The Negative Impacts of COVID-19 Containment Measures on South African Families - Overview and Recommendations

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported various pneumonia cases (‘Coronavirus Disease 2019’ [COVID-19]) on 31 December 2019 in Wuhan City, China, which has spread to many countries, including South Africa. In response to this, the President of South Africa declared a state of national disaster on 15th March 2020, followed by introducing various COVID-19 containment measures to minimize the spread of the virus. This paper examines the negative impacts that COVID-19 containment measures may have had on the family as a unit of society and furthermore provides recommendations to mitigate the impacts of these measures. It can be concluded that COVID-19 containment measures, specifically the lockdown restrictions, would yield both short-term and long-term impacts on proper family functioning. Several families in South Africa have been impacted financially due to the closure of business which led to the temporary/ permanent unemployment of some breadwinners in the families. This also has had a cascading impact on the food security of families and their ability to afford other basic necessities. Distress as a result of financial challenges or failure to provide for the family alongside spending much time locked down together as a family has also led to violence in the family. This was further exacerbated by the fact that the victims were stuck with the abusers and some could not report or find help due to the restricted movements. Furthermore, since most institutions predominantly moved learning online, results indicated that the lockdown restrictions affected the ability of some individuals especially those from poor families to access formal education during the period due to the lack of digital devices and internet facilities. In order to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 containment measures on the family, there is a need for collaborative efforts at intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, community and policy levels using the ecological framework

Simulative Evaluation of the Response of Maize and some Dual-Purpose Legumes to Water and Nutrient Amendments

The study evaluated DSSAT's CERES-Maize and CROPGRO models for their effectiveness in simulating the growth of maize, groundnut, and cowpea under dynamic nutrient amendments and water management practices in field experiments. The experiments were laid-out in split-plot with water management (rainfed and irrigated) as main plots and fertilizer (organic and inorganic fertilizer) as sub-plots during the maize trial, while, water management treatment (irrigated and rainfed) was the main plot and variety as the subplot during the cowpea and groundnut trials arranged in three replications. The CERES-Maize model's RMSE-observations standard deviation ratio (RSR) for simulating maize grain yield under irrigated and rainfed were 0.1624 and 0.0317 respectively, while that for the maize biomass under irrigated and rainfed were 0.4027 and 2.1676 respectively. Also, the CROPGRO model's RSR for simulating groundnut grain yield under irrigated and rainfed were 0.1058 and 8.0592 respectively, while that for the groundnut biomass under irrigated and rainfed were 1.1154 and 0.0161 respectively. In addition, the CROPGRO model's RSR for simulating cowpea grain yield under irrigated and rainfed were 8.1625 and 0.1019 respectively, while that for the cowpea biomass under irrigated and rainfed were 0.2677 and 0.2630 respectively. From the results, it was concluded that the CERES-Maize model was more suited to effectively scope alternate management practices under maize production whereas more research is needed to be able to confirm the effectiveness of the model in our environment.Keywords: Crop production, CROPGRO, CERES-Maize, DSSA

The ex-dividend day stock price anomaly: evidence from the Greek stock market

Ex-dividend day, Short-term trading hypothesis, Athens Stock Exchange, Tax clienteles, G12, G3,

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

The past 2 years, during which waves of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants swept the globe, have starkly highlighted health disparities across nations. Tegally et al. show how the coordinated efforts of talented African scientists have in a short time made great contributions to pandemic surveillance and data gathering. Their efforts and initiatives have provided early warning that has likely benefited wealthier countries more than their own. Genomic surveillance identified the emergence of the highly transmissible Beta and Omicron variants and now the appearance of Omicron sublineages in Africa. However, it is imperative that technology transfer for diagnostics and vaccines, as well the logistic wherewithal to produce and deploy them, match the data-gathering effort