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Objective: In March-April 2020, during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic lockdown in Denmark, the Danish Health Authorities recommended that, where possible, face-to-face patient-physician consultations be replaced by telephone consultations. The aim of this study was to obtain patients’ evaluation of their telemedicine experience. Methods: Patients who were candidates for telemedicine consultations were recruited based on their urological ailment, necessity for follow-up and comorbidity. New referrals including patients with suspicion of cancer were not candidates for telemedicine. In total, 548 patients had their appointment altered during the period from 13 March to 30 April 2020. Postal questionnaires were sent to 548 patients and 300 (54.7%) replied. Results: In total, 280 patient answered, 224 (80%) men and 56 (20%) women, mean age 69 years (range 18–91) of whom 180 (64.3%) had a benign and 100 (35.7%) a malignant diagnosis. Twenty (6.7%) respondents did not remember their telephone consultation and were therefore excluded. Telephone consultation satisfaction was reported by 230 (85.0%) patients, but they would not prefer video consultations over telephone consultations, and only 102 (36.4%) would prefer telephone consultations in the future. Patients’ age, sex and distance to the hospital did not seem to be associated with telephone consultation satisfaction (age p = 0.17; sex p = 0.99; distance p = 0.27, respectively). In total, 226 (80.7%) were medically assessed as being at risk for COVID, but 74 (26.4%) subjectively evaluated themselves as being at risk. Conclusions: In general (85.0%), urological patients were satisfied with telephone consultations.

The approach of this chapter is polemical in nature, reflecting the very fluid situation that lies ahead for orchestras post COVID-19. The chapter has three main academic research objectives. First, to put the current debate in context, it looks at the key challenges that orchestras have faced since the turn of the last century and in what way COVID-19 posed new problems that impacted orchestral music. The second objective is to outline some special short-term measures introduced to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, namely: (i) the income-support measures needed to sustain orchestras; and (ii) the extent to which orchestras could come together and practice, and in fact perform, even if only in front of no or very limited live audiences. The third objective is to discuss what possibly lies ahead for live orchestral music, post-COVID-19, and in a rapidly changing world regarding technological advances in the production and consumption of orchestral music. To inform this discussion, some broad trends in the ‘consumption’ of orchestral music over time, particularly in terms of numbers attending live concerts and revenues from streamed concerts, are examined.

Objective: As alcohol is often consumed for social purposes, we aimed to explore how restrictions during the first Danish COVID-19 lockdown affected the alcohol use among adolescents aged 15–20. Method: In May 2020, 11,596 15- to 20-year-olds from two subpopulations answered a survey regarding their alcohol use and social life, as well as changes to these, during the Danish lockdown. Using survey data from all participants, we performed a multinomial logistic regression to assess the association between determinants of alcohol use and perceived change in alcohol use during the Danish lockdown. We used longitudinal data from one subpopulation ( n=1869) to perform negative binomial regressions exploring changes in frequency of alcohol use from 2019 to 2020. Results: Of all participants, 59% drank less, 75% had fewer in-person social interactions and 56% met more frequently online during lockdown. Girls were more likely than boys to have a perceived decrease in alcohol use during lockdown (odds ratio (OR)=1.41; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.27–1.56). A perceived decrease in in-person social interaction during lockdown was associated with less drinking (OR=2.27; 95% CI 1.98–2.61), while a perceived increase in in-person social interaction during lockdown was associated with more drinking (OR=1.42; 95% CI 1.11–1.82) compared to unchanged drinking behaviour and social interaction. Conclusions: Adolescents in Denmark drank less during the Danish lockdown than before. Findings indicate that there is a close relationship between in-person social interactions and frequency of drinking. Drinking episodes when meeting online were rare and were not unambiguously associated with changes in drinking during lockdown.

This chapter argues that China has been triple hit by the COVID-19 pandemic as it has caused a major trade shock, an investment shock and a business environment shock. To date, the globalized economies are interconnected by international trade, which makes trade an important vehicle for international contagion. Globalization and economic shocks are underpinned by a variety of forces affecting economic and societal changes creating a domino effect in global production networks. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on China’s overseas investment is manifold. Chinese businesses are exposed to the changing international business environment as perceptions on China’s roles are shifting. The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the way business is conducted worldwide. As a result, Chinese companies are now confronted with a new international business environment that is moving away from globalization that had been creating opportunities for firms from emerging economies to grow their presence in global markets.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Similarity Search and Applications, SISAP 2020, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in September/October 2020. The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The 19 full papers presented together with 12 short and 2 doctoral symposium papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 50 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections named: scalable similarity search; similarity measures, search, and indexing; high-dimensional data and intrinsic dimensionality; clustering; artificial intelligence and similarity; demo and position papers; and doctoral symposium.