we characterized the viral sequence diversity of the SARS-CoV-2 variants circulating in Frankfurt am Main, the city with the largest airport in Germany, from the end of October to the end of December 2020. Methods: In total, we recovered 136 SARS-CoV-2 genomes from nasopharyngeal swab samples. We isolated 104 isolates that were grown in cell culture and RNA from the recovered viruses and subjected them to full-genome sequence analysis. In addition, 32 nasopharyngeal swab samples were directly sequenced. Results and conclusion: We found 28 different lineages of SARS-CoV-2 circulating during the study period, including the variant of concern B.1.1.7 (Δ69/70, N501Y). Six of the lineages had not previously been observed in Germany. We detected the spike protein (S) deletion Δ69/Δ70 in 15% of all sequences, a four base pair (bp) deletion (in 2.9% of sequences) and a single bp deletion (in 0.7% of sequences) in ORF3a, leading to ORF3a truncations. In four sequences (2.9%), an amino acid deletion at position 210 in S was identified. In a single sample (0.7%), both a 9 bp deletion in ORF1ab and a 7 bp deletion in ORF7a were identified. One sequence in lineage B.1.1.70 had an N501Y substitution while lacking the Δ69/70 in S. The high diversity of sequences observed over two months in Frankfurt am Main highlights the persisting need for continuous SARS-CoV-2 surveillance using full-genome sequencing, particularly in cities with international airport connections.

Problems of this severity and scope can only be solved through global cooperation, write Muhammad Shahbaz and Muhammad Ali Nasir

Gemma Moss considers whether COVID-19 can act as a catalyst for change in education, leading to different policy choices and a more stable education system, better able to address the dilemmas that prolonged disruption in education and which current policy does so little to address.

The Covid-19 pandemic may be exposing the weaknesses of populism. We should not be complacent, however, as authoritarianism is the real problem, warns Daphne Halikiopoulou (University of Reading). Covid-19 has already infected over 700,000 people worldwide (at the time of writing). Its exponential spread has placed national health systems under severe strain, it has closed borders, and grounded airlines. How may we assess the political implications of this global crisis, especially given that it comes at a time when populists who thrive on the tensions between international initiatives and the ‘national preference’, are in charge in many countries?

© 2020 Oxford University Press. This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in European Heart Journal following peer review. The version of record [Ying X Gue, Diana A Gorog, Reduction in ACE2 may mediate the prothrombotic phenotype in COVID-19, European Heart Journal, ehaa534] is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehaa534. This commentary refers to ‘Characteristics and outcomes of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 and cardiac disease in Northern Italy’, by R.M. Inciardi et al., doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehaa583. Final Accepted Version Peer reviewed

In the Covid-19 crisis, with few or no people and animals around, space opens and we can look inside ourselves, writes Deborah Rowland and Nicole Brauckmann

During the COVID-19 pandemic, massive open online courses (MOOCs) assisted HEIs in delivering remote teaching in the situations where university could not provide it in a traditional setting. Even before the pandemic there has been an interest in the MOOCs usage in different national contexts, with an expansion of research on the use of MOOCs in non-Western countries (see Altalhi, 2021; Fianu et al. 2018; Hamdan et al. 2018; Roshchina, Roshchin, & Rudakov, 2018). Building on the previous research, this study aims to analyse MOOCs acceptance and usage among academics in Russian higher education by applying the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model (Venkatesh et al., 2003) to answer the following research question: What factors affect academics’ acceptance and usage of MOOCs in Russian Tertiary Education? By doing so, the study intends to explore factors that influence MOOCs usage among academics in Russia and provide insights on how to support the adoption and the usage of MOOCs within higher educational institutions. Furthermore, the study can contribute to the methodological discussion on the research of MOOCs using UTAUT model and test the model in the context of Russian higher education.

COVID-19 has been portrayed internationally as a disease more dangerous than Ebola. In Uganda this has created fear among various communities, specifically in the north of the country, where the memory of Ebola remains present. A consequence of the outbreak is reported xenophobia and rumours the epidemic is spread by the rich. Robin Oryem reports from experience on the ground and the role of behavioural change in preventing the disease’s spread.