impact of covid 19 on business research paper

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings
My Bibliography
Collections
Citation manager

Save citation to file

Email citation, add to collections.

Create a new collection
Add to an existing collection

Add to My Bibliography

Your saved search, create a file for external citation management software, your rss feed.

Search in PubMed
Search in NLM Catalog
Add to Search

Effects of COVID-19 on business and research

Affiliations.

1 Georgia State University, United States.
2 BI Norwegian Business School, Norway.
PMID: 32536736
PMCID: PMC7280091
DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.06.008

The COVID-19 outbreak is a sharp reminder that pandemics, like other rarely occurring catastrophes, have happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future. Even if we cannot prevent dangerous viruses from emerging, we should prepare to dampen their effects on society. The current outbreak has had severe economic consequences across the globe, and it does not look like any country will be unaffected. This not only has consequences for the economy; all of society is affected, which has led to dramatic changes in how businesses act and consumers behave. This special issue is a global effort to address some of the pandemic-related issues affecting society. In total, there are 13 papers that cover different industry sectors (e.g., tourism, retail, higher education), changes in consumer behavior and businesses, ethical issues, and aspects related to employees and leadership.

PubMed Disclaimer

Publication types

Search in MeSH

LinkOut - more resources

Full text sources.

Europe PubMed Central
PubMed Central

Miscellaneous

NCI CPTAC Assay Portal
Citation Manager

NCBI Literature Resources

MeSH PMC Bookshelf Disclaimer

The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited.

This website uses cookies to ensure the best user experience. Privacy & Cookies Notice Accept Cookies

Manage My Cookies

Manage Cookie Preferences

NECESSARY COOKIES These cookies are essential to enable the services to provide the requested feature, such as remembering you have logged in.	ALWAYS ACTIVE
	Accept \| Reject
PERFORMANCE AND ANALYTIC COOKIES These cookies are used to collect information on how users interact with Chicago Booth websites allowing us to improve the user experience and optimize our site where needed based on these interactions. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous.
FUNCTIONAL COOKIES These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalization. They may be set by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages or by us.
TARGETING OR ADVERTISING COOKIES These cookies collect information about your browsing habits to make advertising relevant to you and your interests. The cookies will remember the website you have visited, and this information is shared with other parties such as advertising technology service providers and advertisers.
SOCIAL MEDIA COOKIES These cookies are used when you share information using a social media sharing button or “like” button on our websites, or you link your account or engage with our content on or through a social media site. The social network will record that you have done this. This information may be linked to targeting/advertising activities.

Confirm My Selections

Social Impact Research
Get Involved
Rustandy Stories
Give to the Center
Sign Up For Rustandy Center Updates
ESG Data Tool
Research Papers
Research Partnerships
Data Sources
Coronavirus
Criminal Justice
Economic Mobility
Environment
Financial Inclusion
Health Care
Impact Investing
Labor Market
Philanthropy
Political Economy
Social Innovation
Social Preferences
Social Sector Theory

Paper The impact of COVID-19 on small business outcomes and expectations

To explore the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on small businesses, we conducted a survey of more than 5,800 small businesses between March 28 and April 4, 2020. Several themes emerged. First, mass layoffs and closures had already occurred - just a few weeks into the crisis. Second, the risk of closure was negatively associated with the expected length of the crisis. Moreover, businesses had widely varying beliefs about the likely duration of COVID-related disruptions. Third, many small businesses are financially fragile: The median business with more than $10,000 in monthly expenses had only about 2 weeks of cash on hand at the time of the survey. Fourth, the majority of businesses planned to seek funding through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. However, many anticipated problems with accessing the program, such as bureaucratic hassles and difficulties establishing eligibility. Using experimental variation, we also assess take-up rates and business resilience effects for loans relative to grants-based programs.

Get the Working Paper

Authored by Alexander W. Bartik Marianne Bertrand Zoe Cullen Edward L. Glaeser Michael Luca Christopher Stanton
Share This Page

Read the Research in Chicago Booth Review

Us small businesses have little cushion against prolonged disruptions.

New research underscores the need for fast and easy-to-access government interventions when small businesses are interrupted.

CBR - Economics

Open access
Published: 30 September 2022

Management research and the impact of COVID-19 on performance: a bibliometric review and suggestions for future research

Kingsley Opoku Appiah 1 ,
Bismark Addai 2 ,
Wesley Ekuban 3 ,
Suzzie Owiredua Aidoo 4 &
Joseph Amankwah-Amoah 5

Future Business Journal volume 8 , Article number: 41 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

6405 Accesses

2 Citations

Metrics details

Although there has been a burgeoning scholarly interest in the effects of COVID-19, the current stream of research remains scattered in different business and management fields and domains. Accordingly, integrative knowledge is needed to drive poignant and relevant examinations of the phenomenon. This study attempts to fill this gap by providing a synthesis of the literature, patterns of research studies, and direction for further development of the field. This study also provides a systematic identification and bibliometric and thematic review of literature, performance analysis, science mapping, and cluster analysis. The study additionally provides suggestions for future research to guide relevant discourse.

Introduction

The term pandemic has been used to describe the widespread outbreak of disease through human-to-human infections [ 1 ]. Medical texts providing a clear definition of what constitutes a pandemic are non-existent. However, its geographic extent and infectiousness and severe negative impact on all aspects of society are clearly understood [ 2 ]. To this end, research has continued to understand the extent to which pandemics shape communities, economies and society as a whole [ 3 , 4 ]. The COVID-19 pandemic is no exception, with its catastrophic effects considered to be one of the worst in human history [ 5 ]. It is no surprise the plethora of studies seeking to understand the phenomena. The severity of the pandemic has paved the way for a rapidly escalating body of empirical literature analyzing the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on countries [ 6 , 7 ], firms [ 8 ], and households [ 9 , 10 ]. Some business and finance-related studies, for example, have focused on macro-economic indicators [ 11 ], policy alternatives and implementation [ 12 , 13 ], business responses and implications [ 4 , 14 ] as well as firm performance outcomes and failures [ 15 , 16 ].

The COVID-19 pandemic like all other global crises impacts on all aspects of life including business activities. Shocks caused by such events disrupt business operations across the globe and in extreme situations lead to business failure [ 17 , 18 ]. The influence of business activity on national and global economies has encouraged an increasing scholarly interest in understanding the extent to which firm performance has been impacted. Developing suitable and sustainable policy and strategy responses is the logical action and focus of all governments and scholars to help mitigate the negative effects of this pandemic. However, to develop such effective strategies, the extent and various ways in which firm activities and performance has been affected must first be examined. To this end, scholars have found that the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the performance of the hospitality industry [ 19 ], supply chains [ 20 ], stocks of listed companies [ 21 , 22 ], SMEs and family firms [ 23 , 24 ].

Notwithstanding the vital contributions of these studies, the integral role of research is to detect and synthesize patterns, conditions and effects in business activity, to help ensure effective decision-making and policy development. Carracedo et al. [ 25 ] began this pattern detection by conducting a systematic literature review of relevant literature. Although, Carracedo et al.’s [ 25 ] study offers novel insights into the clusters of COVID-19 business-related studies, it hardly provides in-depth knowledge and practicable knowledge on the scope, relationships and gaps in literature. To this end, the present study advances knowledge by conducting a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis of the relationship between COVID-19 and firm performance.

The contribution to the literature is threefold. First, based on the review a comprehensive baseline systematization on the impact of COVID -19 on firm performance was advanced to enhance the understanding of the impact of the pandemic on firm performance. In so doing, we also provide fruitful lines for future research and/or policy (see [ 26 ]). Second, synthesizing the rapidly evolving literature into a conceptual framework/clusters, the study provides academicians, industrial players, government agencies, and all other stakeholders a comprehensive overview and access to the central topics, trends and the implications of the research on the impact of the pandemic on firm performance. Furthermore, the review of the data provides an opportunity to offer a deeper insight to help control the impact of the pandemic on firm’s performance and the antecedent effects on households and economies.

The rest of the paper proceeds as follows. “ Method and initial statistics ” section discusses the method. “ Bibliometric analysis ” and “ Thematic/cluster analysis ” sections present an in-depth bibliometric and cluster/thematic analyses of the dataset, respectively. “ Directions for future research ” and “ Conclusion and limitations ” sections provide direction for future research and the conclusion, respectively.

Method and initial statistics

The objective of this study is to construct a scientific map and further analyze the worth of knowledge produced by management experts who examine the impact of COVID-19 on firms’ performance. Following relevant literature (e.g., [ 27 , 28 ]) and best practices in the mapping of scientific knowledge, we conduct a bibliometrix analysis and a systematic review of the relevant literature. Specifically, we use the bibliometrix to construct scientific mapping to highlight the knowledge base, and its intellectual structure as well as both the conceptual and social network structures of Covid 19’s impact on performance extant literature (see [ 29 , 30 ]). By combining the two complementary approaches, we are able to paint a picture of the development of scientific knowledge on the impact of COVID-19 on firm performance using quantitative bibliometrix tools and also provide a comprehensive analysis of the themes/topics and contents by means of qualitative systematic review. These approaches are well established in management literature (see [ 27 , 31 ]).

Data collection

To undertake this systematic and bibliometric analysis, articles discussing the influence of COVID-19 on firm performance were retrieved and analyzed. To ensure and maintain an unbiased and high-quality database and review, strict criteria were adhered to. These are described in the following steps:

Step 1 A literature search was conducted in Scopus Database. The aim is to ensure broader access to ranked management related, reputable and quality journals.

Step 2 The search was conducted with the search term: ("COVID-19" or "CoronaVirus") and ("value" or "performance" or “profitability”). Various search strings using multiple combinations of the search terms were used during the data collection process. These include ((covid-19 OR coronavirus) AND (value OR performance OR profitability)).

Step 3 The search focused on scholarly studies relating to the impact of COVID 19 on firms published from 2019 to 24 July, 2021. We consider papers published from 2019 to 2021 because COVID-19 emerged as a global health crisis in 2019 [ 9 ] and we finished our literature search in July 2021.

Step 4 These studies were limited to final articles published within Business & Management & Accounting, Social Science, Economics, Econometrics & Finance Journals. We omit books, Ph.D. Thesis, working papers, technical reports, conference proceedings. The stages and the tasks undertaken during the literature search are summarized in Table 1 .

An initial search produced 19,645 articles, excluding articles outside of the 2019–2021 range yielded 18,710. Of these 1571 were management and accounting related. Subsequently, review papers (70), conference papers (59), editorial (10), book chapters (14), note (27), book (7) and letters (4) leaving 1372 articles. Finally, 1355 English journal articles were retained for the bibliometric and thematic analyses. Subsequent steps in this study consisted of conducting a bibliometric and a thematic analysis of articles retained. The bibliometric analysis consists of a performance analysis of articles, authors and journals to identify relevant literature in the field. Next a scientific mapping of country production as well as a keyword analysis is conducted to highlight on the various research topics in the field. We use Biblioshiny and VOSViewer Software applications to perform the bibliometric analysis. Finally, the study conducts a detailed thematic analysis, by identifying and synthesizing studies within the four main research clusters.

Descriptive statistics

Table 2 captures the description of the data collected for the bibliometric analysis and the SLR. As illustrated in the table, we identify 1355 scholarly articles, spread across 437 sources, with 73,478 references, 4407 authors keywords, 3538 authors, 0.383 article per author, and 2.85 co-authors per article. Our descriptive also shows 253 single authorships, while collaboration index is 3.03 (see Table 2 ). Our analysis shows the impact of Covid 19 on performance was first mentioned in the Management research literature in 2019 by Sterling and Merluzzi’s (2019) paper, highlighting that tryouts may rise due to Covid 19-related impacts on US Firms. Table 2 reports an astronomical rate of 31.7% for the 2-year period from 2020 to 2021, implying the ever-increasing literature on the impact of Covid 19 on performance.

The study examines the scientometric index measuring a journal’s impact by assessing the average number of article citations over the last two years. Table 3 shows the top ten most impactful journals in terms of the number of publications on impact of Covid-19 on performance research. It should be noted that the top ten journals published 215 out of 1355 articles, accounting for 15.9% of articles in our dataset. The results indicate that majority of these journals ranked three or two in Association of Business School Journal quality list. Overall, these multi-disciplinary outlets suggest the topic is attractive to all management scholars and research areas.

Bibliometric analysis

The study’s bibliometric analysis reveals the valuable insights to knowledge within management research in assessing the influences of COVID on business performance.

Author influence

This section discusses the most impactful authors to the research domain. Table 4 displays the most impactful author on the basis of h-index, m-index, g-index and number of publications. We examine author’s impact by analyzing the number of academic benchmark performance indicators, namely citations, H-index, G-index, and M-index [ 32 , 33 , 34 ]. The H-index, viewed as an unbiased overview, for example, combines the number of papers and citations to assess author’s scientific contributions over time [ 35 ]. The H-index, however, overlooks the impactful but discriminatory author, implying it favors high-volume authors. Accordingly, we complement the H-index analysis with the G-index. G-index measures the highest rank such that the top G papers have, together, at least G 2 citations (see [ 35 ] for details).

Overall, the small number of publications from these prolific authors confirms the infancy stage of the research domain, thereby allowing different authors with diverse expertise in management research to contribute to the discourse on the impact of Covid-19 and performance from 2019 to present. The results indicate that Dmitry Ivanov is the most influential author with an H-index of 5 and a G-index of 6. All 6 articles authored or co-authored by him have received a total of 448 citations. This is followed by Vanessa Ratten with H and G-indexes of 5 and 6, respectively. She has authored and co-authored a total of 8 articles in the field, earning a total citation score of 64. Next, Andres Coca-Stefaniak, Sertan Kabadayi and Jungkeun Kim assume the third, fourth and fifth most impactful author, respectively, each with an H and G-index of 3. Generally, the H and G-indexes produce different rankings, the results show that the ranking remains the same except for the highest and second highest ranked authors, who interchange according to the index understudy.

Again, critics argue that both H-index and G-index ignore different career lengths [ 36 ]. Accordingly, we use the M-index (i.e., M-quotient), which is H-index divided by author’s active literary years to help provide a clearer view of author rankings in the research area. Ranking scholars according to the M-quotient, sees Junkeun Kim as the highest ranked author with an M-quotient/index of 3, Dmitry Ivanov and Vanessa Ratten are the second and third highest ranked authors. Other impactful authors, who have contributed immensely to the field and are ranked among the top 10 impactful scholars are summarized in Table 4 .

Geographical and institutional scientific production

Biblioshiny was used to retrieve the author organization/affiliation and address information, after which all the authors were sorted in descending order. Table 5 displays the top 20 organizations publishing the most articles on Covid 19 and performance. University of Johannesburg in South Africa contributes most with 17 articles on Covid 19 and performance, followed by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong . Table 4 shows that RATTEN V from the La Trobe University contributes most with 9 articles, and the affiliation appears as the Top 6 contributing organization. Surprisingly, most of the other influential authors do not have their organizations listed in Table 5 . For example, Ivanov D, Gupta S, Kim J, Kumar A, Li S, Li Z, Sharma A, Zhang J, emerge as the Top 2 to 5 contributing authors, respectively; however, their organizations do not appear in influential organizations in Table 5 . Likewise, the University of Johannesburg emerges as the Top 1 contributing institution with 17 publications but no author from this university is listed in Table 4 . Similar surprises exist at other universities such as the RMIT university , the University of Auckland and the Auckland University of Technology which appear in Table 5 but no author from those organizations appears in Table 4 . The results imply that the contributing authors have come diverse research backgrounds in different methodological and industrial settings. For instance, the 17 publications from the University of Johannesburg cover various industries such as fruit, food, manufacturing and food, and they employ differing methodologies including empirical analysis and case studies.

Being a global health issue that has induced economic and social upheaval worldwide, COVID-19 and its related performance impact has received global scholarly attention. The geographic distribution of research attention is shown in Fig. 1 . The United States of America has the highest concentration of COVID-19 and performance impact studies of 377 (22.93%) articles. The literature on performance impact of COVID-19 has received much attention in the United States because the country has encountered disproportionately elevated levels of economic fallout, infections and deaths [ 6 , 37 ]. For instance, WHO reports that compared to other countries, the USA has the highest infection and death rates of 99,085,620, and 2,377,656, respectively. The United Kingdom emerges as the second country with concentration of studies on the performance impact of COVID-19 contributing 286 (17.40%) of the articles. China, Australia and India contribute the third (11.50%), fourth (10.95%) and fifth (10.10%) positions, respectively. Also, the impact of Covid-19 is evaluated in the Indonesia, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and Portugal by other 446 empirical research articles, representing 27.14% of the top 10 geographic dispersion. Generally, the geographical distribution in Fig. 1 depicts that countries in North America (USA), Oceania, Europe and Asia have the highest interest in studies on the performance impact of COVID-19 as compared to those in South America, Africa and Antarctica (where the interest in the study area is scanty). However, literature shows the highly interrelated nature of the global economy today [ 38 ]. Besides, the multinational nature of business activities today, heightens the need to expand knowledge on performance impacts across all continents. Thus, more empirical analysis on the impact of Covid-19 on performance is needed in those regions seemingly underrepresented in scholarship but pivotal to global business and supply chain [ 39 , 40 ].

Geographic dispersion of publications on Covid-19 and performance

Keyword analysis

Next, we conduct a keyword analysis to identify popular research perspectives in the area. Table 6 contains the biblioshiny’s keyword analysis results of 4407 author keywords in the 1355 articles reviewed in the study. As expected, COVID-19 and several iterations of the virus, crisis, crisis management and resilience make up the top 8 keywords. “ Tourism” takes 9th place on the list, indicating the relevance of tourism to national and global economies and elucidating the extent to which the pandemic has influenced the valuable global industry [ 41 ]. Innovation and resilience have been frequently discussed in conjunction with COVID-19 and business research, highlighting inherent relations between innovation and resilience in the COVID-19-performance nexus [ 42 , 43 ]. Again, Finsterwalder and Kuppelwieser [ 44 ] and Golan et al. [ 39 ] highlight the need for resilience and for developing appropriate strategy for recovery following a disruptive event. “Crisis Management” and “Leadership” are similarly popular research foci owing to the significant roles crisis management and leadership play in mitigating crisis and lessening its adverse effects [ 45 , 46 ]. Other frequently used keywords include performance, entrepreneurship, stock market, and supply chain as they all relate to business management and the performance implications of the pandemic. Country-related keywords include India and China, which have both been epicenters of the pandemic at one point or another [ 47 ]. Lastly, Table 6 shows gender as a frequently used keyword as a result of the recorded differences in infection and fatality rate among men and women [ 48 ] as well as employment, equality and other sociological equality implications [ 49 ].

To further identify themes investigated in the management research and the impact of COVID -19 and Performance, given that the field is at its infancy, we used co-occurrence of keywords analysis based on keywords that occurred at least five times, resulting in 133 satisfying the threshold out of 4407 authors keywords. Figure 2 displays the network visualization diagram of VOSviewer highlighting seven common keywords, namely, COVID-19, pandemic, coronavirus, resilience, crisis, COVID-19 pandemic and crisis management. The size of nodes and thickness of line displayed in Fig. 2 verify these findings (see [ 50 ], p. 552 for further reading). The homogeneous nature of these keywords confirms the collective focus on business performance and economic impacts of the pandemic. Figure 2 also displays 7 clustered keywords for 132.

Network visualization diagram of authors keyword on Covid-19 and performance

Citation analysis

In analyzing the 1355 articles, the study examined the citation measure of each article. Citation analysis is usually measured using two indexes: the global and local citations, whereas the former represents the citation of a given article by other articles within the entire academic database of articles, the latter indicates the citation score of a given article by other articles within the articles being assessed in this study [ 29 ].

Table 7 reports the top 10 cited articles, based on both local and global citation scores. The table shows that the most impactful article is “Predicting the impacts of epidemic outbreaks on global supply chains: a simulation-based analysis of the COVID-19/SARS-CoV2 case" —[ 51 ] . Ivanov [ 51 ] examines the global supply chain impacts of pandemic outbreak through simulation-based analysis, which was published in Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review. The study focuses on crucial management and performance issues affected during crisis such as risk management and resilience and thus sets the tone for the later empirical studies. The second most cited article is “ Risk perceptions of COVID-19 around the world ”—[ 52 ]. This article mapped and modeled the risk perception of COVID-19 around 10 countries (US, UK, Australia, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and Sweden). It highlights the role strong predictive roles of various experiential, and socio-cultural values and factors. The next highest cited article is “ Tourism and COVID-19: Impacts and implications for advancing and resetting industry and research ”—[ 53 ]. The study critically evaluates tourism transformation and impacts of the pandemic through a literature review and sets the tone for resetting and advancing research frontiers.

Other impactful articles include “ Feverish stock price reactions to COVID-19 ”—[ 21 ], which provides evidence of the impacts of COVID-19 on stock returns across US industries. The next is “ Effects of COVID-19 on hotel marketing and management: a perspective article ”—[ 54 ] which discusses the effect of COVID-19 on hotel marketing and management by outlining relevant research agenda to foster knowledge development. The multidisciplinary nature of COVID-19 research is evidenced in the diverse perspective from which these studies have examined the effect of the pandemic. Table 2 summarizes the top 10 most impactful studies.

The top 10 cited articles on COVID-19 and performance are presented in Table 8 . The table indicates that the two most cited authors are Ivanov D and Wen J. who appear as the Top 2 and Top 18, respectively, in the authors with most publication list in Table 4 . Most of the other authors in the most cited author list also appear in the most productive author list and these results signify that most of the authors in the two lists are not only productive but they are also very influential.

Co-citation analysis

We analyze the 1355 articles in our dataset, with a minimum threshold of 3 citations; the obtained set contains 29 cited references out of the 6724 total references as reported by VOSviewer. The five most connected references (Fig. 3 ) are: Fornell, C. and Larcker, D.F., 1981. Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of marketing research , 18 (1), pp. 39–50. Henseler, J., Ringle, C.M. and Sarstedt, M., 2015. A new criterion for assessing discriminant validity in variance-based structural equation modeling. Journal of the academy of marketing science , 43 (1), pp. 115–135. Podsakoff, P.M., MacKenzie, S.B., Lee, J.Y. and Podsakoff, N.P., 2003. Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. Journal of applied psychology , 88 (5), p. 879. Sheth, J., 2020. Business of business is more than business: Managing during the Covid crisis. Industrial Marketing Management , 88 , pp. 261–264. Teece, D.J., Pisano, G. and Shuen, A., 1997. Dynamic capabilities and strategic management. Strategic management journal , 18 (7), pp. 509–533.

Network visualization of the largest connected sets of cited references

Figure 3 displays the network visualization of the largest connected sets of cited references. The papers with the highest coupling strengths are those by Henseler, J., Ringle, C.M. and Sarstedt, M., 2015 and Podsakoff, P.M., MacKenzie, S.B., Lee, J.Y. and Podsakoff, N.P., 2003. These papers are central because of their specific contribution to methodological issues in business management and accounting research. Henseler et al. [ 55 ] provide guidelines on how to handle discriminant validity issues in variance-based structural equation modeling, while Podsakoff et al. [ 56 ] provide recommendations for how to select appropriate procedural and statistical remedies for different types of research settings.

Out of the 2354 cited sources, 17 journal each received more than 20 citations. The top 5 journals with the highest numbers of citations are: Tourism Management (98), International Journal of Hospitality Management (66), Journal of Business Research (50), Annual of Research (38), and Journal of Travel Research (32) (Fig. 4 ). These numbers make it evident how much of the discussion of the impact of Covid-19 on performance is supported by papers published in Tourism Management. The analysis of the network visualization provides interesting considerations. It suggests the existence of four different clusters, regarding the managerial implications related to tourism, finance, marketing and hospitality management. The specific clusters on tourism and hospitality management is inevitable due to the impact of Covid-19 on this industry.

Network visualization of the largest connected sets of cited sources by journal

Out of the 9338 cited authors, only 52 had been cited more than 10 times, while only 9 authors were cited more than 20 times. The authors are: Hall C.M (38), Boccia, F (31), Narayan, P.K (31), Salisu, A.A (28), Glossling, S (25), Zhang y (25), Liu Y (22) and Sarstedt, M (20) from University of Canterbury, Parthenope University of Naples, Deakin University, University of Ibadan, Lund University, Harbin Institute of Technology, University of Illinois, Otto-von-Guericke University, respectively. Figure 5 shows network visualization of the author co-citation analysis. It also highlights that these authors are most connected as well as most cited. The network visualization displays the existence of five different clusters. The red, green, and blue clusters are characterized by a high degree of bibliographic coupling with 15–16 items each, while two clusters show 2 items each. The red, green, blue, yellow and violet clusters with the highest degree of bibliographic coupling contain Hall et al. [ 57 ], Zhang et al. [ 58 ], and Narayan et al. [ 59 ], respectively. These studies provide insights on the impacts of Covid-19 on the services sector and consumption displacement (Hall et al. 57 ), global financial markets (Zhang et al. 58 ) and economic stimulus (Narayan et al. 59 ) (Fig. 5 ).

Network visualization of the largest connected sets of cited sources by authors

Network visualization of the bibliographic coupling of articles

Bibliographic coupling

We use bibliographic coupling of the 1349 articles to understand the theoretical foundations of publications on Covid-19 and performance. The minimum number of two articles was analyzed, resulting in the most extensive set of connected documents of 418 publications (30.98% of the dataset). Figure 6 shows network visualization of the bibliographic coupling analysis by articles, highlighting two clusters with the largest set of connected articles of 8 publications (0.59% of the dataset) implying the absence of a consolidated Covid-19 on performance field of study. The red cluster is characterized by a high degree of bibliographic coupling with 5 publications (i.e., [ 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 ]) (Tavares et al. 64 ), while green cluster shows 3 publications (i.e., Asian et al. 65 ; Kells 66 ; Tavares et al. 67 ).

Network visualization of the bibliographic coupling of journals

To analyze the bibliographic coupling of journals, we set a minimum of two articles per journal (see [ 28 ]) (Ferreira 68 ), resulting in 226 (50.78% of the dataset) out of 445 journals (see Fig. 7 ). Figure 7 shows network visualization of the bibliographic coupling analysis by journals, highlighting seven clusters with the largest set of connected journals of 74, implying the absence of a consolidated Covid-19 on performance field of study. Figure 7 reveals that the five journals with the highest bibliographic coupling index are Research in International Business, Financial Innovation, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Tourism Management, and Journal of Business Research. Figure 7 reveals the central role played by other journal in the various clusters including red (International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management and Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management), violet (International Journal of Entrepreneurship Behavior and research), yellow (Corporate Governance-Bingley), green (Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Research) and blue (International Journal of Emerging Markets). These show the field of the research on the impact of Covid 19 on financial and non-financial indicators is receiving attention from multi-disciplinary scholars of business management and accounting.

Cluster analysis of articles

Thematic/cluster analysis

Next, to provide a deeper synthesis and identify relevant patterns in performance-related COVID-19 research, the study conducts a thematic analysis as advocated by [ 69 ]. The study begins by conducting a cluster analysis of the reviewed studies and subsequently discusses the themes of these clusters in detail. The study conducts a cluster analysis of articles to identify relevant ideas, couplings or themes shaping research in COVID-19 influence on performance research. Using a co-citation cluster analysis with Biblioshiny in R, the study identifies three main clusters of research. These are illustrated in Fig. 8 .

Although identifying the main clusters of research in this domain is important, a deeper analysis of the identified themes or clusters will offer more critical insights to knowledge while guiding direction for future research. Thus, we discuss landmark publications within each thematic cluster and synthesize their key contributions to COVID-19 and performance literature. These publications are divided into three clusters contributing to different thematic areas within COVID-19 and performance literature, as identified in Fig. 3 . The landmark publications highlighted within the first cluster assess the COVID-19 pandemic situation from various foundational perspectives. Cluster two contains articles focused on the broad concepts of crisis management and strategic management. Cluster three includes landmark publications which capture the performance outcomes and strategies of COVID-19 on various businesses including sports, education, and global supply chain.

Cluster 1: foundational discussions and risk assessment

Cluster 1 is made up of several papers that assess the COVID-19 pandemic since its inception from various perspectives. These studies elaborate on the nature and implication of the pandemic on macro-economic management [ 70 ] hospitality and human rights to movement [ 71 ] as well as service ecosystems [ 44 , 72 ]. Studies in this cluster provide an elaborate assessment of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a crisis with catastrophic implications while highlighting the shortcomings of current crisis management strategies worldwide on a business and macro-economic level.

First, we consider the seminal paper [ 71 ] which attempts to assess the impact of COVID-19 on human rights to participate in hospitality and tourism, as a result of imposed travel restrictions. The study assesses the extent to which government responses to the pandemic influenced individual right to travel for leisure, business, education among others. These were evident in the closing of tourist sites, national borders, recalling of citizens to their primary residence as well as national restrictions on movement, thus confining people to their homes with little mobility to almost all service provision locations except those considered essential. In certain instances, these restrictions resulted in the inability of some tourists to return to their home countries as was experienced on several cruise ships in Europe, the Americas and Asia. These restrictions additionally, resulted in the loss of employment of numerous individuals. However, the study shows that although the pandemic and its resultant restrictions have imposed numerous challenges to tourism, individual, business and national economic growth, the closure of national borders has seen a reduction in human trafficking, child sex tourism as well as the reduction in environmental pollution and degradation through fossil fuel consumption among others. Lastly, speculating that the global hospitality and tourism industry will face a precarious future riddled with mass closures of small hospitality businesses, increasing operating and consumer costs, the study urges that scholars continue to seek answers to important questions overtime on reinstating hospitality and tourism in a post-COVID-19 world.

Following the broad picture by Baum and Hai [ 71 ], Kabadayi et al. [ 72 ] synthesized the macro-economic impact of COVID-19 while offering a framework for recognizing impacts of disruptions on service ecosystems. The study proposes the concept of service mega-disruptions (SMDs) to refer to the simultaneous multi-industry service disruptions caused by a pandemic. Defining the concept as an event caused by an unforeseen pandemic which affects multiple stakeholders and service ecosystems simultaneously and remains difficult to swiftly recover from, the study introduces a multi-level framework which may better arm service researchers and practitioners alike for future similar disruptions. The study uncovers five research themes relevant in the reducing the impact of service mega-disruptions. These include service ecosystem recovery, service agility and transformation, service technology and automation, remote service provision and finally service theory of social distancing. The study provides these holistic themes which encompass the micro- (individual and employee), meso- (service industries and public services) and macro-level (government actions and policies) perspectives of recovery measures.

Next, Finsterwalder and Kuppelwieser [ 44 ] explore the impact of crises such as COVID-19, on the service industry and its research community. By identifying and categorizing the micro-, meso- and macro-levels of service ecosystems, the study introduces a novel resource-challenges equilibrium (RCE) framework for pre-incident, incident, and post-incident phase strategies directed at building resource resilience. The study highlights the need for stronger resilience to create, facilitate and leverage on safe co-creation spheres with consumers, businesses, not-for-profit organizations as well as governmental institutions. The study highlights the need for co-creation spheres, while accentuating the need for relevant resource-challenge balance to ensure business profitability as well all overall ecosystem equilibrium.

Next, the study discusses the article Andrew et al. [ 70 ], which explores the constraints of the Australian government in responding to crises with relevant budgetary action. The study reviews literature on the COVID-19 crisis, as well as public budgeting responses to the health and economic effects of the crisis. The study identifies public budgeting as being neoliberal. This has been evident in the duo phased response strategy to COVID-19 within the Coronavirus Economic Response Package Omnibus Bill (2020) by initially stimulating businesses through the instant asset write-off scheme in the phase first, and individuals through unemployment benefits among others in the second phase. The study in its examinations seeks to offer insights and synthesis of knowledge relevant to other countries in managing and mitigating the fiscal consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. By discussing responses, outcomes and shortcomings the study provides an overview of neoliberalism influenced crisis responses for the objective assessment of multiple governmental responses available.

Lastly, Ivanov and Dolgui [ 73 ] assess the state of global supply chain in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis and provide a methodical taxonomy of supply chain disruptions caused by pandemics. The study highlights the ideas of ripple effects, structural dynamics and network resilience relevant in the COVID-19 supply chain disruption discourse. The study assesses the various ripple effects caused by the pandemic, such as the halting of production by Chrysler Automobiles NV and Hyundai as a result of the lack of parts supplied from China. The study focuses on disruption propagation throughout networks also known as ripple effects and resultant changes within supply chain structures (structural dynamics) from an operational research perspective. The study reviews relevant theories and methodologies to disruption research at network, process and control levels. By reviewing resilience in supply chain literature, the study advocates for the consideration of 5 stages in building resilience. These include anticipation, early detection, containment, control and mitigation and finally elimination. The study thus, provides relevant direction for future research while providing foundational discourse to drive this increasingly important domain of supply chain studies.

Baudier et al . [ 74 ] use survey method to extensively examine the adoption of telemedicine solutions by patients in several countries in Europe and Asia to help avoid the spread of the disease and alleviate the associated impacts of the pandemic, while ensuring a relatively uninterrupted healthcare service provision. The study argues that the development of ICTs, the individual’s adoption rate of devices (tablets, computer, smartphones), the technological advancements of telemedicine tools, and, recently, the worldwide pandemic (COVID-19) are the key drivers of the expansion of healthcare services. The empirical results based on some constructs of the Technology Acceptance Model, Availability, Personal traits, and Perceived Risks emphasize the huge influence of Performance Expectancy, the positive impact of Contamination Avoidance and the negative effect of Perceived Risk on the adoption of Teleconsultation Solutions. Brodie et al. [ 75 ] similarly review the healthcare system, while highlighting the need for a sustained value co-creation perspective for healthcare delivery with the help of integrative technologies. This, the study argued, helps to create stronger resilience through knowledge sharing, flexibility information and learning. These studies highlight the integral need and potential ecosystem resilience has in responding to and mitigating adversity and crisis during a pandemic.

Cluster 2: crisis and strategic management

The second cluster contains a number of articles which highlights the relevance of crisis and strategic management as well as communication, coordination and the media among firms. Kraus et al. [ 24 ] in a qualitative study of family firms in five western European countries, the study examined several strategic and crisis management measures used in adapting to the crisis. The study examined strategic crisis responses including retrenchment, persevering innovating and exit as discussed by Wenzel et al. [ 4 ]. Several firms included in the study begun changing or extending (innovating) their existing business models to take advantage of new consumer demands even though they may have lost a significant portion of their typical revenue streams. Others, however, continued to persevere by maintaining existing business models as a result of extensive investments in systems prior to the pandemic. The study highlighted various changes occurring among these firms. These include an increase solidarity and commitment among employees as well as a focus on increased digitalization. More prominently, although the study provided empirical evidence for and extended the strategic responses proffered by Wenzel et al. [ 4 ], results show that firms use a combination of various coping mechanisms for two main reasons: safeguarding liquidity and improving long-term survival and viability of the company. One strategic response is incapable of achieving both objectives, thus providing a basis for the combination of various strategic responses. The study however showed that, in the beginning stages of the pandemic no firm adopted exiting as a coping mechanism.

The tourism and hospitality industry has received the greatest brunt of the pandemic and as such continues to enjoy a burgeoning interest in performance, and management research. Although various studies have focused on the performance setbacks encountered by firms within this industry [ 76 ], Sigala [ 53 ] highlights the need to effective crisis management strategies. The study attempts to provide transformational remedies by unraveling all aspects of the industry including demand, supply, and other important stakeholders through three identified stages of responding, recovering and restarting. Giousmpasoglou et al. [ 77 ] extend this conversation by highlighting the relevance of managerial roles in effective crisis management. By ensuring that managers anticipate, equip and prepare their teams for crises by identifying, monitoring and mitigating potential vulnerabilities, firms within the hospitality industry will be better placed to manage crisis and reduce economic losses. By expanding this conversation to human resource management, Carnevale and Hatak [ 78 ] advocate for greater support to the workforce as they cope with altered work systems and environments and navigate changing work-family dynamics among others.

Again, we discuss studies in this cluster that highlight how countries and institutions deal with the impacts of the pandemic through communication and media. For example, Viola et al. [ 79 ] use survey data and the logit model to examine the effectiveness of institutional communication in mitigating COVID-19 impacts in Italy. The study also highlights the crucial roles of education, health literacy and the effect of asymmetric information on the effectiveness of institutional communication. The empirical results show that education plays a significant role in understanding communication pillars and building an individual consciousness about the pandemic and its associated impacts. Similarly, Machmud [ 80 ] by means of content analysis, assesses government officials’ communication and coordination intensity on twitter social media in dealing with the impacts of Covid-19 pandemic in Indonesia. The study documents that government officials are intensively building coordination and communication to overcome the performance impact of Covid-19 in Indonesia. The study further shows that the Indonesian President constantly communicates with the national COVID-19 team to ensure that all government agencies at both central and regional levels are actively mobilized and united. The study confirms coordination and communication strategic crisis management vehicles that enable public officials to jointly implement COVID-19 control policies quickly and accurately throughout Indonesia.

We also highlight studies that contribute to the theoretical development on the use of media by individuals to deal with the impacts of the pandemic. By adopting the theory of planned behavior (TPB), Mohammed and Ferraris [ 81 ] analyze the role of social media in reducing the effects of the pandemic by specifically looking at the factors that stimulate individual’s participation in social media during crises. The empirical method from the survey data shows that attitude, perceived behavioral control, subjective norm, hedonic, utilitarian values and trust affect Twitter users’ active participation significantly during the pandemic. The understanding of these driving factors could help enhance user participation, and information dissemination in the era of social distancing and lock-downs. In the same vein, Kim [ 82 ] employs survey data to examine the effect of video games on the psychological of individuals in the era of COVID-19. The study finds that video individual’s negative and positive emotional states while playing a video game increase one’s level of psychological well-being, which also results in loyalty toward the video game. The empirical findings also indicate that individuals’ positive and negative emotional states while playing a video game were obtained from the perceived emotional value of the virtual product, implying that people evaluate the game not only based on time, money and effort, but also based on enjoyment, positive feelings and pleasure from consuming the digital product. The psychological benefits derived will improve the level of positive emotions and reduce the levels of negative emotions while partaking in the recreational activity. The study advocates that video game companies should design more exciting games that offer fun and entertainment to consumers to help improve the psychological well-being of consumers during this crisis.

The last strand of studies in this cluster emphasizes the role of media in overcoming the performance impact of COVID-19 across industries. These studies highlight the significance of the media in enhancing performance of retail supply chains, tourism, and brand engagement (e.g., [ 83 , 84 , 85 ]. For example, Im et al. [ 84 ] develop two joint models with fixed-effects estimations to examine the relationships among the pandemic, online information search, social distancing, and firm performance in the tourism and hospitality industries. The first model explored the relationship among COVID-19, information search, social distancing and stock performance of tourism and hospitality companies. The results reveal that news coverage on COVID-19 significantly impacts information search and social distancing, and social distancing, in turn, exerts an impact on stock performance. The second analysis focused on the effect of the pandemic on hotel reviews through information search and social distancing for tourist attractions at the regional level. The results indicate that when looking at the geographical effect, news coverage and the number of confirmed cases both lead to variations in social distancing and information search for tourist attractions and these behavioral tendencies are influential in hotel selection. Thus, media coverage and the number of confirmed cases in the news significantly influence social distancing actions of consumers which in turn influences the stock performance of tourism and hospitality industries.

Cluster 3: performance outcomes and strategies

The final cluster contains a number of articles which discuss recorded or projected effects of COVID-19 on various business setups while offering specific remedies, and perspectives for sustained resilience and stronger performance. In Ivanov [ 51 ] the impact of COVID-19 on global supply chains is examined using a simulation-based methodology to predict and examine disruption effects on supply chain performance. This groundbreaking study sets the basis for later empirical studies on supply chains resilience and performance in pandemic era. The study primarily analyzes the manner in which simulation-based methodology can be adopted to examine and predict the effect of pandemic on global supply chain performance. The study highlights the need for firms to be resilient against the disruptions, risks and uncertainties caused by the COVID-19 as such epidemics start small but scale fast and spread across vast geographical expanses creating uncertainty and resulting in numerous unknown and usually adverse outcomes. The results of the simulation based on primary and secondary data offers possibility of predicting both long-term and short-term supply chains performance impact of pandemic in different scenarios. The study approach helps to identify the successful and wrong elements of risk preparedness/mitigation and recovery policies when pandemics erupt. The study results indicate that the timing of the opening and closing of facilities at different strata may become a key factor that determines the impact of epidemic outbreak on supply chain performance rather than the speed of epidemic spread or the duration of an upstream disruption. That is, in the event of pandemic propagation, supply chain performance and reaction depend largely on the timing and the scale of disruption propagation and the sequence of facility opening and closing at various supply chains strata.

Ratten [ 60 ] reviews literature on crisis and its effects on entrepreneurship. By focusing more intently on cultural, lifestyle and social changes experienced in society, the study examines how entrepreneurship has changed in the wake of COVID-19. The study highlights the need for stakeholders to be proactive during a crisis, as it presents both an opportunity and a threat. The study advocates for entrepreneurs to build a social movement by considering broader community needs in addition to their business needs. Additionally, the study highlights the need for a focus on societal trends as well as social changes as a way to surmount possible business setbacks as a result of COVID-19, while taking full advantage of new opportunities. By focusing on inter-organizational networks and collaboration, the study posits that entrepreneurs will begin to leverage and create new, relevant and sustainable innovations. Through appropriate information and resource sharing policy can ensure that entrepreneurs are equipped with relevant tools to rejuvenate troubled industries and grow related businesses.

Ratten [ 62 ] examines the extent to which COVID-19 has influenced sports entrepreneurship, creating the need for considering new business models and encouraging creativity. The study examines the intersection between crisis management and sport entrepreneurship and provides concrete paths to resilience, growth and performance success in dealing with COVID-19. The study examines the concept of sports entrepreneurship, and highlights the critical role technological innovation has played in the success of businesses in this domain. Although the health crisis caused by COVID-19 has resulted in the postponement and cancelation of various sports games including Euro 2020, and the Olympics among others, the study suggests that firms may rise above these setbacks with investments in capital and infrastructure to encourage greater customer and fan engagement as a way to be more entrepreneurially oriented.

Ratten [ 61 ] considers the extent to which COVID-19 has influenced educational entrepreneurship in its almost complete shift to online learning. The global education system was profoundly affected in areas of service, research and teaching. However, the study proffers that educational innovation and the leveraging of multifaceted and rich digital learning environments provides sustainable means through which education communities may cope with the devastating effects of COVID-19. By reimagining online teaching and learning experiences, possibly including artificial intelligence-related tools, and adopting a complimentary approach of innovation and empathy, education communities will begin to identify new revenue streams while strengthening existing ones.

Next, we discuss seminal studies that focus on how entities are responding to the impacts of the pandemic for survival and sustainability (e.g., [ 63 , 86 , 87 , 88 ]). Santos et al. [ 63 ] undertake a comparative study across nine countries to unravel the factors that affect COVID-19 infections and deaths across countries to sustain economies. The study specifically looks at socio-economic indicators and COVOD-19 testing, comparison of infection and death rates across countries and the impact of climate on infection rates across countries. The study finds a significant impact of climate change on COVID-19 infection rate. The results also indicate that socio-economic indicators such as security index, innovation, and GDP per capita are important for a country's sustainability, being imperative to respond to anxious moments such as what nations are living from the COVID-19 pandemic. Through content analysis, Hossain [ 89 ] investigates how the sharing economy (SE) is coping with the changing environment triggered by the Covid-19. The study examines SE sector from four main perspectives: service providers, SE firms, regulatory bodies, and service receivers (customers). The study also explores SE along the following themes: income reduction, anxiety, job loss, hygiene and safety, cancelation, overcoming strategy, and outcomes. The study results indicate the devastating impact of the pandemic on the performance of SE firms and service providers such as Airbnb, accommodation hosts, Uber, and their Uber drivers. Therefore, firms and service providers have adopted strategies to survive in business. The study indicates that because of the pandemic, accommodation hosts are looking at long-term tenants and focusing on domestic instead of foreign guests. This is mirrored by Airbnb strategy of beginning to focus more on long-term stays. These overcoming strategies significantly reduce the impact of the pandemic on SE performance.

Directions for future research

Following the critical review of several relevant studies, this study seeks to categorize and highlight important gaps in literature as well as pertinent trends and foci which research may benefit from while offering practical knowledge and solutions for policy and practice. By structuring relevant gaps and research trends into unique categories, the study provides a means to decompose the broad research domain into vital and unique sub-domains, each warranting extensive and in-depth consideration. For instance, the cluster analysis reveals unexplored areas such as the use of digital technologies and big data to boost performance in the era of viral pandemic. For methodological gaps, the studies analyzed are limited in terms of collecting data at the early stages of the pandemic, hence, the need to consider longitudinal data to better understand the performance impact of pandemic. Another methodological gap is that most of the studies use case-study approach. For contextual gap, the cluster analysis shows lack of attention to supply chains reactions under different pandemic plans. The supply chain performance studies also omitted elements such as back-up suppliers, reserved capacities, regional sub-contracting and lead-time reservations, which could obscure managerial insight. The studies are also limited to upstream disruptions, which call for examination of pandemic disruption in downstream supply chains strata and the antecedent impact on forward and backward propagations of ripple effect.

To facilitate research in addressing the theoretical, contextual, and methodological gaps such as those highlighted, we implement a four-step approach to discern future research agenda by adopting content and bibliometric analyses (Bahoo, 89 ). First, we reviewed 50 top-cited articles that make a citation map. Second, we reviewed all the influential and trending articles during the last 6 months (January to July 2021). Third, we reviewed the remaining articles in our sample to circumvent top citation bias. Fourth, we transformed the possible research agenda into research questions and excluded those questions already investigated by researchers. This systematic process produced the 20 future research questions listed in Table 9 . Through an in-depth qualitative and quantitative review, we recommend a need to establish an appropriate pandemic response framework to help businesses, governments and policy makers to maintain resilience besides maintaining public health safety during such crises.

Conclusion and limitations

The study provided an integrative review to map out the COVID-19 performance discourse. The study adopts a systematic approach to identifying relevant literature used in this review. The study performs a performance analysis to identify seminal studies, impactful authors and high-ranking journals and affiliations. Additionally, the study provides a geographical science mapping of research attention. To guide future research direction, the study conducts a keyword analysis and cluster analysis to identify relevant research themes.

Although the study makes relevant contribution to knowledge, and highlights impactful scholars in the field, the list of impactful scholars provided in this article is far from exhaustive. Additionally, the study adopts a combination of the H, G and M indexes as these indices provide some idea of the impact of authors, it must be noted that such analyses are not without fault. As such, future studies may adopt a wider combination of robust indices in assessing performance factors of authors, articles and journals. The research on the impact of covid-19 on firm performance is now developing so the review in this study focused on all firms. Thus, future reviews may look at how the pandemic affects performance of specific firms and/or sectors since different firms may have different growth objectives, which could influence the impact of COVID-19 on these firms.

Availability of data and materials

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Abbreviations

Coronavirus disease

United States of America

United Kingdom

Service mega-disruptions

Resource-challenges equilibrium

Information and communication technology

Sharing economy

Gross domestic product

Morens DM, Taubenberger JK, Folkers GK, Fauci AS (2009) An historical antecedent of modern guidelines for community pandemic influenza mitigation. Public Health Rep 124(1):22–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/003335490912400105

Article Google Scholar

Goldin I, Mariathasan M (2015) The butterfly defect. Princeton University Press, Princeton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850204/PDF

Book Google Scholar

Qiu J, Wang X, He S, Liu H, Lai J, Wang L (2017) The catastrophic landside in Maoxian County, Sichuan, SW China, on June 24, 2017. Nat Hazards 89(3):1485–1493. https://doi.org/10.1007/S11069-017-3026-9

Wenzel M, Stanske S, Lieberman MB (2021) Strategic responses to crisis. Strateg Manag J 42(2):O16–O27. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3161

Balkhair AA (2020) COVID-19 pandemic: a new chapter in the history of infectious diseases. Oman Med J 35(2):e123. https://doi.org/10.5001/OMJ.2020.41

Chakraborty T, Kumar A, Upadhyay P, Dwivedi YK (2021) Link between social distancing, cognitive dissonance, and social networking site usage intensity: a country-level study during the COVID-19 outbreak. Internet Res 31(2):419–456. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-05-2020-0281/FULL/HTML

Chiappini H, Vento G, De Palma L (2021) The impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on sustainable indexes. Sustainability 13(4):1846

Eggers F (2020) Masters of disasters? Challenges and opportunities for SMEs in times of crisis. J Bus Res 116:199–208. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JBUSRES.2020.05.025

Almeida V, Barrios S, Christl M, De Poli S, Tumino A, van der Wielen W (2021) The impact of COVID-19 on households´ income in the EU. J Econ Inequal 19(3):413–431. https://doi.org/10.1007/S10888-021-09485-8

Le XTT, Dang AK, Toweh J, Nguyen QN, Le HT, Do TTT, Phan HBT, Nguyen TT, Pham QT, Ta NKT, Nguyen QT, Nguyen AN, Van Duong Q, Hoang MT, Pham HQ, Vu LG, Tran BX, Latkin CA, Ho CSH, Ho RCM (2020) Evaluating the psychological impacts related to COVID-19 of Vietnamese people under the first nationwide partial lockdown in Vietnam. Front Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.3389/FPSYT.2020.00824/PDF

Carlsson-Szlezak P, Reeves M, Swartz P (2020) What coronavirus could mean for the global economy. Harv Bus Rev 3(10):1–10

Google Scholar

Griffiths S, Furszyfer Del Rio D, Sovacool B (2021) Policy mixes to achieve sustainable mobility after the COVID-19 crisis. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 143:110919. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.RSER.2021.110919

Papadopoulos T, Baltas KN, Balta ME (2020) The use of digital technologies by small and medium enterprises during COVID-19: Implications for theory and practice. Int J Inf Manag 55:102192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2020.102192

Aidoo SO, Agyapong A, Acquaah M, Akomea SY (2021) The performance implications of strategic responses of SMEs to the covid-19 pandemic: Evidence from an African economy. Afr J Manag 7(1):74–103. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322373.2021.1878810

Amankwah-Amoah J, Khan Z, Wood G (2021) COVID-19 and business failures: the paradoxes of experience, scale, and scope for theory and practice. Eur Manag J 39(2):179–184. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.EMJ.2020.09.002

Hu S, Zhang Y (2021) COVID-19 pandemic and firm performance: cross-country evidence. Int Rev Econ Finance 74:365–372. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.IREF.2021.03.016

Amankwah-Amoah J (2020) Stepping up and stepping out of COVID-19: New challenges for environmental sustainability policies in the global airline industry. J Clean Prod 271:123000. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JCLEPRO.2020.123000

Grover A, Karplus VJ (2021) Coping with COVID-19. World Bank, Washington. https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-9514

Kaushal V, Srivastava S (2021) Hospitality and tourism industry amid COVID-19 pandemic: perspectives on challenges and learnings from India. Int J Hosp Manag 92:102707. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.IJHM.2020.102707

Guan D, Wang D, Hallegatte S, Davis SJ, Huo J, Li S, Bai Y, Lei T, Xue Q, Coffman DM, Cheng D, Chen P, Liang X, Xu B, Lu X, Wang S, Hubacek K, Gong P (2020) Global supply-chain effects of COVID-19 control measures. Nat Hum Behav 4(6):577–587. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0896-8

Ramelli S, Wagner AF (2020) Feverish stock price reactions to COVID-19. Rev Corp Finance Stud 9(3):622–655. https://doi.org/10.1093/RCFS/CFAA012

Smales LA (2020) Investor attention and the response of US stock market sectors to the COVID-19 crisis. https://doi.org/10.1108/RBF-06-2020-0138

Gourinchas PO, Kalemli-Özcan Ṣ, Penciakova V, Sander N (2020) COVID-19 and SME failures. Cambridge, MA. https://doi.org/10.3386/W27877

Kraus S, Clauss T, Breier M, Gast J, Zardini A, Tiberius V (2020) The economics of COVID-19: initial empirical evidence on how family firms in five European countries cope with the corona crisis. Int J Entrep Behav Res 26(5):1067–1092. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-04-2020-0214

Carracedo P, Puertas R, Marti L (2021) Research lines on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business. A text mining analysis. J Bus Res 132(November 2020):586–593. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.11.043

Gaziulusoy AI, Boyle C (2013) Proposing a heuristic reflective tool for reviewing literature in transdisciplinary research for sustainability. J Clean Prod 48:139–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JCLEPRO.2012.04.013

Dabić M, Maley J, Dana LP, Novak I, Pellegrini MM, Caputo A (2020) Pathways of SME internationalization: a bibliometric and systematic review. Small Bus Econ 55(3):705–725. https://doi.org/10.1007/S11187-019-00181-6

Pizzi S, Caputo A, Corvino A, Venturelli A (2020) Management research and the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs): a bibliometric investigation and systematic review. J Clean Prod. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124033

Aria M, Cuccurullo C (2017) bibliometrix: an R-tool for comprehensive science mapping analysis. J Informet 11(4):959–975. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2017.08.007

Zupic I, Čater T (2015) Bibliometric methods in management and organization. Organ Res Methods 18(3):429–472. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428114562629

Caputo A, Marzi G, Pellegrini MM, Rialti R (2018) Conflict management in family businesses: a bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review. Int J Confl Manag 29(4):519–542. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCMA-02-2018-0027/FULL/HTML

Carpenter CR, Cone DC, Sarli CC (2014) Using publication metrics to highlight academic productivity and research impact. Acad Emerg Med 21(10):1160–1172. https://doi.org/10.1111/acem.12482

Costas R, Bordons M (2008) Is g-index better than h-index? An exploratory study at the individual level. Scientometrics 77(2):267–288. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1997-0

Hirsch JE (2005) An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0507655102

Egghe L (2006) Theory and practise of the g-index. Scientometrics 69(1):131–152. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0144-7

Costas R, Franssen T (2018) Reflections around “the cautionary use” of the h-index: response to Teixeira da Silva and Dobránszki. Scientometrics 115(2):1125–1130. https://doi.org/10.1007/S11192-018-2683-0

Mackey K, Ayers CK, Kondo KK, Saha S, Advani SM, Young S, Spencer H, Rusek M, Anderson J, Veazie S, Smith M, Kansagara D (2021) Racial and ethnic disparities in covid-19-related infections, hospitalizations, and deaths a systematic review. Ann Intern Med 174(3):362–373. https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-6306/SUPPL_FILE/M20-6306_SUPPLEMENT.PDF

Kerber G (2020) Everything is interrelated. Ecum Rev 72(4):596–608. https://doi.org/10.1111/EREV.12549

Golan MS, Jernegan LH, Linkov I (2020) Trends and applications of resilience analytics in supply chain modeling: systematic literature review in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Environ Syst Decis 40(2):222–243. https://doi.org/10.1007/S10669-020-09777-W

Mollenkopf DA, Ozanne LK, Stolze HJ (2021) A transformative supply chain response to COVID-19. J Serv Manag 32(2):190–202. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-05-2020-0143/FULL/PDF

Škare M, Soriano DR, Porada-Rochoń M (2021) Impact of COVID-19 on the travel and tourism industry. Technol Forecast Soc Change 163:120469. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.TECHFORE.2020.120469

Juergensen J, Guimón J, Narula R (2020) European SMEs amidst the COVID-19 crisis: assessing impact and policy responses. J Ind Bus Econ 47(3):499–510. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40812-020-00169-4

Kuckertz A, Brändle L, Gaudig A, Hinderer S, Reyes CA, Prochotta A, Steinbrink KM, Berger ES (2020) Startups in times of crisis—a rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic. J Bus Ventur Insights 13:e00169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbvi.2020.e00169

Finsterwalder J, Kuppelwieser VG (2020) Equilibrating resources and challenges during crises: a framework for service ecosystem well-being. J Serv Manag 31(6):1107–1129. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-06-2020-0201/FULL/

Bhaduri RM (2019) Leveraging culture and leadership in crisis management. Eur J Train Dev 43(5–6):554–569. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJTD-10-2018-0109/FULL/HTML

Janis IL (1989) Crucial Decisions: Leadership in Policymaking and Crisis Management. Free Press, New York

Gupta SD (2020) Ravaging pandemic of COVID-19. J Health Manag 22(2):115–116. https://doi.org/10.1177/0972063420951876

Gebhard C, Regitz-Zagrosek V, Neuhauser HK, Morgan R, Klein SL (2020) Impact of sex and gender on COVID-19 outcomes in Europe. Biol Sex Differ. https://doi.org/10.1186/S13293-020-00304-9

Alon T, Doepke M, Olmstead-Rumsey J, Tertilt M (2020) The impact of COVID-19 on gender equality. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.3386/W26947

Chen X, Chen J, Wu D, Xie Y, Li J (2016) Mapping the research trends by co-word analysis based on keywords from funded project. Procedia Comput Sci 91:547–555. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.PROCS.2016.07.140

Ivanov D (2020) Predicting the impacts of epidemic outbreaks on global supply chains: a simulation-based analysis on the coronavirus outbreak. Transp Res Part E 136(March):101922. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tre.2020.101922

Dryhurst S, Schneider CR, Kerr J, Freeman AL, Recchia G, Van Der Bles AM, Spiegelhalter D, Van Der Linden S (2020) Risk perceptions of COVID-19 around the world. J Risk Res 23(7–8):994–1006. https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2020.1758193

Sigala M (2020) Tourism and COVID-19: impacts and implications for advancing and resetting industry and research. J Bus Res 117:312–321. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JBUSRES.2020.06.015

Jiang Y, Wen J (2020) Effects of COVID-19 on hotel marketing and management: a perspective article. Int J Contemp Hosp Manag 32(8):2563–2573. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-03-2020-0237/FULL/HTML

Henseler J, Ringle CM, Sarstedt M (2015) A new criterion for assessing discriminant validity invariance-based structural equation modeling. J Acad Mark Sci 43(1):115–135

Podsakoff PM, MacKenzie SB, Lee JY, Podsakoff NP (2003) Common method biases in behavioralresearch: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. J Appl psychol 88(5):879

Hall MC, Prayag G, Fieger P, Dyason D (2020) Beyond panic buying: consumption displacement and COVID-19. J Serv Manage 32(1):

Zhang D, Hu M, Ji Q (2020) Financial markets under the global pandemic of COVID-19. Financ Res Lett 36:101528

Narayan PK, Phan DHB, Liu G (2021) COVID-19 lockdowns, stimulus packages, travel bans, and stock returns. Financ Res Lett 38:101732

Ratten V (2020) Coronavirus (Covid-19) and entrepreneurship: cultural, lifestyle and societal changes. J Entrep Emerg Econ 13(4):747–761. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEEE-06-2020-0163/FULL/PDF

Ratten V (2020) Coronavirus (Covid-19) and the entrepreneurship education community. J Enterp Communities 14(5):753–764. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEC-06-2020-0121/FULL/PDF

Ratten V (2020) Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and sport entrepreneurship. Int J Entrep Behav Res 26(6):1379–1388. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-06-2020-0387/FULL/PDF

Santos E, Oliveira M, Ratten V, Tavares FO, Tavares VC (2021) A reflection on explanatory factors for COVID-19: a comparative study between countries. Thunderbird Int Bus Rev 63(3):285–301. https://doi.org/10.1002/tie.22188

Tavares F, Santos E, Diogo, A, Ratten V (2020b) An analysis of the experiences based on experimental marketing: pandemic COVID-19 quarantine. World J Entrep Manage Sustain Dev 16(4):327–340. https://doi.org/10.1108/WJEMSD-08-2020-0098 .

Asian S, Wang J, Dickson G (2020) Trade disruptions, behavioral biases, and social influences: Can luxury sporting goods supply chains be immunized? Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review 143:102064.

Kells S (2020) Impacts of COVID-19 on corporate governance and assurance, international finance and economics, and non-fiction book publishing: some personal reflections. J Acc Org Chang Vol. 16:(4):629–635. https://doi.org/10.1108/JAOC-08-2020-0115 .

Tavares F, Santos E, Diogo A, Ratten V (2020a) An analysis of the experiences based on experimental marketing: pandemic COVID-19 quarantine. World J Entrep Manage Sustain Dev 16(4):327–340

Ferreira FAF (2018) Mapping the field of arts-based management: bibliographic coupling and co-citation analyses. J Bus Res 85:348e357. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.03.026 .

Braun V, Clarke V (2012) Thematic analysis. In: Cooper HE, Camic PM, Long DL, Panter AT, Rindskopf DE, Sher KJ (eds) APA handbook of research methods in psychology, Vol 2: research designs: quantitative, qualitative, neuropsychological, and biological. American Psychological Association, Washington

Andrew J, Baker M, Guthrie J, Martin-Sardesai A (2020) Australia’s COVID-19 public budgeting response: the straitjacket of neoliberalism. J Public Budg Account Financ Manag 32(5):759–770

Baum T, Hai NTT (2020) Hospitality, tourism, human rights and the impact of COVID-19. Int J Contemp Hosp Manag 32(7):2397–2407. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-03-2020-0242/FULL/HTML

Kabadayi S, O’Connor GE, Tuzovic S (2020) Viewpoint: the impact of coronavirus on service ecosystems as service mega-disruptions. J Serv Mark 34(6):809–817. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-03-2020-0090/FULL/HTML

Ivanov D, Dolgui A (2021) OR-methods for coping with the ripple effect in supply chains during COVID-19 pandemic : managerial insights and research implications. Int J Prod Econ 232(May 2020):107921. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2020.107921

Baudier P, Kondrateva G, Ammi C, Chang V, Schiavone F (2021) Technological Forecasting & Social Change Patients’ perceptions of teleconsultation during COVID-19: a cross-national study. Technol Forecast Soc Chang 163(December 2020):120510. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120510

Brodie RJ, Ranjan KR, Verreynne ML, Jiang Y, Previte J (2021) Coronavirus crisis and health care: learning from a service ecosystem perspective. J Serv Theory Pract 31(2):225–246. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSTP-07-2020-0178

Gössling S, Scott D, Hall CM (2020) Pandemics, tourism and global change: a rapid assessment of COVID-19. J Sustain Tour. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1758708

Giousmpasoglou C, Marinakou E, Zopiatis A (2021) Hospitality managers in turbulent times: the COVID-19 crisis. Int J Contemp Hosp Manag 33(4):1297–1318. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-07-2020-0741/FULL/PDF

Carnevale JB, Hatak I (2020) Employee adjustment and well-being in the era of COVID-19: implications for human resource management. J Bus Res 116:183–187. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JBUSRES.2020.05.037

Viola C, Toma P, Manta F, Benvenuto M (2021) The more you know, the better you act? Institutional communication in Covid-19 crisis management. Technol Forecast Soc Change. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.TECHFORE.2021.120929

Machmud M, Irawan B, Karinda K, Susilo J (2021) Analysis of the intensity of communication and coordination of government officials on twitter social media during the Covid-19 handling in Indonesia. Acad J Interdiscip Stud 10(3):319–319

Mohammed A, Ferraris A (2021) Factors influencing user participation in social media: evidence from twitter usage during COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia. Technol Soc. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.TECHSOC.2021.101651

Kim M (2021) Does playing a video game really result in improvements in psychological well-being in the era of COVID-19? J Retail Consum Serv. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JRETCONSER.2021.102577

Hollebeek LD, Smith DL, Kasabov E, Hammedi W, Warlow A, Clark MK (2021) Customer brand engagement during service lockdown. J Serv Mark 35(2):201–209. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-05-2020-0199/FULL/HTML

Im J, Kim J, Choeh JY (2021) COVID-19, social distancing, and risk-averse actions of hospitality and tourism consumers: a case of South Korea. J Destin Mark Manag. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JDMM.2021.100566

Sharma M, Luthra S, Joshi S, Kumar A (2021) Accelerating retail supply chain performance against pandemic disruption: adopting resilient strategies to mitigate the long-term effects. J Enterp Inf Manag 34(6):1844–1873. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEIM-07-2020-0286/FULL/HTML

Hossain M (2021) The effect of the Covid-19 on sharing economy activities. J Clean Prod 280:124782. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124782

Tuzovic S, Kabadayi S (2021) The influence of social distancing on employee well-being: a conceptual framework and research agenda. J Serv Manag 32(2):145–160. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-05-2020-0140

Williams CC (2020) The coronavirus pandemic, short-term employment support schemes and undeclared work : some lessons from Europe. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-05-2020-0218

Bahoo, S. (2020). Corruption in banks: A bibliometric review and agenda. Finance Research Letters, 35, 101499.

Jamal, T., & Budke, C. (2020). Tourism in a world with pandemics: local-global responsibility and action. Journal of tourism futures, 6(2), 181-188.

Lai, I. K. W., & Wong, J. W. C. (2020). Comparing crisis management practices in the hotel industry between initial and pandemic stages of COVID-19. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.

Jones, P., & Comfort, D. (2020). The COVID-19 crisis and sustainability in the hospitality industry. International journal of contemporary hospitality management, Volume 32 Issue 10.

Ahrens T, Ferry L (2020) Financial resilience of English local government in the aftermath of COVID-19. Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management, Volume 32 Issue 5.

Download references

The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Business, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

Kingsley Opoku Appiah

School of Economics and Management, Changsha University of Science and Technology, Changsha, China

Bismark Addai

Department of Accounting, FSI Chartered Accountants and Advisory, Accra, Ghana

Wesley Ekuban

Department of Public Leadership and Social Enterprise (PuLSE), The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

Suzzie Owiredua Aidoo

Kent Business School, University of Kent, Kent, UK

Joseph Amankwah-Amoah

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

KOA conceived the idea, KOA and WE performed the literature search; KOA, BA, and SOA performed the analysis; KOA, BA and WE wrote the first draft, JA-A, BA, KOA and SOA critically reviewed the manuscript; KOA, BA, and SOA revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bismark Addai .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Competing interests.

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Appiah, K.O., Addai, B., Ekuban, W. et al. Management research and the impact of COVID-19 on performance: a bibliometric review and suggestions for future research. Futur Bus J 8 , 41 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43093-022-00149-1

Download citation

Received : 07 June 2022

Accepted : 28 August 2022

Published : 30 September 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s43093-022-00149-1

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Management research
Bibliometrics
Coronavirus

impact of covid 19 on business research paper

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

View all journals
Explore content
About the journal
Publish with us
Sign up for alerts
Published: 16 June 2020

COVID-19 impact on research, lessons learned from COVID-19 research, implications for pediatric research

Debra L. Weiner 1 , 2 ,
Vivek Balasubramaniam 3 ,
Shetal I. Shah 4 &
Joyce R. Javier 5 , 6

on behalf of the Pediatric Policy Council

Pediatric Research volume 88 , pages 148–150 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

147k Accesses

81 Citations

19 Altmetric

Metrics details

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented research worldwide. The impact on research in progress at the time of the pandemic, the importance and challenges of real-time pandemic research, and the importance of a pediatrician-scientist workforce are all highlighted by this epic pandemic. As we navigate through and beyond this pandemic, which will have a long-lasting impact on our world, including research and the biomedical research enterprise, it is important to recognize and address opportunities and strategies for, and challenges of research and strengthening the pediatrician-scientist workforce.

The first cases of what is now recognized as SARS-CoV-2 infection, termed COVID-19, were reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019 as cases of fatal pneumonia. By February 26, 2020, COVID-19 had been reported on all continents except Antarctica. As of May 4, 2020, 3.53 million cases and 248,169 deaths have been reported from 210 countries. 1

Impact of COVID-19 on ongoing research

The impact on research in progress prior to COVID-19 was rapid, dramatic, and no doubt will be long term. The pandemic curtailed most academic, industry, and government basic science and clinical research, or redirected research to COVID-19. Most clinical trials, except those testing life-saving therapies, have been paused, and most continuing trials are now closed to new enrollment. Ongoing clinical trials have been modified to enable home administration of treatment and virtual monitoring to minimize participant risk of COVID-19 infection, and to avoid diverting healthcare resources from pandemic response. In addition to short- and long-term patient impact, these research disruptions threaten the careers of physician-scientists, many of whom have had to shift efforts from research to patient care. To protect research in progress, as well as physician-scientist careers and the research workforce, ongoing support is critical. NIH ( https://grants.nih.gov/policy/natural-disasters/corona-virus.htm ), PCORI ( https://www.pcori.org/funding-opportunities/applicant-and-awardee-faqs-related-covid-19 ), and other funders acted swiftly to provide guidance on proposal submission and award management, and implement allowances that enable grant personnel to be paid and time lines to be relaxed. Research institutions have also implemented strategies to mitigate the long-term impact of research disruptions. Support throughout and beyond the pandemic to retain currently well-trained research personnel and research support teams, and to accommodate loss of research assets, including laboratory supplies and study participants, will be required to complete disrupted research and ultimately enable new research.

In the long term, it is likely that the pandemic will force reallocation of research dollars at the expense of research areas funded prior to the pandemic. It will be more important than ever for the pediatric research community to engage in discussion and decisions regarding prioritization of funding goals for dedicated pediatric research and meaningful inclusion of children in studies. The recently released 2020 National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) strategic plan that engaged stakeholders, including scientists and patients, to shape the goals of the Institute, will require modification to best chart a path toward restoring normalcy within pediatric science.

COVID-19 research

This global pandemic once again highlights the importance of research, stable research infrastructure, and funding for public health emergency (PHE)/disaster preparedness, response, and resiliency. The stakes in this worldwide pandemic have never been higher as lives are lost, economies falter, and life has radically changed. Ultimate COVID-19 mitigation and crisis resolution is dependent on high-quality research aligned with top priority societal goals that yields trustworthy data and actionable information. While the highest priority goals are treatment and prevention, biomedical research also provides data critical to manage and restore economic and social welfare.

Scientific and technological knowledge and resources have never been greater and have been leveraged globally to perform COVID-19 research at warp speed. The number of studies related to COVID-19 increases daily, the scope and magnitude of engagement is stunning, and the extent of global collaboration unprecedented. On January 5, 2020, just weeks after the first cases of illness were reported, the genetic sequence, which identified the pathogen as a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, was released, providing information essential for identifying and developing treatments, vaccines, and diagnostics. As of May 3, 2020 1133 COVID-19 studies, including 148 related to hydroxychloroquine, 13 to remdesivir, 50 to vaccines, and 100 to diagnostic testing, were registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, and 980 different studies on the World Health Organization’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (WHO ICTRP), made possible, at least in part, by use of data libraries to inform development of antivirals, immunomodulators, antibody-based biologics, and vaccines. On April 7, 2020, the FDA launched the Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program (CTAP) ( https://www.fda.gov/drugs/coronavirus-covid-19-drugs/coronavirus-treatment-acceleration-program-ctap ). On April 17, 2020, NIH announced a partnership with industry to expedite vaccine development ( https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launch-public-private-partnership-speed-covid-19-vaccine-treatment-options ). As of May 1, 2020, remdesivir (Gilead), granted FDA emergency use authorization, is the only approved therapeutic for COVID-19. 2

The pandemic has intensified research challenges. In a rush for data already thousands of manuscripts, news reports, and blogs have been published, but to date, there is limited scientifically robust data. Some studies do not meet published clinical trial standards, which now include FDA’s COVID-19-specific standards, 3 , 4 , 5 and/or are published without peer review. Misinformation from studies diverts resources from development and testing of more promising therapeutic candidates and has endangered lives. Ibuprofen, initially reported as unsafe for patients with COVID-19, resulted in a shortage of acetaminophen, endangering individuals for whom ibuprofen is contraindicated. Hydroxychloroquine initially reported as potentially effective for treatment of COVID-19 resulted in shortages for patients with autoimmune diseases. Remdesivir, in rigorous trials, showed decrease in duration of COVID-19, with greater effect given early. 6 Given the limited availability and safety data, the use outside clinical trials is currently approved only for severe disease. Vaccines typically take 10–15 years to develop. As of May 3, 2020, of nearly 100 vaccines in development, 8 are in trial. Several vaccines are projected to have emergency approval within 12–18 months, possibly as early as the end of the year, 7 still an eternity for this pandemic, yet too soon for long-term effectiveness and safety data. Antibody testing, necessary for diagnosis, therapeutics, and vaccine testing, has presented some of the greatest research challenges, including validation, timing, availability and prioritization of testing, interpretation of test results, and appropriate patient and societal actions based on results. 8 Relaxing physical distancing without data regarding test validity, duration, and strength of immunity to different strains of COVID-19 could have catastrophic results. Understanding population differences and disparities, which have been further exposed during this pandemic, is critical for response and long-term pandemic recovery. The “Equitable Data Collection and Disclosure on COVID-19 Act” calls for the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and other HHS (United States Department of Health & Human Services) agencies to publicly release racial and demographic information ( https://bass.house.gov/sites/bass.house.gov/files/Equitable%20Data%20Collection%20and%20Dislosure%20on%20COVID19%20Act_FINAL.pdf )

Trusted sources of up-to-date, easily accessible information must be identified (e.g., WHO https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/global-research-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov , CDC https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/hcp/index.html , and for children AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) https://www.aappublications.org/cc/covid-19 ) and should comment on quality of data and provide strategies and crisis standards to guide clinical practice.

Long-term, lessons learned from research during this pandemic could benefit the research enterprise worldwide beyond the pandemic and during other PHE/disasters with strategies for balancing multiple novel approaches and high-quality, time-efficient, cost-effective research. This challenge, at least in part, can be met by appropriate study design, collaboration, patient registries, automated data collection, artificial intelligence, data sharing, and ongoing consideration of appropriate regulatory approval processes. In addition, research to develop and evaluate innovative strategies and technologies to improve access to care, management of health and disease, and quality, safety, and cost effectiveness of care could revolutionize healthcare and healthcare systems. During PHE/disasters, crisis standards for research should be considered along with ongoing and just-in-time PHE/disaster training for researchers willing to share information that could be leveraged at time of crisis. A dedicated funded core workforce of PHE/disaster researchers and funded infrastructure should be considered, potentially as a consortium of networks, that includes physician-scientists, basic scientists, social scientists, mental health providers, global health experts, epidemiologists, public health experts, engineers, information technology experts, economists and educators to strategize, consult, review, monitor, interpret studies, guide appropriate clinical use of data, and inform decisions regarding effective use of resources for PHE/disaster research.

Differences between adult and pediatric COVID-19, the need for pediatric research

As reported by the CDC, from February 12 to April 2, 2020, of 149,760 cases of confirmed COVID-19 in the United States, 2572 (1.7%) were children aged <18 years, similar to published rates in China. 9 Severe illness has been rare. Of 749 children for whom hospitalization data is available, 147 (20%) required hospitalization (5.7% of total children), and 15 of 147 required ICU care (2.0%, 0.58% of total). Of the 95 children aged <1 year, 59 (62%) were hospitalized, and 5 (5.3%) required ICU admission. Among children there were three deaths. Despite children being relatively spared by COVID-19, spread of disease by children, and consequences for their health and pediatric healthcare are potentially profound with immediate and long-term impact on all of society.

We have long been aware of the importance and value of pediatric research on children, and society. COVID-19 is no exception and highlights the imperative need for a pediatrician-scientist workforce. Understanding differences in epidemiology, susceptibility, manifestations, and treatment of COVID-19 in children can provide insights into this pathogen, pathogen–host interactions, pathophysiology, and host response for the entire population. Pediatric clinical registries of COVID-infected, COVID-exposed children can provide data and specimens for immediate and long-term research. Of the 1133 COVID-19 studies on ClinicalTrials.gov, 202 include children aged ≤17 years. Sixty-one of the 681 interventional trials include children. With less diagnostic testing and less pediatric research, we not only endanger children, but also adults by not identifying infected children and limiting spread by children.

Pediatric considerations and challenges related to treatment and vaccine research for COVID-19 include appropriate dosing, pediatric formulation, and pediatric specific short- and long-term effectiveness and safety. Typically, initial clinical trials exclude children until safety has been established in adults. But with time of the essence, deferring pediatric research risks the health of children, particularly those with special needs. Considerations specific to pregnant women, fetuses, and neonates must also be addressed. Childhood mental health in this demographic, already struggling with a mental health pandemic prior to COVID-19, is now further challenged by social disruption, food and housing insecurity, loss of loved ones, isolation from friends and family, and exposure to an infodemic of pandemic-related information. Interestingly, at present mental health visits along with all visits to pediatric emergency departments across the United States are dramatically decreased. Understanding factors that mitigate and worsen psychiatric symptoms should be a focus of research, and ideally will result in strategies for prevention and management in the long term, including beyond this pandemic. Social well-being of children must also be studied. Experts note that the pandemic is a perfect storm for child maltreatment given that vulnerable families are now socially isolated, facing unemployment, and stressed, and that children are not under the watch of mandated reporters in schools, daycare, and primary care. 10 Many states have observed a decrease in child abuse reports and an increase in severity of emergency department abuse cases. In the short term and long term, it will be important to study the impact of access to care, missed care, and disrupted education during COVID-19 on physical and cognitive development.

Training and supporting pediatrician-scientists, such as through NIH physician-scientist research training and career development programs ( https://researchtraining.nih.gov/infographics/physician-scientist ) at all stages of career, as well as fostering research for fellows, residents, and medical students willing to dedicate their research career to, or at least understand implications of their research for, PHE/disasters is important for having an ongoing, as well as a just-in-time surge pediatric-focused PHE/disaster workforce. In addition to including pediatric experts in collaborations and consortiums with broader population focus, consideration should be given to pediatric-focused multi-institutional, academic, industry, and/or government consortiums with infrastructure and ongoing funding for virtual training programs, research teams, and multidisciplinary oversight.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on research and research in response to the pandemic once again highlights the importance of research, challenges of research particularly during PHE/disasters, and opportunities and resources for making research more efficient and cost effective. New paradigms and models for research will hopefully emerge from this pandemic. The importance of building sustained PHE/disaster research infrastructure and a research workforce that includes training and funding for pediatrician-scientists and integrates the pediatrician research workforce into high-quality research across demographics, supports the pediatrician-scientist workforce and pipeline, and benefits society.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Covid-19 Case Tracker. Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html (2020).

US Food and Drug Administration. Coronavirus (COVID-19) update: FDA issues emergency use authorization for potential COVID-19 treatment. FDA News Release . https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-issues-emergency-use-authorization-potential-covid-19-treatment (2020).

Evans, S. R. Fundamentals of clinical trial design. J. Exp. Stroke Transl. Med. 3 , 19–27 (2010).

Article Google Scholar

Antman, E. M. & Bierer, B. E. Standards for clinical research: keeping pace with the technology of the future. Circulation 133 , 823–825 (2016).

Food and Drug Administration. FDA guidance on conduct of clinical trials of medical products during COVID-19 public health emergency. Guidance for Industry, Investigators and Institutional Review Boards . https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/fda-guidance-conduct-clinical-trials-medical-products-during-covid-19-public-health-emergency (2020).

National Institutes of Health. NIH clinical trials shows remdesivir accelerates recovery from advanced COVID-19. NIH New Releases . https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-clinical-trial-shows-remdesivir-accelerates-recovery-advanced-covid-19#.XrIX75ZmQeQ.email (2020).

Radcliffe, S. Here’s exactly where we are with vaccines and treatments for COVID-19. Health News . https://www.healthline.com/health-news/heres-exactly-where-were-at-with-vaccines-and-treatments-for-covid-19 (2020).

Abbasi, J. The promise and peril of antibody testing for COVID-19. JAMA . https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.6170 (2020).

CDC COVID-19 Response Team. Coronavirus disease 2019 in children—United States, February 12–April 2, 2020. Morb. Mortal Wkly Rep . 69 , 422–426 (2020).

Agarwal, N. Opinion: the coronavirus could cause a child abuse epidemic. The New York Times . https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/opinion/coronavirus-child-abuse.html (2020).

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Pediatrics, Division of Emergency Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

Debra L. Weiner

Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Department of Pediatrics, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI, USA

Vivek Balasubramaniam

Department of Pediatrics and Division of Neonatology, Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital at Westchester Medical Center, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY, USA

Shetal I. Shah

Division of General Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Joyce R. Javier

Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors made substantial contributions to conception and design, data acquisition and interpretation, drafting the manuscript, and providing critical revisions. All authors approve this final version of the manuscript.

Pediatric Policy Council

Scott C. Denne, MD, Chair, Pediatric Policy Council; Mona Patel, MD, Representative to the PPC from the Academic Pediatric Association; Jean L. Raphael, MD, MPH, Representative to the PPC from the Academic Pediatric Association; Jonathan Davis, MD, Representative to the PPC from the American Pediatric Society; DeWayne Pursley, MD, MPH, Representative to the PPC from the American Pediatric Society; Tina Cheng, MD, MPH, Representative to the PPC from the Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs; Michael Artman, MD, Representative to the PPC from the Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs; Shetal Shah, MD, Representative to the PPC from the Society for Pediatric Research; Joyce Javier, MD, MPH, MS, Representative to the PPC from the Society for Pediatric Research.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Debra L. Weiner .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Members of the Pediatric Policy Council are listed below Author contributions.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Weiner, D.L., Balasubramaniam, V., Shah, S.I. et al. COVID-19 impact on research, lessons learned from COVID-19 research, implications for pediatric research. Pediatr Res 88 , 148–150 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-020-1006-3

Download citation

Received : 07 May 2020

Accepted : 21 May 2020

Published : 16 June 2020

Issue Date : August 2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-020-1006-3

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

This article is cited by

Catalysing global surgery: a meta-research study on factors affecting surgical research collaborations with africa.

Thomas O. Kirengo
Hussein Dossajee
Nchafatso G. Obonyo

Systematic Reviews (2024)

Lessons learnt while designing and conducting a longitudinal study from the first Italian COVID-19 pandemic wave up to 3 years

Alvisa Palese
Stefania Chiappinotto
Carlo Tascini

Health Research Policy and Systems (2023)

Pediatric Research and COVID-19: the changed landscape

E. J. Molloy
C. B. Bearer

Pediatric Research (2022)

Cancer gene therapy 2020: highlights from a challenging year

Georgios Giamas
Teresa Gagliano

Cancer Gene Therapy (2022)

Quick links

Explore articles by subject
Guide to authors
Editorial policies

Information

Author Services

Initiatives

You are accessing a machine-readable page. In order to be human-readable, please install an RSS reader.

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess .

Feature papers represent the most advanced research with significant potential for high impact in the field. A Feature Paper should be a substantial original Article that involves several techniques or approaches, provides an outlook for future research directions and describes possible research applications.

Feature papers are submitted upon individual invitation or recommendation by the scientific editors and must receive positive feedback from the reviewers.

Editor’s Choice articles are based on recommendations by the scientific editors of MDPI journals from around the world. Editors select a small number of articles recently published in the journal that they believe will be particularly interesting to readers, or important in the respective research area. The aim is to provide a snapshot of some of the most exciting work published in the various research areas of the journal.

Original Submission Date Received: .

Active Journals
Find a Journal
Proceedings Series
For Authors
For Reviewers
For Editors
For Librarians
For Publishers
For Societies
For Conference Organizers
Open Access Policy
Institutional Open Access Program
Special Issues Guidelines
Editorial Process
Research and Publication Ethics
Article Processing Charges
Testimonials
Preprints.org
SciProfiles
Encyclopedia

Article Menu

Subscribe SciFeed
Recommended Articles
Google Scholar
on Google Scholar
Table of Contents

Find support for a specific problem in the support section of our website.

Please let us know what you think of our products and services.

Visit our dedicated information section to learn more about MDPI.

JSmol Viewer

Examining the response to covid-19 in logistics and supply chain processes: insights from a state-of-the-art literature review and case study analysis.

1. Introduction

RQ1 (scientific): How have researchers studied the impact of COVID-19 on logistics and supply chain processes? Which industrial sectors were mostly studied and why? Which additional topics can be related to COVID-19 and logistics/supply chain?
RQ2 (practical): What effects of COVID-19 on logistics and supply chain processes were experienced by companies?

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. systematic literature review, 2.1.1. sample creation, 2.1.2. descriptive analyses, 2.1.3. paper classification.

Macro theme: sustainability, resilience, risk, information technology, economics, performance, planning and food security. This classification represents paper’s core topic.
Industrial sector: aerospace, agri-food, apparel, automotive, construction, e-commerce, electronic, energy, fast-moving consumer goods, food, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing and service.
Data collection method: questionnaire/interview, third-party sources or case study. This classification represents the method used by the authors to collect the data useful to their study.
Research method: statistical, decision-making, simulation, empirical, literature review or economic. This category describes the tool used by the authors to conduct the study and reach the related goals.
Specific method, e.g., descriptive statistics, structural equation modeling (SEM), multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), etc.; this feature describes more accurately the type of work carried out by the authors and the tools used.
Country: it reflects the geographical area in which the study was carried out, in terms, for instance, of the country in which a sample of people has been interviewed or where empirical data were collected, or where the simulation was set. This method of classification, although more elaborated, was preferred over traditional approaches, in which the country of the study is defined based merely on the affiliation of the first author of the paper, because the exact knowledge of the country in which the study was carried out is, for sure, a more representative source of information about the research. This is true in general, but it is even more important for this subject matter, as the management of the COVID-19 pandemic was made on a country or regional basis, with significant differences from country to country; knowing the exact location of the study helps in better interpreting the research outcomes. Possible entries in this field also include “multiple countries” and “not specified”, with the obvious meanings of the terms.

2.1.4. Cross-Analyses

2.1.5. interrelated aspects, 2.2. case study, 2.2.1. data collection.

Economic data: some key economic data were retrieved from the company’s balance sheet, from 2019 up to the latest available document, which refers to 2022.
Organizational data: these data describe changes in the operational, decision-making and business structure of the company in terms, e.g., of number of employees hired, number of drivers, etc.
The related data were collected and elaborated between July and September 2023.

2.2.2. Survey Phase

2.2.3. analysis and summary, 3. results—systematic literature review, 3.1. descriptive statistics, 3.2. common classification fields, 3.2.1. macro theme, 3.2.2. industrial sector, 3.2.3. data collection method, 3.2.4. research method, 3.2.5. country, 3.3. cross-analyses, 3.3.1. macro theme vs. industrial sector, 3.3.2. research method vs. macro theme, 3.4. interrelated aspects, 4. results—case study, 4.1. company overview, 4.2. pre-covid-19 period, 4.3. covid-19 period, 4.4. post-covid-19 period, 4.5. analysis and summary.

Strengths : at present, Company A benefits from a robust network of relationships with customers and suppliers (e.g., drivers), which was leveraged during the pandemic period to provide a rapid response to the increased request by the consumers. The company has also leveraged the usage of digital technologies, which made logistics activities more efficient and, again, allowed the company to respond to consumer demand in the pandemic period.
Weaknesses : Company A has suffered from low economic results, in particular in the post-COVID-19 period, mainly due to the high production costs. Efforts must be made by the company to reduce expenses. At the same time, however, the service level, in terms of delivery lead time or on-time delivery, should be safeguarded.
Opportunities : the growth of e-commerce, experienced in the COVID-19 period but expected to last over time, creates opportunities for increasing the volume of items handled by Company A. Indeed, the survey phase demonstrated that the company’s consumers have shifted towards the usage of online sales; hence, the company could consider investing in this area to increase its market share. By leveraging the e-commerce logistics and diversifying service, expansions could also be possible at an international level. Even if the company has already embraced the implementation of digital technologies, some emerging technologies (e.g., drones or advanced traceability systems) could also be introduced for further improving the logistics efficiency. Finally, sustainability is another opportunity to be leveraged, because of the current push towards the adoption of environmental-friendly logistics solutions. Examples of those solutions include a reduction in CO 2 emissions, and the usage of electric vehicles or zero-impact materials.
Threats : the growth of e-commerce can be seen as an opportunity, but because many logistics companies have already entered this field, the sector is characterized by very high competition, which could limit the market share of Company A; this could instead be seen as a threat needing to be properly managed. Another threat comes from the increased cost of fuel, which, for sure, for a logistics company plays an important role in determining the cost of the transport activities (also, having previously observed that the company suffered from a limited revenue in recent years). This factor could further push towards the adoption of environmentally friendly transport modes (e.g., electric vehicles), which have been previously mentioned as an opportunity for leveraging in the logistics sector.

5. Conclusions

5.1. answer to the research questions, 5.2. scientific and practical implications, 5.3. suggestions for future research directions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

Christopher, M. Logistics and Supply Chain Management: Strategies for Reducing Cost and Improving Service Financial Times ; Pitman Publishing: London, UK, 1998; ISBN 0 273 63049 0. [ Google Scholar ]
Gechevski, D.; Kochov, A.; Popovska-Vasilevska, S.; Polenakovik, R.; Donev, V. Reverse Logistics and Green Logistics Way to Improving the Environmental Sustainability. Acta Tech. Corviniensis-Bull. Eng. 2016 , 9 , 63. [ Google Scholar ]
Mbang, A. A New Introduction to Supply Chains and Supply Chain Management: Definitions and Theories Perspective. Int. Bus. Res. 2011 , 5 , 194–207. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Jones, T.C.; Riley, D.W. Using Inventory for Competitive Advantage through Supply Chain Management. Int. J. Phys. Distrib. Mater. Manag. 1985 , 15 , 16–26. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Monczka, R.M.; Trent, R.J.; Handfield, R.B. Purchasing and Supply Chain Management ; South Western Educational Publishing: Natorp Blvd Cincinnati, OH, USA, 2002; ISBN 0-324-02315-4. [ Google Scholar ]
Belhadi, D.; Peiffer-Smadja, N.; Lescure, F.-X.; Yazdanpanah, Y.; Mentré, F.; Laouénan, C. A Brief Review of Antiviral Drugs Evaluated in Registered Clinical Trials for COVID-19. MedRxiv 2020 . [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Shen, Z.; Sun, Y. Strengthening Supply Chain Resilience during COVID-19: A Case Study of JD.Com. J. Oper. Manag. 2021 , 69 , 359–383. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Dohale, V.; Verma, P.; Gunasekaran, A.; Ambilkar, P. COVID-19 and Supply Chain Risk Mitigation: A Case Study from India. Int. J. Logist. Manag. 2023 , 34 , 417–442. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Mishra, P.K. COVID-19, Black Swan Events and the Future of Disaster Risk Management in India. Prog. Disaster Sci. 2020 , 8 , 100137. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Badhotiya, G.K.; Soni, G.; Jain, V.; Joshi, R.; Mittal, S. Assessing Supply Chain Resilience to the Outbreak of COVID-19 in Indian Manufacturing Firms. Oper. Manag. Res. 2022 , 15 , 1161–1180. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Mahmoud, M.A.; Mahmoud, A.; Abubakar, S.L.; Garba, A.S.; Daneji, B.A. COVID-19 Operational Disruption and SMEs’ Performance: The Moderating Role of Disruption Orientation and Government Support. Benchmarking Int. J. 2022 , 29 , 2641–2664. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Aldrighetti, R.; Battini, D.; Ivanov, D. Increasing Supply Chain Resilience through Efficient Redundancy Allocation: A Risk-Averse Mathematical Model. Ifac-papersonline 2021 , 54 , 1011–1016. [ Google Scholar ]
Tang, O.; Nurmaya Musa, S. Identifying Risk Issues and Research Advancements in Supply Chain Risk Management. Int. J. Prod. Econ. 2011 , 133 , 25–34. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Rinaldi, M.; Murino, T.; Gebennini, E.; Morea, D.; Bottani, E. A Literature Review on Quantitative Models for Supply Chain Risk Management: Can They Be Applied to Pandemic Disruptions? Comput. Ind. Eng. 2022 , 170 , 108329. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Corallo, A.; Lazoi, M.; Lezzi, M.; Luperto, A. Cybersecurity Awareness in the Context of the Industrial Internet of Things: A Systematic Literature Review. Comput. Ind. 2022 , 137 , 103614. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Rinaldi, M.; Bottani, E. How Did COVID-19 Affect Logistics and Supply Chain Processes? Immediate, Short and Medium-Term Evidence from Some Industrial Fields of Italy. Int. J. Prod. Econ. 2023 , 262 , 108915. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Chowdhury, P.; Paul, S.K.; Kaisar, S.; Moktadir, M.A. COVID-19 pandemic related supply chain studies: A systematic review. Transp. Res. Part E—Logist. Transp. Rev. 2021 , 148 , 102271. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Nandi, S.; Sarkis, J.; Hervani, A.A.; Helms, M.M. Redesigning supply chains using blockchain-enabled circular economy and COVID-19 experiences. Sustain. Prod. Consum. 2021 , 27 , 10–22. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Kraus, S.; Clauss, T.; Breier, M.; Gast, J.; Zardini, A.; Tiberius, V. The economics of COVID-19: Initial empirical evidence on how family firms in five European countries cope with the corona crisis. Int. J. Entrep. Behav. Res. 2020 , 26 , 1067–1092. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
De Vet, J.M.; Nigohosyan, D.; Ferrer, J.N.; Gross, A.K.; Kuehl, S.; Flickenschild, M. Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on EU Industries. 2021. Available online: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2021/662903/IPOL_STU(2021)662903_EN.pdf (accessed on 29 April 2024).
Manuj, I.; Mentzer, J.T. Global Supply Chain Risk Management. J. Bus. Logist. 2008 , 29 , 133–155. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Ali, I.; Golgeci, I.; Arslan, A. Achieving Resilience through Knowledge Management Practices and Risk Management Culture in Agri-Food Supply Chains. Supply Chain. Manag. Int. J. 2023 , 28 , 284–299. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Madhavika, N.; Jayasinghe, N.; Ehalapitiya, S.; Wickramage, T.; Fernando, D.; Jayasinghe, V. Operationalizing Resilience through Collaboration: The Case of Sri Lankan Tea Supply Chain during Covid-19. Qual. Quant. 2023 , 57 , 2981–3018. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Aman, S.; Seuring, S. Analysing Developing Countries Approaches of Supply Chain Resilience to COVID-19. Int. J. Logist. Manag. 2023 , 34 , 909–934. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Maharjan, R.; Kato, H. Resilient Supply Chain Network Design: A Systematic Literature Review. Transp. Rev. 2022 , 42 , 739–761. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Zidi, S.; Hamani, N.; Kermad, L. Antecedents and Enablers of Supply Chain Reconfigurability and Their Effects on Performance. Int. J. Adv. Manuf. Technol. 2022 , 120 , 3027–3043. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Nabipour, M.; Ülkü, M.A. On Deploying Blockchain Technologies in Supply Chain Strategies and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Outlook. Sustainability 2021 , 13 , 10566. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Rokicki, T.; Bórawski, P.; Bełdycka-Bórawska, A.; Szeberényi, A.; Perkowska, A. Changes in Logistics Activities in Poland as a Result of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Sustainability 2022 , 14 , 10303. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Figura, J.; Gądek-Hawlena, T. The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Development of Electromobility in Poland. The Perspective of Companies in the Transport-Shipping-Logistics Sector: A Case Study. Energies 2022 , 15 , 1461. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Baldrighi, E.; Monferdini, L.; Bottani, E. The Response to COVID-19 in Logistics and Supply Chain Processes: Evidence from a Review of the Literature. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Harbour, Maritime and Multimodal Logistics Modelling and Simulation, Athens, Greece, 18–20 September 2023. [ Google Scholar ]
Bottani, E.; Monferdini, L. Studies related to Covid-19 in logistics and supply chain processes (2021–2023). Mendeley Data 2024 , V1. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Kesmodel, U.S. Cross-Sectional Studies—What Are They Good For? Acta Obstet. Gynecol. Scand. 2018 , 97 , 388–393. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Thompson, M.L.; Myers, J.; Kriebel, D. Prevalence Odds Ratio or Prevalence Ratio in the Analysis of Cross Sectional Data: What Is to Be Done? Occup. Environ. Med. 1998 , 55 , 272–277. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Robson, C. Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers ; Blackwell Publishing: Hoboken, NJ, USA, 1993; ISBN 978-0-631-17689-3. [ Google Scholar ]
Yin, R. Case Studies. Int. Encycl. Soc. Behav. Sci. 2015 , 2 , 194–201. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Wohlin, C. Case Study Research in Software Engineering—It Is a Case, and It Is a Study, but Is It a Case Study? Inf. Softw. Technol. 2021 , 133 , 106514. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Grabot, B.; Vallespir, B.; Samuel, G.; Bouras, A.; Kiritsis, D. Advances in Production Management Systems: Innovative and Knowledge-Based Production Management in a Global-Local World: IFIP WG 5.7 International Conference, APMS 2014, Ajaccio, France, 20–24 September 2014, Proceedings, Part II ; Springer: Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany, 2014; Volume 439, ISBN 3-662-44736-3. [ Google Scholar ]
Alicke, K.; Azcue, X.; Barriball, E.; Supply-Chain Recovery in Coronavirus Times—Plan for Now and the Future. McKinsey & Company. 2020. Available online: https://www.mckinsey.com (accessed on 29 April 2024).
Ivanov, D. Supply Chain Viability and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Conceptual and Formal Generalisation of Four Major Adaptation Strategies. Int. J. Prod. Res. 2021 , 59 , 3535–3552. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Adobor, H.; McMullen, R.S. Supply Chain Resilience: A Dynamic and Multidimensional Approach. Int. J. Logist. Manag. 2018 , 29 , 1451–1471. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Singh, C.S.; Soni, G.; Badhotiya, G.K. Performance Indicators for Supply Chain Resilience: Review and Conceptual Framework. J. Ind. Eng. Int. 2019 , 15 , 105–117. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Mohammed, A.; Jabbour, A.B.L.D.S.; Diabat, A. COVID-19 Pandemic Disruption: A Matter of Building Companies’ Internal and External Resilience. Int. J. Prod. Res. 2023 , 61 , 2716–2737. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
El Khoury, R.; Nasrallah, N.; Atayah, O.F.; Dhiaf, M.M.; Frederico, G.F. The Impact of Green Supply Chain Management Practices on Environmental Performance during COVID-19 Period: The Case of Discretionary Companies in the G-20 Countries. Benchmarking Int. J. 2022 . ahead of print . [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Sharma, V.; Singh, A.; Rai, S.S. Disruptions in Sourcing and Distribution Practices of Supply Chains Due to COVID-19 Pandemic: A Sustainability Paradigm. J. Glob. Oper. Strateg. Sourc. 2022 , 15 , 235–261. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Karmaker, C.L.; Bari, A.B.M.M.; Anam, M.Z.; Ahmed, T.; Ali, S.M.; de Jesus Pacheco, D.A.; Moktadir, M.A. Industry 5.0 Challenges for Post-Pandemic Supply Chain Sustainability in an Emerging Economy. Int. J. Prod. Econ. 2023 , 258 , 108806. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Paul, A.; Shukla, N.; Trianni, A. Modelling Supply Chain Sustainability Challenges in the Food Processing Sector amid the COVID-19 Outbreak. Socio-Econ. Plan. Sci. 2023 , 87 , 101535. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Siuta, K.; Kaszyński, D. The Principal-Agent Problem in Supply Chain Management—The Simulation Based Framework. Control. Cybern. 2021 , 50 , 195–221. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Kumar, P.; Singh, S.S.; Pandey, A.K.; Singh, R.K.; Srivastava, P.K.; Kumar, M.; Dubey, S.K.; Sah, U.; Nandan, R.; Singh, S.K.; et al. Multi-Level Impacts of the COVID-19 Lockdown on Agricultural Systems in India: The Case of Uttar Pradesh. Agric. Syst. 2021 , 187 , 103027. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Atayah, O.F.; Dhiaf, M.M.; Najaf, K.; Frederico, G.F. Impact of COVID-19 on Financial Performance of Logistics Firms: Evidence from G-20 Countries. J. Glob. Oper. Strateg. Sourc. 2022 , 15 , 172–196. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Israfilov, N.; Druzyanova, V.; Ermakova, M.; Sinitsyna, A. Key Directions for Transforming Supply Chain Management in Emerging Markets during the PostCOVID-19 Pandemic Period. Oper. Supply Chain. Manag. 2023 , 16 , 498–508. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Dwivedi, A.; Chowdhury, P.; Paul, S.K.; Agrawal, D. Sustaining Circular Economy Practices in Supply Chains during a Global Disruption. Int. J. Logist. Manag. 2023 , 34 , 644–673. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Ghadge, D.A.; Er, M.; Ivanov, D.; Chaudhuri, A. Visualisation of Ripple Effect in Supply Chains under Long-Term, Simultaneous Disruptions: A System Dynamics Approach. Int. J. Prod. Res. 2021 , 60 , 1987547. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Eldem, B.; Kluczek, A.; Bagiński, J. The COVID-19 Impact on Supply Chain Operations of Automotive Industry: A Case Study of Sustainability 4.0 Based on Sense–Adapt–Transform Framework. Sustainability 2022 , 14 , 5855. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Gui, D.; Wang, H.; Yu, M. Risk Assessment of Port Congestion Risk during the COVID-19 Pandemic. J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022 , 10 , 150. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Brdulak, H.; Brdulak, A. Challenges and Threats Faced in 2020 by International Logistics Companies Operating on the Polish Market. Sustainability 2021 , 13 , 359. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Paul, S.K.; Chowdhury, P.; Chowdhury, M.T.; Chakrabortty, R.K.; Moktadir, M.A. Operational Challenges during a Pandemic: An Investigation in the Electronics Industry. Int. J. Logist. Manag. 2023 , 34 , 336–362. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Klein, M.; Gutowska, E.; Gutowski, P. Innovations in the T&L (Transport and Logistics) Sector during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Sweden, Germany and Poland. Sustainability 2022 , 14 , 3323. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Mishrif, A.; Khan, A. Technology Adoption as Survival Strategy for Small and Medium Enterprises during COVID-19. J. Innov. Entrep. 2023 , 12 , 53. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Ishak, S.; Shaharudin, M.R.; Salim, N.A.M.; Zainoddin, A.I.; Deng, Z. The Effect of Supply Chain Adaptive Strategies During the COVID-19 Pandemic on Firm Performance in Malaysia’s Semiconductor Industries. Glob. J. Flex. Syst. Manag. 2023 , 24 , 439–458. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Hendijani, R.; Norouzi, M. Supply Chain Integration and Firm Performance in the COVID-19 Era: The Mediating Role of Resilience and Robustness. J. Glob. Oper. Strateg. Sourc. 2023 , 16 , 337–367. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Vilko, J.; Hallikas, J. Impact of COVID-19 on Logistics Sector Companies. Int. J. Ind. Eng. Oper. Manag. 2024 , 6 , 25–42. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Palouj, M.; Lavaei Adaryani, R.; Alambeigi, A.; Movarej, M.; Safi Sis, Y. Surveying the Impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) on the Poultry Supply Chain: A Mixed Methods Study. Food Control 2021 , 126 , 108084. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Ali, I.; Arslan, A.; Khan, Z.; Tarba, S. The Role of Industry 4.0 Technologies in Mitigating Supply Chain Disruption: Empirical Evidence From the Australian Food Processing Industry. IEEE Trans. Eng. Manag. 2021 , 71 , 10600–10610. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Grigorescu, I.; Popovici, E.-A.; Damian, N.; Dumitraşcu, M.; Sima, M.; Mitrică, B.; Mocanu, I. The Resilience of Sub-Urban Small Farming in Bucharest Metropolitan Area in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Land Use Policy 2022 , 122 , 106351. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Perrin, A.; Martin, G. Resilience of French Organic Dairy Cattle Farms and Supply Chains to the Covid-19 Pandemic. Agric. Syst. 2021 , 190 , 103082. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Coopmans, I.; Bijttebier, J.; Marchand, F.; Mathijs, E.; Messely, L.; Rogge, E.; Sanders, A.; Wauters, E. COVID-19 Impacts on Flemish Food Supply Chains and Lessons for Agri-Food System Resilience. Agric. Syst. 2021 , 190 , 103136. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Ababulgu, N.; Abajobir, N.; Wana, H. The Embarking of COVID-19 and the Perishable Products’ Value Chain in Ethiopia. J. Innov. Entrep. 2022 , 11 , 34. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Eileen Bogweh, N.; Lutomia, C. COVID-19 Challenges to Sustainable Food Production and Consumption: Future Lessons for Food Systems in Eastern and Southern Africa from a Gender Lens. Sustain. Prod. Consum. 2021 , 27 , 2208–2220. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Igberi, C.; Omenyi, L.; Osuji, E.; Egwu, P.; Ibrahim-olesin, S. Comparative Analysis of the Sustainable Dimensions of Food Security with COVID-19 and Climate Change: A Case Study. Int. J. Adv. Appl. Sci. 2022 , 9 , 9–15. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Mugabe, P.A.; Renkamp, T.M.; Rybak, C.; Mbwana, H.; Gordon, C.; Sieber, S.; Löhr, K. Governing COVID-19: Analyzing the Effects of Policy Responses on Food Systems in Tanzania. Agric. Food Secur. 2022 , 11 , 47. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Nunes, M.; Abreu, A.; Bagnjuk, J.; Nunes, E.; Saraiva, C. A Strategic Process to Manage Collaborative Risks in Supply Chain Networks (SCN) to Improve Resilience and Sustainability. Sustainability 2022 , 14 , 5237. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
World Economic Forum (WEF). How to Rebound Stronger from COVID-19—Resilience in Manufacturing and Supply Systems ; World Economic Forum: Cologny, Switzerland, 2020. [ Google Scholar ]
Zulkiffli, S.N.; Zaidi, N.F.; Padlee, S.F.; Sukri, N.K. Eco-Innovation Capabilities and Sustainable Business Performance during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Sustainability 2022 , 14 , 7525. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Moosavi, J.; Hosseini, S. Simulation-Based Assessment of Supply Chain Resilience with Consideration of Recovery Strategies in the COVID-19 Pandemic Context. Comput. Ind. Eng. 2021 , 160 , 107593. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Ho, W.; Zheng, T.; Yildiz, H.; Talluri, S. Supply Chain Risk Management: A Literature Review. Int. J. Prod. Res. 2015 , 53 , 1030467. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Dogbe, C.S.K.; Iddris, F.; Duah, E.; Boateng, P.A.; Kparl, E.M. Analyzing the Health Supply Chain Risks during COVID-19 Pandemic: The Moderating Role of Risk Management. Cogent Bus. Manag. 2023 , 10 , 2281716. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Shenoi, V.; Dath, S.; Rajendran, C. Supply Chain Risk Management in Indian Manufacturing Industries: An Empirical Study and a Fuzzy Approach ; Springer Nature Switzerland: Cham, Switzerland, 2021; pp. 107–145. ISBN 978-3-030-69264-3. [ Google Scholar ]
Jifar, W.; Geneti, G.; Dubale, S. The Impact of COVID-19 on Pharmaceutical Shortages and Supply Disruptions for Non-Communicable Diseases Among Public Hospitals of South West, Oromia, Ethiopia. J. Multidiscip. Healthc. 2022 , 15 , 1933–1943. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Goodarzian, F.; Taleizadeh, A.; Ghasemi, P.; Abraham, A. An Integrated Sustainable Medical Supply Chain Network during COVID-19 ; Elsevier: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2021; Volume 100. [ Google Scholar ]
Bump, J.B.; Friberg, P.; Harper, D.R. International Collaboration and Covid-19: What Are We Doing and Where Are We Going? BMJ 2021 , 372 , n180. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Abu-Elmagd, K.; Fung, J.; Bueno, J.; Martin, D.; Madariaga, J.R.; Mazariegos, G.; Bond, G.; Molmenti, E.; Corry, R.J.; Starzl, T.E. Logistics and Technique for Procurement of Intestinal, Pancreatic, and Hepatic Grafts from the Same Donor. Ann. Surg. 2000 , 232 , 680–687. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Fu, H.; Ke, G.Y.; Lian, Z.; Zhang, L. 3PL Firm’s Equity Financing for Technology Innovation in a Platform Supply Chain. Transp. Res. Part E Logist. Transp. Rev. 2021 , 147 , 102239. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Ferrari, P. The Reasons for the Success of Freight Rail Transport through the Swiss Alps|Le Ragioni Del Successo Del Trasporto Ferroviario Delle Merci Attraverso Le Alpi Svizzere. Ing. Ferrov. 2019 , 74 , 9–26. [ Google Scholar ]
Hess, A.-K.; Schubert, I. Functional Perceptions, Barriers, and Demographics Concerning e-Cargo Bike Sharing in Switzerland. Transp. Res. Part D Transp. Environ. 2019 , 71 , 153–168. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Eurostat Sustainable Development in the European Union: Monitoring Report on Progress towards the SDGS in an EU Context ; Publications office of the European Union: Maastricht, The Netherlands, 2017; ISBN 92-79-72288-3.
European Union. European Union Horizon 2020 in Brief. In The EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation ; European Union: Maastricht, The Netherlands, 2014. [ Google Scholar ]
Stoll, J.; Harrison, H.; De Sousa, E.; Callaway, D.; Collier, M.; Harrell, K.; Jones, B.; Kastlunger, J.; Kramer, E.; Kurian, S.; et al. Alternative Seafood Networks During COVID-19: Implications for Resilience and Sustainability. Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 2021 , 5 , 614368. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Tendall, D.; Joerin, J.; Kopainsky, B.; Edwards, P.; Shreck, A.; Le, Q.B.; Krütli, P.; Grant, M.; Six, J. Food System Resilience: Defining the Concept. Glob. Food Secur. 2015 , 6 , 17–23. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Li, D.; Wang, X.; Chan, H.K.; Manzini, R. Sustainable Food Supply Chain Management. Int. J. Prod. Econ. 2014 , 152 , 1–8. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Neven, D. Developing Sustainable Food Value Chains ; FAO: Rome, Italy, 2014; ISBN 92-5-108481-5. [ Google Scholar ]
Mishra, D.; Gunasekaran, A.; Papadopoulos, T.; Dubey, R. Supply Chain Performance Measures and Metrics: A Bibliometric Study. Benchmarking Int. J. 2018 , 25 , 932–967. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Guersola, M.; Pinheiro de Lima, E.; Steiner, M. Supply Chain Performance Measurement: A Systematic Literature Review. Int. J. Logist. Syst. Manag. 2018 , 31 , 109. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Perdana, T.; Onggo, B.; Sadeli, A.; Chaerani, D.; Achmad, A.; Rahayu, F.; Gong, Y. Food Supply Chain Management in Disaster Events: A Systematic Literature Review. Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct. 2022 , 79 , 103183. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Rahbari, M.; Arshadi Khamseh, A.; Mohammadi, M. Robust Optimization and Strategic Analysis for Agri-Food Supply Chain under Pandemic Crisis: Case Study from an Emerging Economy. Expert Syst. Appl. 2023 , 225 , 120081. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Singh, R.; Sinha, V.; Joshi, P.; Kumar, M. Modelling Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) in Response to Climate Change Scenarios for the SAARC Nations. Environ. Monit. Assess. 2020 , 192 , 1–18. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Divergences, N.G. World Economic Outlook. 2023. Available online: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2023/10/10/world-economic-outlook-october-2023 (accessed on 29 April 2024).
Ponomarov, S.; Holcomb, M. Understanding the Concept of Supply Chain Resilience. Int. J. Logist. Manag. 2009 , 20 , 124–143. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Tarigan, Z.J.H.; Siagian, H.; Jie, F. Impact of Internal Integration, Supply Chain Partnership, Supply Chain Agility, and Supply Chain Resilience on Sustainable Advantage. Sustainability 2021 , 13 , 5460. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Zidi, S.; Hamani, N.; Kermad, L. New Metrics for Measuring Supply Chain Reconfigurability. J. Intell. Manuf. 2022 , 33 , 2371–2392. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Zhang, S.; Wang, H.; Li, G.; Wang, J. Modeling of the Resilient Supply Chain System from a Perspective of Production Design Changes. Front. Eng. Manag. 2023 , 10 , 96–106. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Brundtland, G.H. World Commission on Environment and Development. Environ. Policy Law 1985 , 14 , 26–30. [ Google Scholar ]
Yao, Q.; Liu, J.; Sheng, S.; Fang, H. Does Eco-Innovation Lift Firm Value? The Contingent Role of Institutions in Emerging Markets. J. Bus. Ind. Mark. 2019 . ahead of print . [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Althaf, S.; Babbitt, C.W. Disruption Risks to Material Supply Chains in the Electronics Sector. Resour. Conserv. Recycl. 2021 , 167 , 105248. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Zeng, X.; Mathews, J.A.; Li, J. Urban Mining of E-Waste Is Becoming More Cost-Effective than Virgin Mining. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2018 , 52 , 4835–4841. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Nosalska, K.; Piątek, Z.; Mazurek, G.; Rządca, R. Industry 4.0: Coherent Definition Framework with Technological and Organizational Interdependencies. J. Manuf. Technol. Manag. [ CrossRef ]
Munongo, S.; Pooe, D. Small and Medium Enterprises’ Adoption of 4IR Technologies for Supply Chain Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic. J. Transp. Supply Chain. Manag. 2022 , 14 , 747. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Kumar, A.; Singh, R.K. Supply Chain Management Practices, Retail Outlets Attributes and Organisational Performance: A Case of Organised Food Retailers in India. J. Glob. Oper. Strateg. Sourc. 2023 , 16 , 568–589. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Nisar, Q.A.; Haider, S.; Ameer, I.; Hussain, M.S.; Gill, S.S.; Usama, A. Sustainable Supply Chain Management Performance in Post COVID-19 Era in an Emerging Economy: A Big Data Perspective. Int. J. Emerg. Mark. 2022; ahead of print . [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Miljenović, D.; Beriša, B. Pandemics Trends in E-Commerce: Drop Shipping Entrepreneurship during COVID-19 Pandemic. Pomorstvo 2022 , 36 , 31–43. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Laborde, D.; Martin, W.; Swinnen, J.; Vos, R. COVID-19 Risks to Global Food Security. Science 2020 , 369 , 500–502. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
Yearbook, F.S. World Food and Agriculture ; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: Rome, Italy, 2013; Volume 15. [ Google Scholar ]
Kim, B.; Kim, G.; Kang, M. Study on Comparing the Performance of Fully Automated Container Terminals during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Sustainability 2022 , 14 , 9415. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
ISO 9001:2015 ; Quality Management Systems-Requirements. International Organization for Standardization: Geneva, Switzerland, 2015. Available online: https://committee.iso.org/standard/62085.html (accessed on 13 June 2024).

Click here to enlarge figure

Source	No. of Papers	Scimago Ranking
Sustainability (Switzerland)	10	Q1–Q2
International Journal of Logistics Management	6	Q1
Journal of Global Operations and Strategic Sourcing	5	Q2
Agricultural Systems	5	Q1
Benchmarking	4	Q1
International Journal of Production Research	3	Q1

Research Method	No. of Papers

ANOVA	2
Contingency analysis and frequency analysis	1
Cronbach’s alpha	1
Descriptive statistics	8
Econometric	1
Hypothesis test	5
Keyword analysis	1
Logistic regression—R software	1
Partial Least Square (PLS)	1
PLS-SEM	11
Random forest regression	1
Regression	3
SEM	9
Descriptive statistics, bias and common method variance test, multiple regression analysis and mediation test	1
Analysis with SPSS and Nvivo	1

Best Worst Method	1
Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL)	1
DEMATEL—Maximum mean de-entropy (MMDE)	1
Fuzzy	10
ISM	1
ISM-Bayesian network (BN)	1
ISM-Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC)	1
Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM)	1
Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT)	1
Multi-Criteria Decision Methods (MCDM)	6
SWOT analysis	2
Total Interpretive Structural Modelling (TISM) + MICMAC analysis	1

Case study	7
Framework and case study	1
Product design changes (PDC)—domain modelling	1
Qualitative	5


ABC analysis	2
Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML)	1
Method of stochastic factor economic–mathematical analysis	1

Discrete Event Simulation (DES)	1
System dynamics approach	1
Multi-period simulation	1

Industrial Sector	No. of Papers
Logistics	13
Manufacturing	4
Food	4
Automotive	3
Agri-food	3

Industrial Sector	No. of Papers
Logistics	10
Food	7
Agri-food	6
Manufacturing	6
Healthcare	2
Electronic	2

Industrial Sector	No. of Papers
Logistics	9
Food	3
Agri-food	3
Manufacturing	2

The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.

Share and Cite

Monferdini, L.; Bottani, E. Examining the Response to COVID-19 in Logistics and Supply Chain Processes: Insights from a State-of-the-Art Literature Review and Case Study Analysis. Appl. Sci. 2024 , 14 , 5317. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14125317

Monferdini L, Bottani E. Examining the Response to COVID-19 in Logistics and Supply Chain Processes: Insights from a State-of-the-Art Literature Review and Case Study Analysis. Applied Sciences . 2024; 14(12):5317. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14125317

Monferdini, Laura, and Eleonora Bottani. 2024. "Examining the Response to COVID-19 in Logistics and Supply Chain Processes: Insights from a State-of-the-Art Literature Review and Case Study Analysis" Applied Sciences 14, no. 12: 5317. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14125317

Article Metrics

Article access statistics, further information, mdpi initiatives, follow mdpi.

Subscribe to receive issue release notifications and newsletters from MDPI journals

The future of work after COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted labor markets globally during 2020. The short-term consequences were sudden and often severe: Millions of people were furloughed or lost jobs, and others rapidly adjusted to working from home as offices closed. Many other workers were deemed essential and continued to work in hospitals and grocery stores, on garbage trucks and in warehouses, yet under new protocols to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus.

This report on the future of work after COVID-19 is the first of three MGI reports that examine aspects of the postpandemic economy. The others look at the pandemic’s long-term influence on consumption and the potential for a broad recovery led by enhanced productivity and innovation. Here, we assess the lasting impact of the pandemic on labor demand, the mix of occupations, and the workforce skills required in eight countries with diverse economic and labor market models: China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Together, these eight countries account for almost half the global population and 62 percent of GDP.

Jobs with the highest physical proximity are likely to be most disrupted

Before COVID-19, the largest disruptions to work involved new technologies and growing trade links. COVID-19 has, for the first time, elevated the importance of the physical dimension of work. In this research, we develop a novel way to quantify the proximity required in more than 800 occupations by grouping them into ten work arenas according to their proximity to coworkers and customers, the number of interpersonal interactions involved, and their on-site and indoor nature.

This offers a different view of work than traditional sector definitions. For instance, our medical care arena includes only caregiving roles requiring close interaction with patients, such as doctors and nurses. Hospital and medical office administrative staff fall into the computer-based office work arena, where more work can be done remotely. Lab technicians and pharmacists work in the indoor production work arena because those jobs require use of specialized equipment on-site but have little exposure to other people (Exhibit 1).

We find that jobs in work arenas with higher levels of physical proximity are likely to see greater transformation after the pandemic, triggering knock-on effects in other work arenas as business models shift in response.

The short- and potential long-term disruptions to these arenas from COVID-19 vary. During the pandemic, the virus most severely disturbed arenas with the highest overall physical proximity scores: medical care, personal care, on-site customer service, and leisure and travel. In the longer term, work arenas with higher physical proximity scores are also likely to be more unsettled, although proximity is not the only explanation. For example:

The on-site customer interaction arena includes frontline workers who interact with customers in retail stores, banks, and post offices, among other places. Work in this arena is defined by frequent interaction with strangers and requires on-site presence. Some work in this arena migrated to e-commerce and other digital transactions, a behavioral change that is likely to stick.
The leisure and travel arena is home to customer-facing workers in hotels, restaurants, airports, and entertainment venues. Workers in this arena interact daily with crowds of new people. COVID-19 forced most leisure venues to close in 2020 and airports and airlines to operate on a severely limited basis. In the longer term, the shift to remote work and related reduction in business travel, as well as automation of some occupations, such as food service roles, may curtail labor demand in this arena.
The computer-based office work arena includes offices of all sizes and administrative workspaces in hospitals, courts, and factories. Work in this arena requires only moderate physical proximity to others and a moderate number of human interactions. This is the largest arena in advanced economies, accounting for roughly one-third of employment. Nearly all potential remote work is within this arena.
The outdoor production and maintenance arena includes construction sites, farms, residential and commercial grounds, and other outdoor spaces. COVID-19 had little impact here as work in this arena requires low proximity and few interactions with others and takes place fully outdoors. This is the largest arena in China and India, accounting for 35 to 55 percent of their workforces.

COVID-19 has accelerated three broad trends that may reshape work after the pandemic recedes

The pandemic pushed companies and consumers to rapidly adopt new behaviors that are likely to stick, changing the trajectory of three groups of trends. We consequently see sharp discontinuity between their impact on labor markets before and after the pandemic.

Remote work and virtual meetings are likely to continue, albeit less intensely than at the pandemic’s peak

Perhaps the most obvious impact of COVID-19 on the labor force is the dramatic increase in employees working remotely. To determine how extensively remote work might persist after the pandemic, we analyzed its potential across more than 2,000 tasks used in some 800 occupations in the eight focus countries. Considering only remote work that can be done without a loss of productivity, we find that about 20 to 25 percent of the workforces in advanced economies could work from home between three and five days a week. This represents four to five times more remote work than before the pandemic and could prompt a large change in the geography of work, as individuals and companies shift out of large cities into suburbs and small cities. We found that some work that technically can be done remotely is best done in person. Negotiations, critical business decisions, brainstorming sessions, providing sensitive feedback, and onboarding new employees are examples of activities that may lose some effectiveness when done remotely.

Some companies are already planning to shift to flexible workspaces after positive experiences with remote work during the pandemic, a move that will reduce the overall space they need and bring fewer workers into offices each day. A survey of 278 executives by McKinsey in August 2020 found that on average, they planned to reduce office space by 30 percent. Demand for restaurants and retail in downtown areas and for public transportation may decline as a result.

Remote work may also put a dent in business travel as its extensive use of videoconferencing during the pandemic has ushered in a new acceptance of virtual meetings and other aspects of work. While leisure travel and tourism are likely to rebound after the crisis, McKinsey’s travel practice estimates that about 20 percent of business travel, the most lucrative segment for airlines, may not return. This would have significant knock-on effects on employment in commercial aerospace, airports, hospitality, and food service. E-commerce and other virtual transactions are booming.

Many consumers discovered the convenience of e-commerce and other online activities during the pandemic. In 2020, the share of e-commerce grew at two to five times the rate before COVID-19 (Exhibit 2). Roughly three-quarters of people using digital channels for the first time during the pandemic say they will continue using them when things return to “normal,” according to McKinsey Consumer Pulse surveys conducted around the world.

Other kinds of virtual transactions such as telemedicine, online banking, and streaming entertainment have also taken off. Online doctor consultations through Practo, a telehealth company in India, grew more than tenfold between April and November 2020 . These virtual practices may decline somewhat as economies reopen but are likely to continue well above levels seen before the pandemic.

This shift to digital transactions has propelled growth in delivery, transportation, and warehouse jobs. In China, e-commerce, delivery, and social media jobs grew by more than 5.1 million during the first half of 2020.

COVID-19 may propel faster adoption of automation and AI, especially in work arenas with high physical proximity

Two ways businesses historically have controlled cost and mitigated uncertainty during recessions are by adopting automation and redesigning work processes, which reduce the share of jobs involving mainly routine tasks. In our global survey of 800 senior executives in July 2020, two-thirds said they were stepping up investment in automation and AI either somewhat or significantly. Production figures for robotics in China exceeded prepandemic levels by June 2020.

Many companies deployed automation and AI in warehouses, grocery stores, call centers, and manufacturing plants to reduce workplace density and cope with surges in demand. The common feature of these automation use cases is their correlation with high scores on physical proximity, and our research finds the work arenas with high levels of human interaction are likely to see the greatest acceleration in adoption of automation and AI.

The mix of occupations may shift, with little job growth in low-wage occupations

The trends accelerated by COVID-19 may spur greater changes in the mix of jobs within economies than we estimated before the pandemic.

We find that a markedly different mix of occupations may emerge after the pandemic across the eight economies. Compared to our pre-COVID-19 estimates, we expect the largest negative impact of the pandemic to fall on workers in food service and customer sales and service roles, as well as less-skilled office support roles. Jobs in warehousing and transportation may increase as a result of the growth in e-commerce and the delivery economy, but those increases are unlikely to offset the disruption of many low-wage jobs. In the United States, for instance, customer service and food service jobs could fall by 4.3 million, while transportation jobs could grow by nearly 800,000. Demand for workers in the healthcare and STEM occupations may grow more than before the pandemic, reflecting increased attention to health as populations age and incomes rise as well as the growing need for people who can create, deploy, and maintain new technologies (Exhibit 3).

Before the pandemic, net job losses were concentrated in middle-wage occupations in manufacturing and some office work, reflecting automation, and low- and high-wage jobs continued to grow. Nearly all low-wage workers who lost jobs could move into other low-wage occupations—for instance, a data entry worker could move into retail or home healthcare. Because of the pandemic’s impact on low-wage jobs, we now estimate that almost all growth in labor demand will occur in high-wage jobs. Going forward, more than half of displaced low-wage workers may need to shift to occupations in higher wage brackets and requiring different skills to remain employed.

As many as 25 percent more workers may need to switch occupations than before the pandemic

Given the expected concentration of job growth in high-wage occupations and declines in low-wage occupations, the scale and nature of workforce transitions required in the years ahead will be challenging, according to our research. Across the eight focus countries, more than 100 million workers, or 1 in 16, will need to find a different occupation by 2030 in our post-COVID-19 scenario, as shown in Exhibit 4. This is 12 percent more than we estimated before the pandemic, and up to 25 percent more in advanced economies (Exhibit 4).

Before the pandemic, we estimated that just 6 percent of workers would need to find jobs in higher wage occupations. In our post-COVID-19 research, we find not only that a larger share of workers will likely need to transition out of the bottom two wage brackets but also that roughly half of them overall will need new, more advanced skills to move to occupations one or even two wage brackets higher.

The skill mix required among workers who need to shift occupations has changed. The share of time German workers spend using basic cognitive skills, for example, may shrink by 3.4 percentage points, while time spend using social and emotional skills will increase by 3.2 percentage points. In India, the share of total work hours expended using physical and manual skills will decline by 2.2 percentage points, while time devoted to technological skills will rise 3.3 percentage points. Workers in occupations in the lowest wage bracket use basic cognitive skills and physical and manual skills 68 percent of the time, while in the middle wage bracket, use of these skills occupies 48 percent of time spent. In the highest two brackets, those skills account for less than 20 percent of time spent. The most disadvantaged workers may have the biggest job transitions ahead, in part because of their disproportionate employment in the arenas most affected by COVID-19. In Europe and the United States, workers with less than a college degree, members of ethnic minority groups, and women are more likely to need to change occupations after COVID-19 than before. In the United States, people without a college degree are 1.3 times more likely to need to make transitions compared to those with a college degree, and Black and Hispanic workers are 1.1 times more likely to have to transition between occupations than white workers. In France, Germany, and Spain, the increase in job transitions required due to trends influenced by COVID-19 is 3.9 times higher for women than for men. Similarly, the need for occupational changes will hit younger workers more than older workers, and individuals not born in the European Union more than native-born workers.

Companies and policymakers can help facilitate workforce transitions

The scale of workforce transitions set off by COVID-19’s influence on labor trends increases the urgency for businesses and policymakers to take steps to support additional training and education programs for workers. Companies and governments exhibited extraordinary flexibility and adaptability in responding to the pandemic with purpose and innovation that they might also harness to retool the workforce in ways that point to a brighter future of work.

Businesses can start with a granular analysis of what work can be done remotely by focusing on the tasks involved rather than whole jobs. They can also play a larger role in retraining workers, as Walmart, Amazon, and IBM have done. Others have facilitated occupational shifts by focusing on the skills they need, rather than on academic degrees. Remote work also offers companies the opportunity to enrich their diversity by tapping workers who, for family and other reasons, were unable to relocate to the superstar cities where talent, capital, and opportunities concentrated before the pandemic.

Policymakers could support businesses by expanding and enhancing the digital infrastructure. Even in advanced economies, almost 20 percent of workers in rural households lack access to the internet. Governments could also consider extending benefits and protections to independent workers and to workers working to build their skills and knowledge mid-career.

Both businesses and policymakers could collaborate to support workers migrating between occupations. Under the Pact for Skills established in the European Union during the pandemic, companies and public authorities have dedicated €7 billion to enhancing the skills of some 700,000 automotive workers, while in the United States, Merck and other large companies have put up more than $100 million to burnish the skills of Black workers without a college education and create jobs that they can fill.

The reward of such efforts would be a more resilient, more talented, and better-paid workforce—and a more robust and equitable society.

Go behind the scenes and get more insights with “ Where the jobs are: An inside look at our new Future of Work research ” from our New at McKinsey blog.

Susan Lund and Anu Madgavkar are partners of the McKinsey Global Institute, where James Manyika and Sven Smit are co-chairs and directors. Kweilin Ellingrud is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Minneapolis office. Mary Meaney is a senior partner in the Paris office. Olivia Robinson is a consultant in the London office.

This report was edited by Stephanie Strom, a senior editor with the McKinsey Global Institute, and Peter Gumbel, MGI editorial director.

Explore a career with us

What’s next for remote work: An analysis of 2,000 tasks, 800 jobs, and nine countries

What 800 global executives envision for the post-pandemic workforce

What 800 executives envision for the postpandemic workforce

COVID-19 and US jobs: Monitoring the impact on people and places

COVID-19 and jobs: Monitoring the US impact on people and places

Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here .

Loading metrics

Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific research in the life sciences

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation AXES, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Lucca, Italy

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Chair of Systems Design D-MTEC, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland

Massimo Riccaboni,
Luca Verginer

Published: February 9, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263001
Reader Comments

The COVID-19 outbreak has posed an unprecedented challenge to humanity and science. On the one side, public and private incentives have been put in place to promptly allocate resources toward research areas strictly related to the COVID-19 emergency. However, research in many fields not directly related to the pandemic has been displaced. In this paper, we assess the impact of COVID-19 on world scientific production in the life sciences and find indications that the usage of medical subject headings (MeSH) has changed following the outbreak. We estimate through a difference-in-differences approach the impact of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific production using the PubMed database (3.6 Million research papers). We find that COVID-19-related MeSH terms have experienced a 6.5 fold increase in output on average, while publications on unrelated MeSH terms dropped by 10 to 12%. The publication weighted impact has an even more pronounced negative effect (-16% to -19%). Moreover, COVID-19 has displaced clinical trial publications (-24%) and diverted grants from research areas not closely related to COVID-19. Note that since COVID-19 publications may have been fast-tracked, the sudden surge in COVID-19 publications might be driven by editorial policy.

Citation: Riccaboni M, Verginer L (2022) The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific research in the life sciences. PLoS ONE 17(2): e0263001. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263001

Editor: Florian Naudet, University of Rennes 1, FRANCE

Received: April 28, 2021; Accepted: January 10, 2022; Published: February 9, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Riccaboni, Verginer. 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.

Data Availability: The processed data, instructions on how to process the raw PubMed dataset as well as all code are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5121216 .

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has mobilized the world scientific community in 2020, especially in the life sciences [ 1 , 2 ]. In the first three months after the pandemic, the number of scientific papers about COVID-19 was fivefold the number of articles on H1N1 swine influenza [ 3 ]. Similarly, the number of clinical trials related to COVID-19 prophylaxis and treatments skyrocketed [ 4 ]. Thanks to the rapid mobilization of the world scientific community, COVID-19 vaccines have been developed in record time. Despite this undeniable success, there is a rising concern about the negative consequences of COVID-19 on clinical trial research, with many projects being postponed [ 5 – 7 ]. According to Evaluate Pharma, clinical trials were one of the pandemic’s first casualties, with a record number of 160 studies suspended for reasons related to COVID-19 in April 2020 [ 8 , 9 ] reporting a total of 1,200 trials suspended as of July 2020. As a consequence, clinical researchers have been impaired by reduced access to healthcare research infrastructures. Particularly, the COVID-19 outbreak took a tall on women and early-career scientists [ 10 – 13 ]. On a different ground, Shan and colleagues found that non-COVID-19-related articles decreased as COVID-19-related articles increased in top clinical research journals [ 14 ]. Fraser and coworker found that COVID-19 preprints received more attention and citations than non-COVID-19 preprints [ 1 ]. More recently, Hook and Porter have found some early evidence of ‘covidisation’ of academic research, with research grants and output diverted to COVID-19 research in 2020 [ 15 ]. How much should scientists switch their efforts toward SARS-CoV-2 prevention, treatment, or mitigation? There is a growing consensus that the current level of ‘covidisation’ of research can be wasteful [ 4 , 5 , 16 ].

Against this background, in this paper, we investigate if the COVID-19 pandemic has induced a shift in biomedical publications toward COVID-19-related scientific production. The objective of the study is to show that scientific articles listing covid-related Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) when compared against covid-unrelated MeSH have been partially displaced. Specifically, we look at several indicators of scientific production in the life sciences before and after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) number of papers published, (2) impact factor weighted number of papers, (3) opens access, (4) number of publications related to clinical trials, (5) number of papers listing grants, (6) number of papers listing grants existing before the pandemic. Through a natural experiment approach, we analyze the impact of the pandemic on scientific production in the life sciences. We consider COVID-19 an unexpected and unprecedented exogenous source of variation with heterogeneous effects across biomedical research fields (i.e., MeSH terms).

Based on the difference in difference results, we document the displacement effect that the pandemic has had on several aspects of scientific publishing. The overall picture that emerges from this analysis is that there has been a profound realignment of priorities and research efforts. This shift has displaced biomedical research in fields not related to COVID-19.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. First, we describe the data and our measure of relatedness to COVID-19. Next, we illustrate the difference-in-differences specification we rely on to identify the impact of the pandemic on scientific output. In the results section, we present the results of the difference-in-differences and network analyses. We document the sudden shift in publications, grants and trials towards COVID-19-related MeSH terms. Finally, we discuss the findings and highlight several policy implications.

Materials and methods

The present analysis is based primarily on PubMed and the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terminology. This data is used to estimate the effect of the start of the COVID 19 pandemic via a difference in difference approach. This section is structured as follows. We first introduce the data and then the econometric methodology. This analysis is not based on a pre-registered protocol.

Selection of biomedical publications.

We rely on PubMed, a repository with more than 34 million biomedical citations, for the analysis. Specifically, we analyze the daily updated files up to 31/06/2021, extracting all publications of type ‘Journal Article’. For the principal analysis, we consider 3,638,584 papers published from January 2019 to December 2020. We also analyze 11,122,017 papers published from 2010 onwards to identify the earliest usage of a grant and infer if it was new in 2020. We use the SCImago journal ranking statistics to compute the impact factor weighted number (IFWN) of papers in a given field of research. To assign the publication date, we use the ‘electronically published’ dates and, if missing, the ‘print published’ dates.

Medical subject headings.

We rely on the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terminology to approximate narrowly defined biomedical research fields. This terminology is a curated medical vocabulary, which is manually added to papers in the PubMed corpus. The fact that MeSH terms are manually annotated makes this terminology ideal for classification purposes. However, there is a delay between publication and annotation, on the order of several months. To address this delay and have the most recent classification, we search for all 28 425 MeSH terms using PubMed’s ESearch utility and classify paper by the results. The specific API endpoint is https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/esearch.fcgi , the relevant scripts are available with the code. For example, we assign the term ‘Ageusia’ (MeSH ID D000370) to all papers listed in the results of the ESearch API. We apply this method to the whole period (January 2019—December 2020) and obtain a mapping from papers to the MeSH terms. For every MeSH term, we keep track of the year they have been established. For instance, COVID-19 terms were established in 2020 (see Table 1 ): in January 2020, the WHO recommended 2019-nCoV and 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease as provisional names for the virus and disease. The WHO issued the official terms COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 at the beginning of February 2020. By manually annotating publications, all publications referring to COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 since January 2020 have been labelled with the related MeSH terms. Other MeSH terms related to COVID-19, such as coronavirus, for instance, have been established years before the pandemic (see Table 2 ). We proxy MeSH term usage via search terms using the PubMed EUtilities API; this means that we are not using the hand-labelled MeSH terms but rather the PubMed search results. This means that the accuracy of the MeSH term we assign to a given paper is not perfect. In practice, this means that we have assigned more MeSH terms to a given term than a human annotator would have.

PPT PowerPoint slide
PNG larger image
TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263001.t001

The list contains only terms with at least 100 publications in 2020.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263001.t002

Clinical trials and publication types.

We classify publications using PubMed’s ‘PublicationType’ field in the XML baseline files (There are 187 publication types, see https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/pubtypes.html ). We consider a publication to be related to a clinical trial if it lists any of the following descriptors:

D016430: Clinical Trial
D017426: Clinical Trial, Phase I
D017427: Clinical Trial, Phase II
D017428: Clinical Trial, Phase III
D017429: Clinical Trial, Phase IV
D018848: Controlled Clinical Trial
D065007: Pragmatic Clinical Trial
D000076362: Adaptive Clinical Trial
D000077522: Clinical Trial, Veterinary

In our analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on publications related to clinical trials, we only consider MeSH terms that are associated at least once with a clinical trial publication over the two years. We apply this restriction to filter out MeSH terms that are very unlikely to be relevant for clinical trial types of research.

Open access.

We proxy the availability of a journal article to the public, i.e., open access, if it is available from PubMed Central. PubMed Central archives full-text journal articles and provides free access to the public. Note that the copyright license may vary across participating publishers. However, the text of the paper is for all effects and purposes freely available without requiring subscriptions or special affiliation.

We infer if a publication has been funded by checking if it lists any grants. We classify grants as either ‘old’, i.e. existed before 2019, or ‘new’, i.e. first observed afterwards. To do so, we collect all grant IDs for 11,122,017 papers from 2010 on-wards and record their first appearance. This procedure is an indirect inference of the year the grant has been granted. The basic assumption is that if a grant number has not been listed in any publication since 2010, it is very likely a new grant. Specifically, an old grant is a grant listed since 2019 observed at least once from 2010 to 2018.

Note that this procedure is only approximate and has a few shortcomings. Mistyped grant numbers (e.g. ‘1234-M JPN’ and ‘1234-M-JPN’) could appear as new grants, even though they existed before, or new grants might be classified as old grants if they have a common ID (e.g. ‘Grant 1’). Unfortunately, there is no central repository of grant numbers and the associated metadata; however, there are plans to assign DOI numbers to grants to alleviate this problem (See https://gitlab.com/crossref/open_funder_registry for the project).

Impact factor weighted publication numbers (IFWN).

In our analysis, we consider two measures of scientific output. First, we simply count the number of publications by MeSH term. However, since journals vary considerably in terms of impact factor, we also weigh the number of publications by the impact factor of the venue (e.g., journal) where it was published. Specifically, we use the SCImago journal ranking statistics to weigh a paper by the impact factor of the journal it appears in. We use the ‘citation per document in the past two years’ for 45,230 ISSNs. Note that a journal may and often has more than one ISSN, i.e., one for the printed edition and one for the online edition. SCImago applies the same score for a venue across linked ISSNs.

For the impact factor weighted number (IFWN) of publication per MeSH terms, this means that all publications are replaced by the impact score of the journal they appear in and summed up.

COVID-19-relatedness.

To measure how closely related to COVID-19 is a MeSH term, we introduce an index of relatedness to COVID-19. First, we identify the focal COVID-19 terms, which appeared in the literature in 2020 (see Table 1 ). Next, for all other pre-existing MeSH terms, we measure how closely related to COVID-19 they end up being.

Our aim is to show that MeSH terms that existed before and are related have experienced a sudden increase in the number of (impact factor weighted) papers.

Intuitively we can read this measure as: what is the probability in 2020 that a COVID-19 MeSH term is present given that we chose a paper with MeSH term i ? For example, given that in 2020 we choose a paper dealing with “Ageusia” (i.e., Complete or severe loss of the subjective sense of taste), there is a 96% probability that this paper also lists COVID-19, see Table 1 .

Note that a paper listing a related MeSH term does not imply that that paper is doing COVID-19 research, but it implies that one of the MeSH terms listed is often used in COVID-19 research.

In sum, in our analysis, we use the following variables:

Papers: Number of papers by MeSH term;
Impact: Impact factor weighted number of papers by MeSH term;
PMC: Papers listed in PubMed central by MeSH term, as a measure of Open Access publications;
Trials: number of publications of type “Clinical Trial” by MeSH term;
Grants: number of papers with at least one grant by MeSH term;
Old Grants: number of papers listing a grant that has been observed between 2010 and 2018, by MeSH term;

Difference-in-differences

The difference-in-differences (DiD) method is an econometric technique to imitate an experimental research design from observation data, sometimes referred to as a quasi-experimental setup. In a randomized controlled trial, subjects are randomly assigned either to the treated or the control group. Analogously, in this natural experiment, we assume that medical subject headings (MeSH) have been randomly assigned to be either treated (related) or not treated (unrelated) by the pandemic crisis.

Before the COVID, for a future health crisis, the set of potentially impacted medical knowledge was not predictable since it depended on the specifics of the emergency. For instance, ageusia (loss of taste), a medical concept existing since 1991, became known to be a specific symptom of COVID-19 only after the pandemic.

Specifically, we exploit the COVID-19 as an unpredictable and exogenous shock that has deeply affected the publication priorities for biomedical scientific production, as compared to the situation before the pandemic. In this setting, COVID-19 is the treatment, and the identification of this new human coronavirus is the event. We claim that treated MeSH terms, i.e., MeSH terms related to COVID-19, have experienced a sudden increase in terms of scientific production and attention. In contrast, research on untreated MeSH terms, i.e., MeSH terms not related to COVID-19, has been displaced by COVID-19. Our analysis compares the scientific output of COVID-19 related and unrelated MeSH terms before and after January 2020.

In our case, some of the terms turn out to be related to COVID-19 in 2020, whereas most of the MeSH terms are not closely related to COVID-19.

Thus β 1 identifies the overall effect on the control group after the event, β 2 the difference across treated and control groups before the event (i.e. the first difference in DiD) and finally the effect on the treated group after the event, net of the first difference, β 3 . This last parameter identifies the treatment effect on the treated group netting out the pre-treatment difference.

For the DiD to have a causal interpretation, it must be noted that pre-event, the trends of the two groups should be parallel, i.e., the common trend assumption (CTA) must be satisfied. We will show that the CTA holds in the results section.

To specify the DiD model, we need to define a period before and after the event and assign a treatment status or level of exposure to each term.

Before and after.

The pre-treatment period is defined as January 2019 to December 2019. The post-treatment period is defined as the months from January 2020 to December 2020. We argue that the state of biomedical research was similar in those two years, apart from the effect of the pandemic.

Treatment status and exposure.

The treatment is determined by the COVID-19 relatedness index σ i introduced earlier. Specifically, this number indicates the likelihood that COVID-19 will be a listed MeSH term, given that we observe the focal MeSH term i . To show that the effect becomes even stronger the closer related the subject is, and for ease of interpretation, we also discretize the relatedness value into three levels of treatment. Namely, we group MeSH terms with a σ between, 0% to 20%, 20% to 80% and 80% to 100%. The choice of alternative grouping strategies does not significantly affect our results. Results for alternative thresholds of relatedness can be computed using the available source code. We complement the dichotomized analysis by using the treatment intensity (relatedness measure σ ) to show that the result persists.

Panel regression.

In this work, we estimate a random effects panel regression where the units of analysis are 28 318 biomedical research fields (i.e. MeSH terms) observed over time before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The time resolution is at the monthly level, meaning that for each MeSH term, we have 24 observations from January 2019 to December 2020.

The outcome variable Y it identifies the outcome at time t (i.e., month), for MeSH term i . As before, P t identifies the period with P t = 0 if the month is before January 2020 and P t = 1 if it is on or after this date. In (3) , the treatment level is measure by the relatedness to COVID-19 ( σ i ), where again the γ 1 identifies pre-trend (constant) differences and δ 1 the overall effect.

In total, we estimate six coefficients. As before, the δ l coefficient identifies the DiD effect.

Verifying the Common Trend Assumption (CTA).

We show that the CTA holds for this model by comparing the pre-event trends of the control group to the treated groups (COVID-19 related MeSH terms). Namely, we show that the pre-event trends of the control group are the same as the pre-event trends of the treated group.

Co-occurrence analysis

To investigate if the pandemic has caused a reconfiguration of research priorities, we look at the MeSH term co-occurrence network. Precisely, we extract the co-occurrence network of all 28,318 MeSH terms as they appear in the 3.3 million papers. We considered the co-occurrence networks of 2018, 2019 and 2020. Each node represents a MeSH term in these networks, and a link between them indicates that they have been observed at least once together. The weight of the edge between the MeSH terms is given by the number of times those terms have been jointly observed in the same publications.

Medical language is hugely complicated, and this simple representation does not capture the intricacies, subtle nuances and, in fact, meaning of the terms. Therefore, we do not claim that we can identify how the actual usage of MeSH terms has changed from this object, but rather that it has. Nevertheless, the co-occurrence graph captures rudimentary relations between concepts. We argue that absent a shock to the system, their basic usage patterns, change in importance (within the network) would essentially be the same from year to year. However, if we find that the importance of terms changes more than expected in 2020, it stands to reason that there have been some significant changes.

To show that that MeSH usage has been affected, we compute for each term in the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 their PageRank centrality [ 17 ]. The PageRank centrality tells us how likely a random walker traversing a network would be found at a given node if she follows the weights of the empirical edges (i.e., co-usage probability). Specifically, for the case of the MeSH co-occurrence network, this number represents how often an annotator at the National Library of Medicine would assign that MeSH term following the observed general usage patterns. It is a simplistic measure to capture the complexities of biomedical research. Nevertheless, it captures far-reaching interdependence across MeSH terms as the measure uses the whole network to determine the centrality of every MeSH term. A sudden change in the rankings and thus the position of MeSH terms in this network suggests that a given research subject has risen as it is used more often with other important MeSH terms (or vice versa).

We then compare the growth for each MeSH i term in g i (2019), i.e. before the the COVID-19 pandemic, with the growth after the event ( g i (2020)).

Publication growth

Changes in output and COVID-19 relatedness

Before we show the regression results, we provide descriptive evidence that publications from 2019 to 2020 have drastically increased. By showing that this growth correlates strongly with a MeSH term’s COVID-19 relatedness ( σ ), we demonstrate that (1) σ captures an essential aspect of the growth dynamics and (2) highlight the meteoric rise of highly related terms.

We look at the year over year growth in the number of the impact weighted number of publications per MeSH term from 2018 to 2019 and 2019 to 2020 as defined in the methods section.

Fig 1 shows the yearly growth of the impact weighted number of publications per MeSH term. By comparing the growth of the number of publications from the years 2018, 2019 and 2020, we find that the impact factor weighted number of publications has increased by up to a factor of 100 compared to the previous year for Betacoronavirus, one of the most closely related to COVID-19 MeSH term.

Each dot represents, a MeSH term. The y axis (growth) is in symmetric log scale. The x axis shows the COVID-19 relatedness, σ . Note that the position of the dots on the x-axis is the same in the two plots. Below: MeSH term importance gain (PageRank) and their COVID-19 relatedness.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263001.g001

Fig 1 , first row, reveals how strongly correlated the growth in the IFWN of publication is to the term’s COVID-19 relatedness. For instance, we see that the term ‘Betacoronavirus’ skyrocketed from 2019 to 2020, which is expected given that SARS-CoV-2 is a species of the genus. Conversely, the term ‘Alphacoronavirus’ has not experienced any growth given that it is twin a genus of the Coronaviridae family, but SARS-CoV-2 is not one of its species. Note also the fast growth in the number of publications dealing with ‘Quarantine’. Moreover, MeSH terms that grew significantly from 2018 to 2019 and were not closely related to COVID-19, like ‘Vaping’, slowed down in 2020. From the graph, the picture emerges that publication growth is correlated with COVID-19 relatedness σ and that the growth for less related terms slowed down.

To show that the usage pattern of MeSH terms has changed following the pandemic, we compute the PageRank centrality using graph-tool [ 18 ] as discussed in the Methods section.

Fig 1 , second row, shows the change in the PageRank centrality of the MeSH terms after the pandemic (2019 to 2020, right plot) and before (2018 to 2019, left plot). If there were no change in the general usage pattern, we would expect the variance in PageRank changes to be narrow across the two periods, see (left plot). However, PageRank scores changed significantly more from 2019 to 2020 than from 2018 to 2019, suggesting that there has been a reconfiguration of the network.

To further support this argument, we carry out a DiD regression analysis.

Common trends assumption

As discussed in the Methods section, we need to show that the CTA assumption holds for the DiD to be defined appropriately. We do this by estimating for each month the number of publications and comparing it across treatment groups. This exercise also serves the purpose of a placebo test. By assuming that each month could have potentially been the event’s timing (i.e., the outbreak), we show that January 2020 is the most likely timing of the event. The regression table, as noted earlier, contains over 70 estimated coefficients, hence for ease of reading, we will only show the predicted outcome per month by group (see Fig 2 ). The full regression table with all coefficients is available in the S1 Table .

The y axis is in log scale. The dashed vertical line identifies January 2020. The dashed horizontal line shows the publications in January 2019 for the 0–20% group before the event. This line highlights that the drop happens after the event. The bands around the lines indicate the 95% confidence interval of the predicted values. The results are the output of the Stata margins command.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263001.g002

Fig 2 shows the predicted number per outcome variable obtained from the panel regression model. These predictions correspond to the predicted value per relatedness group using the regression parameters estimated via the linear panel regression. The bands around the curves are the 95% confidence intervals.

All outcome measures depict a similar trend per month. Before the event (i.e., January 2020), there is a common trend across all groups. In contrast, after the event, we observe a sudden rise for the outcomes of the COVID-19 related treated groups (green and red lines) and a decline in the outcomes for the unrelated group (blue line). Therefore, we can conclude that the CTA assumption holds.

Regression results

Table 3 shows the DiD regression results (see Eq (3) ) for the selected outcome measures: number of publications (Papers), impact factor weighted number of publications (Impact), open access (OA) publications, clinical trial related publications, and publications with existing grants.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263001.t003

Table 3 shows results for the discrete treatment level version of the DiD model (see Eq (4) ).

Note that the outcome variable is in natural log scale; hence to get the effect of the independent variable, we need to exponentiate the coefficient. For values close to 0, the effect is well approximated by the percentage change of that magnitude.

In both specifications we see that the least related group, drops in the number of publications between 10% and 13%, respectively (first row of Tables 3 and 4 , exp(−0.102) ≈ 0.87). In line with our expectations, the increase in the number of papers published by MeSH term is positively affected by the relatedness to COVID-19. In the discrete model (row 2), we note that the number of documents with MeSH terms with a COVID-19 relatedness between 20 and 80% grows by 18% and highly related terms by a factor of approximately 6.6 (exp(1.88)). The same general pattern can be observed for the impact weighted publication number, i.e., Model (2). Note, however, that the drop in the impact factor weighted output is more significant, reaching -19% for COVID-19 unrelated publications, and related publications growing by a factor of 8.7. This difference suggests that there might be a bias to publish papers on COVID-19 related subjects in high impact factor journals.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263001.t004

By looking at the number of open access publications (PMC), we note that the least related group has not been affected negatively by the pandemic. However, the number of COVID-19 related publications has drastically increased for the most COVID-19 related group by a factor of 6.2. Note that the substantial increase in the number of papers available through open access is in large part due to journal and editorial policies to make preferentially COVID research immediately available to the public.

Regarding the number of clinical trial publications, we note that the least related group has been affected negatively, with the number of publications on clinical trials dropping by a staggering 24%. At the same time, publications on clinical trials for COVID-19-related MeSH have increased by a factor of 2.1. Note, however, that the effect on clinical trials is not significant in the continuous regression. The discrepancy across Tables 3 and 4 highlights that, especially for trials, the effect is not linear, where only the publications on clinical trials closely related to COVID-19 experiencing a boost.

It has been reported [ 19 ] that while the number of clinical trials registered to treat or prevent COVID-19 has surged with 179 new registrations in the second week of April 2020 alone. Only a few of these have led to publishable results in the 12 months since [ 20 ]. On the other hand, we find that clinical trial publications, considering related MeSH (but not COVID-19 directly), have had significant growth from the beginning of the pandemic. These results are not contradictory. Indeed counting the number of clinical trial publications listing the exact COVID-19 MeSH term (D000086382), we find 212 publications. While this might seem like a small number, consider that in 2020 only 8,485 publications were classified as clinical trials; thus, targeted trials still made up 2.5% of all clinical trials in 2020 . So while one might doubt the effectiveness of these research efforts, it is still the case that by sheer number, they represent a significant proportion of all publications on clinical trials in 2020. Moreover, COVID-19 specific Clinical trial publications in 2020, being a delayed signal of the actual trials, are a lower bound estimate on the true number of such clinical trials being conducted. This is because COVID-19 studies could only have commenced in 2020, whereas other studies had a head start. Thus our reported estimates are conservative, meaning that the true effect on actual clinical trials is likely larger, not smaller.

Research funding, as proxied by the number of publications with grants, follows a similar pattern, but notably, COVID-19-related MeSH terms list the same proportion of grants established before 2019 as other unrelated MeSH terms, suggesting that grants which were not designated for COVID-19 research have been used to support COVID-19 related research. Overall, the number of publications listing a grant has dropped. Note that this should be because the number of publications overall in the unrelated group has dropped. However, we note that the drop in publications is 10% while the decline in publications with at least one grant is 15%. This difference suggests that publications listing grants, which should have more funding, are disproportionately COVID-19 related papers. To further investigate this aspect, we look at whether the grant was old (pre-2019) or appeared for the first time in or after 2019. It stands to reason that an old grant (pre-2019) would not have been granted for a project dealing with the pandemic. Hence we would expect that COVID-19 related MeSH terms to have a lower proportion of old grants than the unrelated group. In models (6) in Table 4 we show that the number of old grants for the unrelated group drops by 13%. At the same time, the number of papers listing old grants (i.e., pre-2019) among the most related group increased by a factor of 3.1. Overall, these results suggest that COVID-19 related research has been funded largely by pre-existing grants, even though a specific mandate tied to the grants for this use is unlikely.

The scientific community has swiftly reallocated research efforts to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, mobilizing knowledge across disciplines to find innovative solutions in record time. We document this both in terms of changing trends in the biomedical scientific output and the usage of MeSH terms by the scientific community. The flip side of this sudden and energetic prioritization of effort to fight COVID-19 has been a sudden contraction of scientific production in other relevant research areas. All in all, we find strong support to the hypotheses that the COVID-19 crisis has induced a sudden increase of research output in COVID-19 related areas of biomedical research. Conversely, research in areas not related to COVID-19 has experienced a significant drop in overall publishing rates and funding.

Our paper contributes to the literature on the impact of COVID-19 on scientific research: we corroborate previous findings about the surge of COVID-19 related publications [ 1 – 3 ], partially displacing research in COVID-19 unrelated fields of research [ 4 , 14 ], particularly research related to clinical trials [ 5 – 7 ]. The drop in trial research might have severe consequences for patients affected by life-threatening diseases since it will delay access to new and better treatments. We also confirm the impact of COVID-19 on open access publication output [ 1 ]; also, this is milder than traditional outlets. On top of this, we provide more robust evidence on the impact weighted effect of COVID-19 and grant financed research, highlighting the strong displacement effect of COVID-19 on the allocation of financial resources [ 15 ]. We document a substantial change in the usage patterns of MeSH terms, suggesting that there has been a reconfiguration in the way research terms are being combined. MeSH terms highly related to COVID-19 were peripheral in the MeSH usage networks before the pandemic but have become central since 2020. We conclude that the usage patterns have changed, with COVID-19 related MeSH terms occupying a much more prominent role in 2020 than they did in the previous years.

We also contribute to the literature by estimating the effect of COVID-19 on biomedical research in a natural experiment framework, isolating the specific effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the biomedical scientific landscape. This is crucial to identify areas of public intervention to sustain areas of biomedical research which have been neglected during the COVID-19 crisis. Moreover, the exploratory analysis on the changes in usage patterns of MeSH terms, points to an increase in the importance of covid-related topics in the broader biomedical research landscape.

Our results provide compelling evidence that research related to COVID-19 has indeed displaced scientific production in other biomedical fields of research not related to COVID-19, with a significant drop in (impact weighted) scientific output related to non-COVID-19 and a marked reduction of financial support for publications not related to COVID-19 [ 4 , 5 , 16 ]. The displacement effect is persistent to the end of 2020. As vaccination progresses, we highlight the urgent need for science policy to re-balance support for research activity that was put on pause because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We find that COVID-19 dramatically impacted clinical research. Reactivation of clinical trials activities that have been postponed or suspended for reasons related to COVID-19 is a priority that should be considered in the national vaccination plans. Moreover, since grants have been diverted and financial incentives have been targeted to sustain COVID-19 research leading to an excessive entry in COVID-19-related clinical trials and the ‘covidisation’ of research, there is a need to reorient incentives to basic research and otherwise neglected or temporally abandoned areas of biomedical research. Without dedicated support in the recovery plans for neglected research of the COVID-19 era, there is a risk that more medical needs will be unmet in the future, possibly exacerbating the shortage of scientific research for orphan and neglected diseases, which do not belong to COVID-19-related research areas.

Limitations

Our empirical approach has some limits. First, we proxy MeSH term usage via search terms using the PubMed EUtilities API. This means that the accuracy of the MeSH term we assign to a given paper is not fully validated. More time is needed for the completion of manually annotated MeSH terms. Second, the timing of publication is not the moment the research has been carried out. There is a lead time between inception, analysis, write-up, review, revision, and final publication. This delay varies across disciplines. Nevertheless, given that the surge in publications happens around the alleged event date, January 2020, we are confident that the publication date is a reasonable yet imperfect estimate of the timing of the research. Third, several journals have publicly declared to fast-track COVID-19 research. This discrepancy in the speed of publication of COVID-19 related research and other research could affect our results. Specifically, a surge or displacement could be overestimated due to a lag in the publication of COVID-19 unrelated research. We alleviate this bias by estimating the effect considering a considerable time after the event (January 2020 to December 2020). Forth, on the one hand, clinical Trials may lead to multiple publications. Therefore we might overestimate the impact of COVID-19 on the number of clinical trials. On the other hand, COVID-19 publications on clinical trials lag behind, so the number of papers related COVID-19 trials is likely underestimated. Therefore, we note that the focus of this paper is scientific publications on clinical trials rather than on actual clinical trials. Fifth, regarding grants, unfortunately, there is no unique centralized repository mapping grant numbers to years, so we have to proxy old grants with grants that appeared in publications from 2010 to 2018. Besides, grant numbers are free-form entries, meaning that PubMed has no validation step to disambiguate or verify that the grant number has been entered correctly. This has the effect of classifying a grant as new even though it has appeared under a different name. We mitigate this problem by using a long period to collect grant numbers and catch many spellings of the same grant, thereby reducing the likelihood of miss-identifying a grant as new when it existed before. Still, unless unique identifiers are widely used, there is no way to verify this.

So far, there is no conclusive evidence on whether entry into COVID-19 has been excessive. However, there is a growing consensus that COVID-19 has displaced, at least temporally, scientific research in COVID-19 unrelated biomedical research areas. Even though it is certainly expected that more attention will be devoted to the emergency during a pandemic, the displacement of biomedical research in other fields is concerning. Future research is needed to investigate the long-run structural consequences of the COVID-19 crisis on biomedical research.

Supporting information

S1 table. common trend assumption (cta) regression table..

Full regression table with all controls and interactions.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263001.s001

View Article
Google Scholar
PubMed/NCBI
8. Brown A, Edwin E, Fagg J. Evaluate Pharma 2021 Preview; 2020. https://www.evaluate.com/thought-leadership/vantage/evaluate-vantage-2021-preview .
15. Hook D, Porter S. The COVID Brain Drain; 2020. https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/covid-brain-drain-scientific-research .
17. Page L, Brin S, Motwani R, Winograd T. The PageRank citation ranking: Bringing order to the web. Stanford InfoLab; 1999.

Optimal Age-based Policies for Pandemics: An Economic Analysis of Covid-19 and Beyond

This paper investigates the importance of the age composition for pandemic policy design. To do so, it introduces an economic framework with age heterogeneity, individual choice, and incomplete information, emphasizing the value of testing. Calibrating the model to the US Covid-19 pandemic reveals an 80% reduction in death toll due to voluntary actions and the lockdown implemented in the US. The optimal lockdown, however, is more stringent than what was implemented in the US. Moreover, the social planner follows an asymmetric approach by locking down the young relatively more than the old. We underscore the importance of testing, showing its impact on reduced deaths, lower economic costs and laxer lockdown. We use the framework to provide systematic insights into pandemics caused by different viruses (among others the Spanish flu), and underline the influence of economic conditions on optimal policies.

All funding sources are named in the acknowledgements of the paper. In particular: Financial support from the German Research Foundation (through CRC-TR-224 (project A3) and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Prize), the European Research Council (through ERC grant 818859), the Spanish Government (PID2021-126549NB-I00 and PID2020-114040RB-I00), and the Generalitat of Catalonia (AGAUR-2020PANDE00036 and 2021-SGR-00862) is gratefully acknowledged. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

Download Citation Data

More from NBER

In addition to working papers , the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals — the NBER Reporter , the NBER Digest , the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability , the Bulletin on Health , and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship — as well as online conference reports , video lectures , and interviews .

15th Annual Feldstein Lecture, Mario Draghi, "The Next Flight of the Bumblebee: The Path to Common Fiscal Policy in the Eurozone cover slide

Browse All Articles
Newsletter Sign-Up

18 Jun 2024
Cold Call Podcast

How Natural Winemaker Frank Cornelissen Innovated While Staying True to His Brand

In 2018, artisanal Italian vineyard Frank Cornelissen was one of the world’s leading producers of natural wine. But when weather-related conditions damaged that year’s grapes, founder Frank Cornelissen had to decide between staying true to the tenets of natural wine making or breaking with his public beliefs to save that year’s grapes by adding sulfites. Harvard Business School assistant professor Tiona Zuzul discusses the importance of staying true to your company’s principles while remaining flexible enough to welcome progress in the case, Frank Cornelissen: The Great Sulfite Debate.

Research & Ideas

Central Banks Missed Inflation Red Flags. This Pricing Model Could Help.

The steep inflation that plagued the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic took many economists by surprise. But research by Alberto Cavallo suggests that a different method of tracking prices—a real-time model—could predict future surges better.

What Your Non-Binary Employees Need to Do Their Best Work

How can you break down gender boundaries and support the non-binary people on your team better? A study by Katherine Coffman reveals the motivations and aspirations of non-binary employees, highlighting the need for greater inclusion to unlock the full potential of a diverse workforce.

04 Jun 2024

How One Insurtech Firm Formulated a Strategy for Climate Change

The Insurtech firm Hippo was facing two big challenges related to climate change: major loss ratios and rate hikes. The company used technologically empowered services to create its competitive edge, along with providing smart home packages, targeting risk-friendly customers, and using data-driven pricing. But now CEO and president Rick McCathron needed to determine how the firm’s underwriting model could account for the effects of high-intensity weather events. Harvard Business School professor Lauren Cohen discusses how Hippo could adjust its strategy to survive a new era of unprecedented weather catastrophes in his case, “Hippo: Weathering the Storm of the Home Insurance Crisis.”

22 Apr 2024

When Does Impact Investing Make the Biggest Impact?

More investors want to back businesses that contribute to social change, but are impact funds the only approach? Research by Shawn Cole, Leslie Jeng, Josh Lerner, Natalia Rigol, and Benjamin Roth challenges long-held assumptions about impact investing and reveals where such funds make the biggest difference.

23 Jan 2024

More Than Memes: NFTs Could Be the Next Gen Deed for a Digital World

Non-fungible tokens might seem like a fad approach to selling memes, but the concept could help companies open new markets and build communities. Scott Duke Kominers and Steve Kaczynski go beyond the NFT hype in their book, The Everything Token.

12 Sep 2023

How Can Financial Advisors Thrive in Shifting Markets? Diversify, Diversify, Diversify

Financial planners must find new ways to market to tech-savvy millennials and gen Z investors or risk irrelevancy. Research by Marco Di Maggio probes the generational challenges that advisory firms face as baby boomers retire. What will it take to compete in a fintech and crypto world?

17 Aug 2023

‘Not a Bunch of Weirdos’: Why Mainstream Investors Buy Crypto

Bitcoin might seem like the preferred tender of conspiracy theorists and criminals, but everyday investors are increasingly embracing crypto. A study of 59 million consumers by Marco Di Maggio and colleagues paints a shockingly ordinary picture of today's cryptocurrency buyer. What do they stand to gain?

17 Jul 2023

Money Isn’t Everything: The Dos and Don’ts of Motivating Employees

Dangling bonuses to checked-out employees might only be a Band-Aid solution. Brian Hall shares four research-based incentive strategies—and three perils to avoid—for leaders trying to engage the post-pandemic workforce.

20 Jun 2023

Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover: Lessons in Strategic Change

In late October 2022, Elon Musk officially took Twitter private and became the company’s majority shareholder, finally ending a months-long acquisition saga. He appointed himself CEO and brought in his own team to clean house. Musk needed to take decisive steps to succeed against the major opposition to his leadership from both inside and outside the company. Twitter employees circulated an open letter protesting expected layoffs, advertising agencies advised their clients to pause spending on Twitter, and EU officials considered a broader Twitter ban. What short-term actions should Musk take to stabilize the situation, and how should he approach long-term strategy to turn around Twitter? Harvard Business School assistant professor Andy Wu and co-author Goran Calic, associate professor at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business, discuss Twitter as a microcosm for the future of media and information in their case, “Twitter Turnaround and Elon Musk.”

06 Jun 2023

The Opioid Crisis, CEO Pay, and Shareholder Activism

In 2020, AmerisourceBergen Corporation, a Fortune 50 company in the drug distribution industry, agreed to settle thousands of lawsuits filed nationwide against the company for its opioid distribution practices, which critics alleged had contributed to the opioid crisis in the US. The $6.6 billion global settlement caused a net loss larger than the cumulative net income earned during the tenure of the company’s CEO, which began in 2011. In addition, AmerisourceBergen’s legal and financial troubles were accompanied by shareholder demands aimed at driving corporate governance changes in companies in the opioid supply chain. Determined to hold the company’s leadership accountable, the shareholders launched a campaign in early 2021 to reject the pay packages of executives. Should the board reduce the executives’ pay, as of means of improving accountability? Or does punishing the AmerisourceBergen executives for paying the settlement ignore the larger issue of a business’s responsibility to society? Harvard Business School professor Suraj Srinivasan discusses executive compensation and shareholder activism in the context of the US opioid crisis in his case, “The Opioid Settlement and Controversy Over CEO Pay at AmerisourceBergen.”

16 May 2023
In Practice

After Silicon Valley Bank's Flameout, What's Next for Entrepreneurs?

Silicon Valley Bank's failure in the face of rising interest rates shook founders and funders across the country. Julia Austin, Jeffrey Bussgang, and Rembrand Koning share key insights for rattled entrepreneurs trying to make sense of the financing landscape.

27 Apr 2023

Equity Bank CEO James Mwangi: Transforming Lives with Access to Credit

James Mwangi, CEO of Equity Bank, has transformed lives and livelihoods throughout East and Central Africa by giving impoverished people access to banking accounts and micro loans. He’s been so successful that in 2020 Forbes coined the term “the Mwangi Model.” But can we really have both purpose and profit in a firm? Harvard Business School professor Caroline Elkins, who has spent decades studying Africa, explores how this model has become one that business leaders are seeking to replicate throughout the world in her case, “A Marshall Plan for Africa': James Mwangi and Equity Group Holdings.” As part of a new first-year MBA course at Harvard Business School, this case examines the central question: what is the social purpose of the firm?

25 Apr 2023

Using Design Thinking to Invent a Low-Cost Prosthesis for Land Mine Victims

Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (BMVSS) is an Indian nonprofit famous for creating low-cost prosthetics, like the Jaipur Foot and the Stanford-Jaipur Knee. Known for its patient-centric culture and its focus on innovation, BMVSS has assisted more than one million people, including many land mine survivors. How can founder D.R. Mehta devise a strategy that will ensure the financial sustainability of BMVSS while sustaining its human impact well into the future? Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar discusses the importance of design thinking in ensuring a culture of innovation in his case, “BMVSS: Changing Lives, One Jaipur Limb at a Time.”

18 Apr 2023

What Happens When Banks Ditch Coal: The Impact Is 'More Than Anyone Thought'

Bank divestment policies that target coal reduced carbon dioxide emissions, says research by Boris Vallée and Daniel Green. Could the finance industry do even more to confront climate change?

The Best Person to Lead Your Company Doesn't Work There—Yet

Recruiting new executive talent to revive portfolio companies has helped private equity funds outperform major stock indexes, says research by Paul Gompers. Why don't more public companies go beyond their senior executives when looking for top leaders?

11 Apr 2023

A Rose by Any Other Name: Supply Chains and Carbon Emissions in the Flower Industry

Headquartered in Kitengela, Kenya, Sian Flowers exports roses to Europe. Because cut flowers have a limited shelf life and consumers want them to retain their appearance for as long as possible, Sian and its distributors used international air cargo to transport them to Amsterdam, where they were sold at auction and trucked to markets across Europe. But when the Covid-19 pandemic caused huge increases in shipping costs, Sian launched experiments to ship roses by ocean using refrigerated containers. The company reduced its costs and cut its carbon emissions, but is a flower that travels halfway around the world truly a “low-carbon rose”? Harvard Business School professors Willy Shih and Mike Toffel debate these questions and more in their case, “Sian Flowers: Fresher by Sea?”

Is Amazon a Retailer, a Tech Firm, or a Media Company? How AI Can Help Investors Decide

More companies are bringing seemingly unrelated businesses together in new ways, challenging traditional stock categories. MarcAntonio Awada and Suraj Srinivasan discuss how applying machine learning to regulatory data could reveal new opportunities for investors.

07 Apr 2023

When Celebrity ‘Crypto-Influencers’ Rake in Cash, Investors Lose Big

Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan, and other entertainers have been accused of promoting crypto products on social media without disclosing conflicts. Research by Joseph Pacelli shows what can happen to eager investors who follow them.

31 Mar 2023

Can a ‘Basic Bundle’ of Health Insurance Cure Coverage Gaps and Spur Innovation?

One in 10 people in America lack health insurance, resulting in $40 billion of care that goes unpaid each year. Amitabh Chandra and colleagues say ensuring basic coverage for all residents, as other wealthy nations do, could address the most acute needs and unlock efficiency.

Appointments at Mayo Clinic

COVID-19 in babies and children

Anyone can get COVID-19 , also called coronavirus disease 2019, including children. Find out about the symptoms, testing and medical issues linked to COVID-19 in children. And learn how to help prevent COVID-19, especially in children at high risk of serious illness.

How likely is it for a child to become sick with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)?

Data tracking between 2020 and 2023 found that children made up about 18% of all people with reported COVID-19 in the United States.

While children are as likely as adults to catch the virus that causes COVID-19, kids are less likely to become seriously ill. From 2020 to the end of March 2024, children up to age 17 accounted for about 1.5% of people who needed to be treated for COVID-19 in the hospital.

But some children with COVID-19 need to be hospitalized, treated in the intensive care unit or placed on a machine to help them breathe, called a ventilator. Very rarely, COVID-19 can cause death.

Some health issues might raise a child's risk of serious illness with COVID-19, such as:

Having more than one chronic disease, including those of the heart, lung or nervous system.
Not being up to date with COVID-19 vaccination.
Having a weakened immune system.
Being born before the due date, called prematurity.
Having obesity.
Having type 1 or type 2 diabetes.

This is not a complete list. Other health issues, such as sickle cell disease, may be linked to more-serious COVID-19.

Having more than one risk factor raises the chance of serious COVID-19. Age younger than 1 year or older than 12 also raises the risk. And if a medical condition isn't under control, that can raise the risk of serious COVID-19.

A COVID-19 vaccine might prevent your child from getting the virus that causes COVID-19. It also may prevent your child from becoming seriously ill, having to stay in the hospital or dying of COVID-19.

How are babies affected by COVID-19?

Babies under age 1 might be at higher risk of serious illness with COVID-19 than are older children. This may be mostly due to the fact that babies born prematurely have the highest risk.

In general, the virus that causes COVID-19 doesn't spread from the pregnant person to the unborn baby. Infants typically get COVID-19 from a sick caregiver after delivery.

Pregnant people can help lower an infant's risk by getting the COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy. Some evidence suggests protection can pass to the unborn baby and continue after birth.

What are the symptoms of COVID-19 in children?

Children with COVID-19 may have serious or mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. Symptoms may show up from 2 to 14 days after contact with the virus that causes COVID-19.

The most common symptoms are fever and a cough, including a barking cough linked to croup. For many children, symptoms are like those of other lung and breathing illnesses, called respiratory illnesses, and may include:

Sore throat.
Stuffy or runny nose.
Feeling very tired, called fatigue.
Nausea, vomiting or loose stools, called diarrhea.
Muscle aches and pain.

Testing can help figure out if the virus that causes COVID-19 is the cause.

COVID-19 symptoms also may include problems breathing or shortness of breath, as well as new loss of taste or smell.

Breathing trouble

Get emergency help right away if your child is working hard to breathe. Symptoms of breathing trouble include grunting, flaring the nostrils, or having the chest pull at the collarbone and rib with a breath. Other symptoms of trouble breathing are shortness of breath at rest; rapid breathing; or wheezy, noisy or raspy breathing. In babies, this may show as not being able to cry or feed.

Get emergency help for other symptoms of serious illness, such as:

Fever higher than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) in a child younger than 3 months old.
Problems swallowing, for example, drooling in children younger than age 3 and in older children, not being able to swallow or open the mouth fully.
Skin, lips or nail beds that are gray or blue.
New confusion.
Trouble staying awake or waking up.
Chest pain or pressure that is constant.
Vomiting or diarrhea that doesn't stop.
Dehydration, which in babies younger than 3 month means fewer than three wet diapers in 24 hours.

This list doesn't include every emergency symptom. If the child you're taking care of has symptoms that worry you, get help. Let the healthcare team know about a positive test for COVID-19 or symptoms of the illness.

Testing for COVID-19

Testing for COVID-19 can help you quickly figure out if the COVID-19 virus is the cause of your child's illness. Testing helps you act quickly to prevent serious illness in kids who are at higher than average risk. It also helps protect others who may be at high risk.

Test for COVID-19 if you know you or your child was exposed to the virus or if you have symptoms. Testing during times when many people in your area have COVID-19 can help stop the spread of the virus that causes the illness.

Supporting Your Child During COVID-19 Nasal Swab Testing

Jennifer Rodemeyer, Child Life Program Manager, Mayo Clinic: Hi, I'm Jennifer and I am a child life specialist at Mayo Clinic. My job is to help kids like you prepare for medical tests.

You may have heard there is a virus going around that can make people feel sick. A virus is a germ and it is so tiny you can't even see it.

Some people who get this virus can have a fever or a cough and may feel achy and tired, while some people can have this virus and not feel sick at all. People may get this virus from touching things. That's why it's important to wash your hands often with soap and water. The virus also can spread through a cough or a sneeze. So it's important to always cover your cough or sneeze.

Today, even though you may or may not be feeling sick, we will need to give you a test so we know how to best proceed with your medical care. This medical test will tell us if you have the virus.

When you go to take your test, the health care provider will wear special protective clothing. They wear this clothing to keep themselves and you safe from getting germs. They will wear a mask to cover their nose and mouth and a clear plastic shield to protect their eyes.

The most important thing you can do during your test is to sit perfectly still like a statue. To help make sure you don't move, your parent or caregiver will help keep you still and calm during your test. The health care provider needs to touch the inside of the back of your nose with a long, skinny Q-tip. To do this, you need to hold your chin up, then the health care provider will put the Q-tip in your nose for a short time to collect a sample.

While this happens you may feel like you want to push the Q-tip away, but it's really important to stay as still as possible so the health care provider can finish the test. The Q-tip will be in and out of your nose in a few seconds.

Some kids tell me that counting to 3 or taking a deep breath relaxes them before the test happens, and some tell me they like to hold on to their favorite stuffed animal or blanket. Maybe you have your own way to relax.

Remember that during the test, the most important thing to do is to keep your body perfectly still.

You may have many feelings seeing the health care provider wearing different clothing, but know this person is caring and wants to help you.

Thank you for helping us get this test done, so we know how to proceed with your medical care.

What is multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C)?

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a serious condition linked to infection with the virus that causes COVID-19.

With MIS-C, children have fever, blood markers of inflammation and serious disease throughout the body. Organs such as the brain, eyes, heart, lungs, kidneys, digestive system and skin may become inflamed. MIS-C symptoms are treated in the hospital as the illness runs its course.

MIS-C is rare. In 2023, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received 117 reports of MIS-C. Most of these children had no medical issues before getting MIS-C.

Symptoms usually show up in about 2 to 6 weeks after infection with the virus that causes COVID-19.

Symptoms of MIS-C include a fever that doesn't go away, along with other symptoms:

Belly pain.
Bloodshot eyes.
Dizziness or lightheadedness.

Emergency warning signs of MIS-C include:

Difficulty breathing.
Gray or blue skin, lips or nail beds.
Terrible belly pain.

If your child shows any emergency warning signs or is severely sick with other symptoms, take your child to the nearest emergency department or call 911 or your local emergency number. If your child isn't seriously ill but shows other symptoms of MIS-C, contact your child's healthcare professional right away for advice.

Most children get better quickly and don't have any medical issues caused by MIS-C.

Staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccination offers protection against MIS-C. And most children who have had MIS-C can get a COVID-19 vaccine on schedule.

Can children who get COVID-19 experience long-term effects?

Anyone who has had COVID-19 can develop a post-COVID-19 syndrome. New symptoms or conditions that develop after infection with the virus that causes COVID-19 is more often linked to serious COVID-19 illness. But anyone who catches the COVID-19 virus can develop a post-COVID-19 syndrome.

Symptoms often include a high level of tiredness that affects day-to-day life. And some symptoms may get worse after certain activities.

Symptoms may relate to trouble with:

Trouble with thinking.
Fast heartbeat.
Sleep problems
Digestive issues.
Pain in the joints or muscles.

Depending on their age, children may have trouble explaining some of these issues, which may be difficult for healthcare teams to diagnose.

These symptoms could affect your child's ability to attend school or do typical activities. If your child has post-COVID-19 symptoms that aren't getting better, talk with your healthcare professional. Working with your child's school, it may be possible to compensate for these symptoms.

Staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccines offers protection against post-COVID-19 syndrome.

What COVID-19 vaccines are available to kids in the U.S.?

The COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are:

2023-2024 Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, available for people age 6 months and older.
2023-2024 Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, available for people age 6 months and older.
2023-2024 Novavax COVID-19 vaccine, available for people age 12 years and older.

In general, people older than age 4 with typical immune systems can get any vaccine that is approved or authorized for their age. And people usually don't need to get vaccines from the same vaccine maker each time.

Some people should get all their vaccine doses from the same vaccine maker, including:

Children age 6 months to 4 years.
People age 5 years and older with weakened immune systems.
People age 12 and older who have had one shot of the Novavax vaccine. They should get the second Novavax shot in the two-dose series.

Talk with your healthcare professional if you have any questions about the vaccines for you or your child. Your healthcare team can help you if:

The vaccine you or your child got earlier isn't available.
You don't know which vaccine you or your child received.
You or your child started a vaccine series but couldn't finish it due to side effects.

What can I do to prevent my child from getting COVID-19?

There are many steps you can take to prevent your child from getting the COVID-19 virus and spreading it to others.

Get vaccinated. If the timing works out, a COVID-19 vaccine can be given to eligible children on the same day as other vaccines.
Keep hands clean. Encourage frequent hand-washing with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Teach your kids to keep washing their hands until they have sung the entire "Happy Birthday" song twice, which takes about 20 seconds. Or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol. Have your child cover the mouth and nose with an elbow or a tissue when coughing or sneezing. Remind your child to avoid touching the eyes, nose and mouth.
Clean and disinfect your home. Clean high-touch surfaces and objects regularly and after you have visitors in your home. Also, regularly clean areas that easily get dirty, such as a baby's changing table, and surfaces and items that your child often touches.
Get the air flowing. Use fans, open windows or doors, and use filters to keep air and germs moving out of your indoor space.
Keep some distance. If possible, avoid close contact with anyone who is sick or has symptoms. Spread out in crowded indoor places, especially in places with poor airflow.
Wear face masks. If you are in an area with a high number of people in the hospital with COVID-19, the CDC recommends wearing a well-fitted mask indoors in public. Don't place a face mask on a child younger than age 2 or a child with a disability who can't safely wear a mask.

Keep up with well-child visits and your child's other vaccines. COVID-19 is just one of many illnesses that can be prevented with vaccination. Vaccines for children are timed carefully. Vaccines are given when protection inherited from the mother fades and the child's immune system is ready, but before kids are likely to come in contact with the germs that cause real infections.

Following guidelines to protect against the COVID-19 virus can be difficult for kids. Stay patient. Be a good role model and your child will be more likely to follow your lead.

There is a problem with information submitted for this request. Review/update the information highlighted below and resubmit the form.

From Mayo Clinic to your inbox

Sign up for free and stay up to date on research advancements, health tips, current health topics, and expertise on managing health. Click here for an email preview.

Error Email field is required

Error Include a valid email address

To provide you with the most relevant and helpful information, and understand which information is beneficial, we may combine your email and website usage information with other information we have about you. If you are a Mayo Clinic patient, this could include protected health information. If we combine this information with your protected health information, we will treat all of that information as protected health information and will only use or disclose that information as set forth in our notice of privacy practices. You may opt-out of email communications at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the e-mail.

Thank you for subscribing!

You'll soon start receiving the latest Mayo Clinic health information you requested in your inbox.

Sorry something went wrong with your subscription

Please, try again in a couple of minutes

Children and COVID-19: State data report. American Academy of Pediatrics. https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/children-and-covid-19-state-level-data-report/. Accessed April 3, 2024.
Information for pediatric healthcare providers. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/pediatric-hcp.html. Accessed April 3, 2024.
COVID data tracker. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#pediatric-data. Accessed April 3, 2024.
Willis ZI, et al. Guidance for prevention and management of COVID-19 in children and adolescents: A consensus statement from the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society Pediatric COVID-19 Therapies Taskforce. Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society. 2024; doi:10.1093/jpids/piad116.
Stay up to date with your vaccines. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/stay-up-to-date.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.
Hughes BL, et al. COVID-19: Antepartum care of pregnant patients with symptomatic infection. https://www.uptodate.com/contents/search. Accessed April 4, 2024.
AskMayoExpert. COVID-19: Pregnancy. Mayo Clinic; 2024.
Halasa NB, et al. Effectiveness of maternal vaccination with mRNA COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy against COVID-19-associated hospitalization in infants aged <6 months — 17 states, July 2021-January 2022. MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 2022; doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm7107e3.
AskMayoExpert. COVID-19: Outpatient and inpatient management (child). Mayo Clinic; 2024.
Symptoms of COVID-19. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/symptoms.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.
Testing and respiratory viruses. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/prevention/testing.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.
Information for healthcare providers about multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/mis/mis-c/hcp_cstecdc/index.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.
Notes from the field: Surveillance for multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, United States, 2023. MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 2024; doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm7310a2.
For parents: Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) associated with COVID-19. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/mis/mis-c.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.
Long COVID or post-COVID conditions. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html. Accessed April 3, 2024.
Caring for people with long COVID. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/care-post-covid.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.
Interim clinical considerations for use of COVID-19 vaccines currently approved or authorized in the United States. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/clinical-considerations/covid-19-vaccines-us.html. Accessed April 3, 2024.
How to protect yourself and others. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.
When and how to wash your hands. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/when-how-handwashing.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.
Everyday cleaning. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/hygiene/cleaning/index.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.
Taking steps for cleaner air for respiratory virus prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/prevention/air-quality.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.
Masks and respiratory viruses prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/prevention/masks.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.
Timing and spacing of immunobiologics. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/acip-recs/general-recs/timing.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.
Infants and children birth through age 6. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.hhs.gov/immunization/who-and-when/index.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.
Your child's first vaccines. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/multi.html. Accessed April 4, 2024.

Products and Services

A Book: Endemic - A Post-Pandemic Playbook
Begin Exploring Women's Health Solutions at Mayo Clinic Store
A Book: Future Care
Antibiotics: Are you misusing them?
COVID-19 and vitamin D
Convalescent plasma therapy
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
COVID-19: How can I protect myself?
Herd immunity and respiratory illness
COVID-19 and pets
COVID-19 and your mental health
COVID-19 antibody testing
COVID-19, cold, allergies and the flu
Long-term effects of COVID-19
COVID-19 tests
COVID-19 drugs: Are there any that work?
Coronavirus infection by race
COVID-19 travel advice
COVID-19 vaccine: Should I reschedule my mammogram?
COVID-19 vaccines for kids: What you need to know
COVID-19 vaccines
COVID-19 variant
COVID-19 vs. flu: Similarities and differences
COVID-19: Who's at higher risk of serious symptoms?
Debunking coronavirus myths
Different COVID-19 vaccines
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO)
Fever: First aid
Fever treatment: Quick guide to treating a fever
Fight coronavirus (COVID-19) transmission at home
Honey: An effective cough remedy?
How do COVID-19 antibody tests differ from diagnostic tests?
How to measure your respiratory rate
How to take your pulse
How to take your temperature
How well do face masks protect against COVID-19?
Is hydroxychloroquine a treatment for COVID-19?
Loss of smell
Mayo Clinic Minute: You're washing your hands all wrong
Mayo Clinic Minute: How dirty are common surfaces?
Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C)
Nausea and vomiting
Pregnancy and COVID-19
Safe outdoor activities during the COVID-19 pandemic
Safety tips for attending school during COVID-19
Sex and COVID-19
Shortness of breath
Thermometers: Understand the options
Treating COVID-19 at home
Unusual symptoms of coronavirus
Vaccine guidance from Mayo Clinic
Watery eyes

Related information

COVID-19 vaccines for kids: What you need to know - Related information COVID-19 vaccines for kids: What you need to know
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) - Related information Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) and COVID-19 - Related information Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) and COVID-19
Resilience: Build skills to endure hardship - Related information Resilience: Build skills to endure hardship
31 - Related information 31

Your gift holds great power – donate today!

Make your tax-deductible gift and be part of the cutting-edge research and care that's changing medicine.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List
Elsevier - PMC COVID-19 Collection

Areas of academic research with the impact of COVID-19

Abid haleem.

a Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

Mohd Javaid

Raju vaishya.

b Department of Orthopaedics, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, Sarita Vihar, Mathura Road, 110076 New Delhi, India

S.G. Deshmukh

c Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India

Coronavirus (COVID-19) endemic is growing exponentially in the whole world. Researchers, technologists, doctors and other healthcare workers are working day and night on the development of vaccine and medicinesto control and treat this virus. SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the virus responsible for causing COVID-19 disease, which is highly infectious and lethal.With exponentially increasing infections, proportionate fatalities are being reported both from developed and under developed countries. As of today, more than one million people across the world have been reported infected with this virus, and more than 65,000 people have died of this disease. Hence, there is an urgent requirement for conducting academic research on several aspects of this highly contagious disease, to find effective means of containment and treatment of the disease, for now, and in future. We have identified some opportunities for academic research related to COVID-19 and have also provided suggestions to contain, prevent and treat this viral infection.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus has significantly affected the health, economy, and socio-economic fabric of the global society. The costs involved in the containment and treatment of this infectious disease are exorbitantly high, which even the wealthiestand developed countries are finding it difficult to sustain. COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the crude, stock market, gold and metals and almost all areas of the global market [ 1 ]. Large research laboratories and corporate houses are working with a high speed to develop medicines and vaccines for the prevention and treatment of this dreaded disease. To deal with these current health management challenges, we need a comprehensive understanding of the effect on the health system, global business, and culture. COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the WHO on 11th March 2020 [ 2 ]. COVID-19 has become an international emergency in a short period and will have long-lasting effects. There is an urgent need to identify and study the areas of academic research which will be impacted by COVID-19 [ 3 ].

1. Research objectives

This manuscript highlights potential areas of academic research which are likely to be impacted by COVID-19. The main objectives of this paper are to provide awareness and to identify the research areas related to COVID-19. It may help improve the understanding of this disease and describe the psychological impacts of this pandemic and how these could change as the disease spreads.

2. Current limitations and gaps in the knowledge of Coronavirus and its effects

It appears the Coronavirus is zoonotic and originated in China. Scientists have not yet been able to identify the animal source of the infectious agent and have not determined whether a persistent animal reservoir of the infectious agent exists. It is also unclear whether SARS, like influenza, is a seasonal disease that would have receded on its own. It remains to be seen whether it will reemerge on a seasonal basis, and if so, how virulent future manifestations would be. The answers to these questions would undoubtedly advance the world's ability to predict and prepare for a resurgence of COVID-19.

3. Significant research areas on COVID-19

COVID-19 has disrupted the economies and the lives of individuals around the world. There are many areas of research needed regarding COVID-19 [ [4] , [5] , [6] ]. Table 1 identifies significant research areas which be profoundly impacted by this pandemic. We need to undertake extensive research on these areas.

Major research areas which will be impacted by COVID-19.

S. No	Areas	Description
1	Vaccine Development
2	Medication/Therapy
3	Health Care and equipment
4	Social
5	Economic
6	Environmental
7	Sustainability
8	Psychiatric
9	The emergence of a new workplace and work culture
10	Information Technology revolution
11	Online awareness workshop and capacity building
12	Biological warfare
13	Psychological issues
14	Industry 4.0
15	Importance of home life
16	Global trade, commerce
17	Medical Supply chains
18	Public health and Policy

Extensive research is required for the development of a vaccine for the prevention of Coronavirus infection. There is an urgent need for early production and manufacturing of the essential items like personal protective equipment, medicines, and ventilators to combat this pandemic. All measures to keep a social distancing by the public must be ensured by avoiding social-cultural and religious programs and festivals etc. during this pandemic. Along with these, healthcare measures to deal with COVID-19 pandemic, there is also an imminent requirement for theresearch to improvethe global economy, which has taken a tremendous beating and is unlikely to recover in the near future [ 7 , 8 ].

4. Conclusion

COVID-19 pandemic is a public health emergency of international concern.It has posed new challenges to the global research community. With the help of academic research, there is a need for a better understanding of the COVID-19 and its socio-economic ramifications on society. The future research will be multi-disciplinary and trans-national.We see a new wave of research in the biological and the medical sciences for the well-being of the civilization.

Declaration of competing interest

The impact of social networks of historically underrepresented group operators (HUGOs) business recovery

Chandrasekhar, Divya

While Historically Underrepresented Group Operators (HUGOs) businesses typically depend on social networks for disaster recovery, this aspect remains inadequately researched. This research investigates whether leveraging particular social networks (bonding, bridging, and linking) to obtain financial and informational access influences small business perceptions of recovery. Data was collected through a survey of 200 businesses in Salt Lake City, UT affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and analyzed using logistic regression. The findings indicate that: (1) small businesses that utilized bonding, bridging, or linking networking experienced negative recovery; however (2) HUGOs that utilized linking networks were more likely to experience a positive recovery than non-HUGOs. The research underscores the importance of diversifying social networking channels for successful HUGO business recovery and points to the need for economic recovery programs that build this networking capacity.

HUGOs business;
Social networks;
Financial and informational aid;
Social capital;
Business recovery

Fact sheets
Facts in pictures
Publications
Questions and answers
Tools and toolkits
HIV and AIDS
Hypertension
Mental disorders
Top 10 causes of death
All countries
Eastern Mediterranean
South-East Asia
Western Pacific
Data by country
Country presence
Country strengthening
Country cooperation strategies
News releases
Feature stories
Press conferences
Commentaries
Photo library
Afghanistan
Cholera
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
Greater Horn of Africa
Israel and occupied Palestinian territory
Disease Outbreak News
Situation reports
Weekly Epidemiological Record
Surveillance
Health emergency appeal
International Health Regulations
Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee
Classifications
Data collections
Global Health Estimates
Mortality Database
Sustainable Development Goals
Health Inequality Monitor
Global Progress
Data collection tools
Global Health Observatory
Insights and visualizations
COVID excess deaths
World Health Statistics
Partnerships
Committees and advisory groups
Collaborating centres
Technical teams
Organizational structure
Initiatives
General Programme of Work
WHO Academy
Investment case
WHO Foundation
External audit
Financial statements
Internal audit and investigations
Programme Budget
Results reports
Governing bodies
World Health Assembly
Executive Board
Member States Portal
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) /
Advice for the public /
Mythbusters

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public: Mythbusters

Section navigation.

Advice for the public
When and how to use masks

19 January 2022

How to report misinformation

Alcohol-based sanitizer
Alcohol-based sanitizer, amount
Alcohol-based sanitizer, religion
Clean hands
Cold weather, snow
Dexamethasone
Hand dryers
Hand sanitizer
Hand sanitizer, essential medicine
Hand sanitizer, bottle
Hot and humid climates
Hot peppers
Masks, CO2 intoxication
Methanol, ethanol
Older people, younger people
Sunny and hot weather
Supplements
Viruses, bacteria, antibiotics

FACT: Hand sanitizers can be used often

An alcohol-based sanitizer does not create antibiotic resistance. Unlike other antiseptics and antibiotics, pathogens (harmful germs) do not seem to develop resistance to alcohol-based sanitizers.

Hand sanitizers can be used often

Fact: alcohol-based sanitizers are safe for everyone to use.

Alcohols in the sanitizers have not been shown to create any relevant health issues. Little alcohol is absorbed into the skin, and most products contain an emollient to reduce skin dryness. Allergic contact dermatitis and bleaching of hand hair due to alcohol are very rare adverse effects. Accidental swallowing and intoxication have been described in rare cases.

COVID-19: Alcohol-based sanitizers are safe for everyone to use

Fact: alcohol-based sanitizers can be used in religions where alcohol is prohibited.

Any manufactured substance developed to alleviate illness or contribute to better health is permitted by the Qur'an, including alcohol used as a medical agent.

COVID-19: FACT: Alcohol-based sanitizers can be used in religions where alcohol is prohibited

Fact: the amount of alcohol-based sanitizer you use matters.

Apply a palmful of alcohol-based sanitizer to cover all surfaces of your hands. Rub your hands together using the right technique until they are dry.

The entire procedure should last 20-30 seconds.

COVID-19: The amount of alcohol-based sanitizer you use matters

Fact: it is safer to frequently clean your hands and not wear gloves.

Wearing gloves risks transferring germs from one surface to another and contaminating your hands when removing them. Wearing gloves does not replace cleaning hands. Health workers wear gloves only for specific tasks.

It is safer to frequently clean your hands and not wear gloves

Fact: touching a communal bottle of alcohol-based sanitizer will not infect you.

Once you've sanitized your hands, you have disinfected them from any germs that may have been on the bottle. If everyone uses sanitizer in a public place such as a supermarket entrance, the risk of germs on communal items will be lower and will help keep everyone safe.

COVID-19: Touching a communal bottle of alcohol-based sanitizer will not infect you

Fact: an alcohol-based handrub is listed as a who essential medicine.

Clean hands protect patients, health workers, other caregivers and everyone from infection. Cleaning your hands is one of the key measures to prevent disease.

COVID-19: An alcohol-based handrub is listed as a WHO essential medicine

Fact: vitamin and mineral supplements cannot cure covid-19 .

Micronutrients, such as vitamins D and C and zinc, are critical for a well-functioning immune system and play a vital role in promoting health and nutritional well-being. There is currently no guidance on the use of micronutrient supplements as a treatment of COVID-19.

WHO is coordinating efforts to develop and evaluate medicines to treat COVID-19.

COVID-19: Vitamin and mineral supplements cannot cure COVID-19

Is dexamethasone a treatment for all covid-19 patients.

Dexamethasone should be reserved for patients who need it most. It should not be stockpiled.

It provided no improvement for patients with mild symptoms. Dexamethasone is a corticosteroid used for its anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive effects. For some COVID-19 patients on ventilators, a daily 6 mg dose of dexamethasone for 10 days improved their health

COVID-19: Corticosteroid are recommended for severe and critically ill COVID-19 patients

Fact: water or swimming does not transmit the covid-19 virus.

The COVID-19 virus does not transmit through water while swimming. However, the virus spreads between people when someone has close contact with an infected person.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Avoid crowds and maintain at least a 1-metre distance from others, even when you are swimming or at swimming areas. Wear a mask when you’re not in the water and you can’t stay distant. Clean your hands frequently, cover a cough or sneeze with a tissue or bent elbow, and stay home if you’re unwell.

COVID-19: Water or swimming does not transmit the COVID-19 virus

Fact: the likelihood of shoes spreading covid-19 is very low.

The likelihood of COVID-19 being spread on shoes and infecting individuals is very low. As a precautionary measure, particularly in homes where infants and small children crawl or play on floors, consider leaving your shoes at the entrance of your home. This will help prevent contact with dirt or any waste that could be carried on the soles of shoes.

COVID-19: Can shoes spread the COVID-19 virus?

The likelihood of shoes spreading COVID-19 is very low

Fact: the coronavirus disease (covid-19) is caused by a virus, not by bacteria.

The virus that causes COVID-19 is in a family of viruses called Coronaviridae. Antibiotics do not work against viruses.

Some people who become ill with COVID-19 can also develop a bacterial infection as a complication. In this case, antibiotics may be recommended by a health care provider.

There is currently no licensed medication to cure COVID-19. If you have symptoms, call your health care provider or COVID-19 hotline for assistance.

Mythbuster infographic: Bacteria versus virus.

COVID-19 is caused by a virus, not by bacteria

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is caused by a virus, NOT by bacteria

Fact: the prolonged use of medical masks* when properly worn, does not cause co2 intoxication nor oxygen deficiency.

The prolonged use of medical masks can be uncomfortable. However, it does not lead to CO2 intoxication nor oxygen deficiency. While wearing a medical mask, make sure it fits properly and that it is tight enough to allow you to breathe normally. Do not re-use a disposable mask and always change it as soon as it gets damp.

* Medical masks (also known as surgical masks) are flat or pleated; they are affixed to the head with straps or have ear loops.

COVID-19: The prolonged use of medical masks* when properly worn, DOES NOT cause CO2 intoxication nor oxygen deficiency

Use of medical masks when properly worn DOESN'T cause CO2 intoxication nor oxygen deficiency

Fact: drinking alcohol does not protect you against covid-19 and can be dangerous.

The harmful use of alcohol increases your risk of health problems.

COVID-19: Drinking alcohol does not protect you against COVID-19 and can be dangerous

WHO's Science in 5 on COVID-19 - Mythbusters - 16 October 2020

Fact: adding pepper to your soup or other meals does not prevent or cure covid-19.

Hot peppers in your food, though very tasty, cannot prevent or cure COVID-19. The best way to protect yourself against the new coronavirus is to keep at least 1 metre away from others and to wash your hands frequently and thoroughly. It is also beneficial for your general health to maintain a balanced diet, stay well hydrated, exercise regularly and sleep well.

COVID-19: Adding pepper to your soup or other meals DOES NOT prevent or cure COVID-19

Fact: spraying and introducing bleach or another disinfectant into your body will not protect you against covid-19 and can be dangerous.

Do not under any circumstance spray or introduce bleach or any other disinfectant into your body. These substances can be poisonous if ingested and cause irritation and damage to your skin and eyes.

Bleach and disinfectant should be used carefully to disinfect surfaces only. Remember to keep chlorine (bleach) and other disinfectants out of reach of children.

COVID-19: Spraying and introducing bleach or another disinfectant into your body WILL NOT protect you against COVID-19 and can be dangerous

Coronavirus mythbusters: Spraying and introducing bleach into your body WON'T protect you

Fact: drinking methanol, ethanol or bleach does not prevent or cure covid-19 and can be extremely dangerous.

Methanol, ethanol, and bleach are poisons. Drinking them can lead to disability and death. Methanol, ethanol, and bleach are sometimes used in cleaning products to kill the virus on surfaces – however you should never drink them. They will not kill the virus in your body and they will harm your internal organs.

To protect yourself against COVID-19, disinfect objects and surfaces, especially the ones you touch regularly. You can use diluted bleach or alcohol for that. Make sure you clean your hands frequently and thoroughly and avoid touching your eyes, mouth and nose.

COVID-19: Drinking methanol, ethanol or bleach DOES NOT prevent or cure COVID-19 and can be extremely dangerous

Fact: exposing yourself to the sun or temperatures higher than 25°c does not protect you from covid-19.

You can catch COVID-19, no matter how sunny or hot the weather is. Countries with hot weather have reported cases of COVID-19. To protect yourself, make sure you clean your hands frequently and thoroughly and avoid touching your eyes, mouth, and nose.

Exposing yourself to the sun or to temperatures higher than 25C degrees DOES NOT prevent nor cure COVID-19

COVID-19: Exposing yourself to the sun or temperatures higher than 25°C DOES NOT protect you from COVID-19

Fact: the covid-19 virus can spread in hot and humid climates.

The best way to protect yourself against COVID-19 is by maintaining physical distance of at least 1 metre from others and frequently cleaning your hands. By doing this you eliminate viruses that may be on your hands and avoid infection that could occur by then touching your eyes, mouth, and nose.

COVID-19 transmission in hot and humid climates

The COVID-19 virus can spread in hot and humid climates

Fact: cold weather and snow cannot kill the covid-19 virus.

There is no reason to believe that cold weather can kill the new coronavirus or other diseases. The normal human body temperature remains around 36.5°C to 37°C, regardless of the external temperature or weather.

Cold weather and snow CANNOT kill the COVID-19 virus

Who's science in 5 on covid-19 - myth busters - 9 september 2020, the covid-19 virus cannot be spread through mosquito bites.

To date there has been no information nor evidence to suggest that the new coronavirus could be transmitted by mosquitoes. The new coronavirus is a respiratory virus which spreads primarily through droplets generated when an infected person coughs or sneezes, or through droplets of saliva or discharge from the nose.

FACT: Hand dryers are NOT effective in killing the COVID-19 virus

Hand dryers are not effective in killing the COVID-19 virus. To protect yourself, frequently clean your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or wash them with soap and water. Once your hands are cleaned, you should dry them thoroughly by using paper towels or a warm air dryer.

Hand dryers are NOT effective in killing the COVID-19 virus

Fact: people of all ages can be infected by the covid-19 virus.

Older people and younger people can be infected by the COVID-19 virus. Older people, and people with pre-existing medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, and heart disease are more vulnerable to becoming severely ill with the virus.

WHO advises people of all ages to take steps to protect themselves from the virus, for example by following good hand hygiene and good respiratory hygiene.

People of all ages can be infected by the COVID-19 virus

Fact: antibiotics cannot prevent or treat covid-19.

Antibiotics work only against bacteria, not viruses.

COVID-19 is caused by a virus, and therefore antibiotics should not be used for prevention or treatment.

Antibiotics CANNOT prevent or treat COVID-19

Title: A machine learning perspective of the impact of COVID-19 on the Indian stock market

Authors : Jared Dominic Fernandez; Arya Kumar

Addresses : Department of Economics and Finance, Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani 333031, Rajasthan, India ' Department of Economics and Finance, Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani 333031, Rajasthan, India

Abstract : Stock markets across the globe were affected by the outburst of COVID-19 in early 2020. This attracted researchers to analyse and understand the implications of such sudden happenings on stock prices, more so by application of latest methodologies that are slowly finding greater relevance in social sciences. This study uses econometric and machine learning techniques to measure the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and predict the future trend of the stock market in India. This paper attempts to examine the reliability of traditional methods and machine learning techniques to establish their relevance in predicting stock market trends. The study also uses variable perturbation and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) to identify which variables have more significant predictive weightage in the machine learning models. The study reveals that machine learning models outperform econometric models in their predictive power amidst more significant uncertainty. Moreover, a gated recurrent unit (GRU) model is able to capture the stock market dip and gradual recovery much better than a long short-term memory (LSTM) model. The findings of the study reveal that the number of cases and deaths had a significant impact on stock prices and predictive ability to forecast the NIFTY close price.

Keywords : stock market prediction; machine learning; long short-term memory; LSTM; gated recurrent unit; GRU; variable perturbation; COVID-19; NIFTY; Indian stock market.

DOI : 10.1504/IJBISE.2024.139145

International Journal of Business Intelligence and Systems Engineering, 2024 Vol.2 No.1, pp.1 - 22

Received: 10 Mar 2022 Received in revised form: 02 Nov 2022 Accepted: 09 Nov 2022 Published online: 15 Jun 2024 *

Keep up-to-date

Our Newsletter ( subscribe for free )
New issue alerts
Inderscience is a member of publishing organisations including:

IMAGES

Business Impact of COVID-19 on SMEs 2020
Business Owner Perceptions of COVID-19 Effects on the Business
Business Impact of COVID-19 Survey
Impact of COVID-19 on Business and the Labour Market Q2 2022
Impact of COVID-19 on Business Disruption and Industry
This is the impact of the Coronavirus on business

COMMENTS

The impact of COVID-19 on small business outcomes and expectations
To explore the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on small businesses, we conducted a survey of more than 5,800 small businesses between March 28 and April 4, 2020. Several themes emerged. First, mass layoffs and closures had already occurred—just a few weeks into the crisis. Second, the risk of closure was negatively associated ...
The Impact of COVID-19 on Small Businesses' Performance and Innovation
Abstract. This study looked at the impact of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the revenues of small businesses operating in industrial sectors and at the extent to which these businesses changed or adjusted their business activity, or changed the extent to which they utilized open innovation tools and implement innovation ...
PDF The Impact of Covid-19 on Small Business Owners: National Bureau of
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS: EVIDENCE OF EARLY-STAGE LOSSES FROM THE APRIL 2020 CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY ... research to study determinants of business ownership (e.g. recently, Levine and Rubenstein 2017, Wang 2019, Fairlie and Fossen 2019). The data allow for an analysis of recent trends in
Effects of COVID-19 on business and research
Effects of COVID-19 on business and research. ... A Commentary in the Shadow of the Covid-19 Pandemic." The paper highlights that social distancing is prompting educational institutions to rethink how they are connecting with their student bodies. ... Anirban Adhikary, and Sourav Bikash Borah contributed with "Covid-19 Impact on Supply ...
PDF The Impact of COVID-19 on Small Business Outcomes and Expectations
Overall, our paper contributes to our understanding of the economic impact of COVID-19 on the small business ecosystem. The fate of the 48% of American workers who work in small businesses is closely tied to the resilience of the small business ecosystem to the massive economic disruption caused by the pandemic.
The impact of COVID-19 on small business outcomes and expectations
COVID-19 j small businesses j CARES Act I n addition to its impact on public health, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a major economic shock. In this paper, we explore the impact of COVID-19 on the small business landscape in the United States, focusing on three ques-tions. First, how did small businesses adjust to the economic
Effects of COVID-19 on business and research
The COVID-19 outbreak is a sharp reminder that pandemics, like other rarely occurring catastrophes, have happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future. ... Effects of COVID-19 on business and research J Bus Res. 2020 Sep:117:284-289. doi: ... there are 13 papers that cover different industry sectors (e.g., tourism, retail ...
The Impact of Covid-19 on Small Business Owners: Evidence of Early
Social distancing restrictions and demand shifts from COVID-19 are expected to shutter many small businesses, but there is very little early evidence on impacts. This paper provides the first analysis of impacts of the pandemic on the number of active small businesses in the United States using nationally representative data from the April 2020 ...
The impact of COVID-19 on small business outcomes and expectations
To explore the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on small businesses, we conducted a survey of more than 5,800 small businesses between March 28 and April 4, 2020. Several themes emerged. First, mass layoffs and closures had already occurred—just a few weeks into the crisis. Second, the risk of closure was negatively associated ...
The Impact of COVID-19 on Small Businesses' Performance and Innovation
In light of COVID-19's far-reaching impact on all areas of life, and especially on the economy and the business sector, the aim of the present study was to investigate the pandemic's effect on the scope of operations and the revenues of small businesses in industrial sectors, and the extent to which adjustments or changes were made to ...
The impact of COVID‐19 on small business owners: Evidence from the
The impact of Covid‐19 on small business owners: Evidence of early‐stage losses from the April 2020 Current Population Survey. Stanford University (SIEPR) Working Paper No. 20‐022, May 23. ... National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 25350. Parker, S. C. (2018). The economics of entrepreneurship. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge ...
Economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on entrepreneurship and small
The impact of COVID-19 on small business owners: Evidence from the first three months after widespread social-distancing restrictions. ... (2020). The potential impact of COVID-19 on GDP and trade: a preliminary assessment. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, (9211). Accessed 15 May 2021. Marshall MI, Schrank HL. Small business disaster ...
PDF COVID-19 and the Workplace: Implications, Issues, and Insights for
in the wake of COVID-19, including unemployment, mental illness, and addiction; and, (3) the importance of moderating factors (e.g., age, race and ethnicity, gender, personality, family status, and culture) for which there are likely to be disparate COVID-19 impacts.
PDF Unmasking the Impact of COVID-19 on Businesses
The results are based on a novel data set collected by the World Bank Group and several partner institutions in 51 countries covering more than 100,000 businesses. The paper provides several stylized facts. First, the COVID-19 shock has been severe and widespread across firms, with persistent negative impact on sales.
Paper The impact of COVID-19 on small business outcomes and expectations
The impact of COVID-19 on small business outcomes and expectations. To explore the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on small businesses, we conducted a survey of more than 5,800 small businesses between March 28 and April 4, 2020. Several themes emerged. First, mass layoffs and closures had already occurred - just a few weeks into ...
Management research and the impact of COVID-19 on ...
Although there has been a burgeoning scholarly interest in the effects of COVID-19, the current stream of research remains scattered in different business and management fields and domains. Accordingly, integrative knowledge is needed to drive poignant and relevant examinations of the phenomenon. This study attempts to fill this gap by providing a synthesis of the literature, patterns of ...
COVID-19 impact on research, lessons learned from COVID-19 research
The impact on research in progress prior to COVID-19 was rapid, dramatic, and no doubt will be long term. The pandemic curtailed most academic, industry, and government basic science and clinical ...
The impact of covid-19 on financial management: evidence from Romania
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted every facet of life globally. Business and commerce are key areas where the monetary crunch has been acutely felt. This study aims to analyze the various key changes in entities' activities to evaluate the level of business performance in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, we use panel ...
Applied Sciences
This article investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on logistics and supply chain processes through a two-phase analysis. First, a literature review maps the existing studies, published from 2021 to 2023 (101 papers), offering a view of the multiple challenges faced by supply chains during the pandemic emergency. The literature analysis makes use of descriptive statistics, thematic ...
The future of work after COVID-19
COVID-19 has, for the first time, elevated the importance of the physical dimension of work. In this research, we develop a novel way to quantify the proximity required in more than 800 occupations by grouping them into ten work arenas according to their proximity to coworkers and customers, the number of interpersonal interactions involved ...
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific research in the life
The COVID-19 outbreak has posed an unprecedented challenge to humanity and science. On the one side, public and private incentives have been put in place to promptly allocate resources toward research areas strictly related to the COVID-19 emergency. However, research in many fields not directly related to the pandemic has been displaced. In this paper, we assess the impact of COVID-19 on ...
Optimal Age-based Policies for Pandemics: An Economic Analysis of Covid
This paper investigates the importance of the age composition for pandemic policy design. To do so, it introduces an economic framework with age heterogeneity, individual choice, and incomplete information, emphasizing the value of testing. Calibrating the model to the US Covid-19 pandemic reveals ...
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Freight Transportation Services
The disruptions in maritime shipping related to the COVID-19 pandemic and their effects on merchandise imports can be divided into two distinct halves. [2] In the first half of 2020, U.S. maritime container imports declined 7.0 percent, by volume, compared to the same period in 2019, while in the second half of 2020 there was a large increase in container imports. [3]
Epidemic outcomes following government responses to COVID-19 ...
If COVID-19 was a defining health event, the global responses to COVID-19 were a defining health policy experience (4, 5).The swiftness of global responses, their extensiveness, and direct implications for billions of people's lives were historically unique: The responses to the 1918 influenza pandemic, in comparison, were largely localized, while the global response to the HIV pandemic was ...
Finance Articles, Research Topics, & Case Studies
New research on finance from Harvard Business School faculty on issues and topics including corporate investment, governance, and accounting management. ... and Benjamin Roth challenges long-held assumptions about impact investing and reveals where such funds make the biggest difference. ... But when the Covid-19 pandemic caused huge increases ...
COVID-19 in babies and children
Anyone can get COVID-19, also called coronavirus disease 2019, including children.Find out about the symptoms, testing and medical issues linked to COVID-19 in children. And learn how to help prevent COVID-19, especially in children at high risk of serious illness.
Areas of academic research with the impact of COVID-19
COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the crude, stock market, gold and metals and almost all areas of the global market [ 1 ]. Large research laboratories and corporate houses are working with a high speed to develop medicines and vaccines for the prevention and treatment of this dreaded disease. To deal with these current health management ...
The impact of social networks of historically ...
This research investigates whether leveraging particular social networks (bonding, bridging, and linking) to obtain financial and informational access influences small business perceptions of recovery. Data was collected through a survey of 200 businesses in Salt Lake City, UT affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and analyzed using logistic ...
COVID-19 Mythbusters
The virus that causes COVID-19 is in a family of viruses called Coronaviridae. Antibiotics do not work against viruses. Some people who become ill with COVID-19 can also develop a bacterial infection as a complication. In this case, antibiotics may be recommended by a health care provider. There is currently no licensed medication to cure COVID-19.
Article: A machine learning perspective of the impact of COVID-19 on
International Journal of Business Intelligence and Systems Engineering; 2024 Vol.2 No.1; Title: A machine learning perspective of the impact of COVID-19 on the Indian stock market Authors: Jared Dominic Fernandez; Arya Kumar. Addresses: Department of Economics and Finance, Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani 333031, Rajasthan, India ' Department of Economics and Finance ...

Save citation to file

Add to My Bibliography

Effects of COVID-19 on business and research

Similar articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources

Miscellaneous

Manage Cookie Preferences

Paper The impact of COVID-19 on small business outcomes and expectations

Read the Research in Chicago Booth Review

Management research and the impact of COVID-19 on performance: a bibliometric review and suggestions for future research

Introduction

Method and initial statistics

Data collection

Descriptive statistics

Bibliometric analysis

Author influence

Geographical and institutional scientific production

Keyword analysis

Citation analysis

Co-citation analysis

Bibliographic coupling

Thematic/cluster analysis

Cluster 1: foundational discussions and risk assessment

Cluster 2: crisis and strategic management

Cluster 3: performance outcomes and strategies

Directions for future research

Conclusion and limitations

Availability of data and materials

Abbreviations

Author information

Contributions

Corresponding author

Ethics declarations

Consent for publication

Additional information

Rights and permissions

About this article

Share this article

COVID-19 impact on research, lessons learned from COVID-19 research, implications for pediatric research

on behalf of the Pediatric Policy Council

Impact of COVID-19 on ongoing research

COVID-19 research

Differences between adult and pediatric COVID-19, the need for pediatric research

Author information

Contributions

Pediatric Policy Council

Corresponding author

Ethics declarations

Additional information

Rights and permissions

About this article

Share this article

This article is cited by

Lessons learnt while designing and conducting a longitudinal study from the first Italian COVID-19 pandemic wave up to 3 years

Pediatric Research and COVID-19: the changed landscape

Cancer gene therapy 2020: highlights from a challenging year

Quick links

Information

Initiatives

Article Menu

JSmol Viewer

1. Introduction

2. Materials and Methods

2.1.4. Cross-Analyses

2.2.2. Survey Phase

5. Conclusions

Share and Cite

Article Metrics

The future of work after COVID-19

Jobs with the highest physical proximity are likely to be most disrupted

COVID-19 has accelerated three broad trends that may reshape work after the pandemic recedes

Remote work and virtual meetings are likely to continue, albeit less intensely than at the pandemic’s peak

COVID-19 may propel faster adoption of automation and AI, especially in work arenas with high physical proximity

The mix of occupations may shift, with little job growth in low-wage occupations

As many as 25 percent more workers may need to switch occupations than before the pandemic

Companies and policymakers can help facilitate workforce transitions

Explore a career with us

What’s next for remote work: An analysis of 2,000 tasks, 800 jobs, and nine countries

What 800 executives envision for the postpandemic workforce