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The majority of women in Mexican cities depend on public transport to get to work. Yet sprawling urban development and a lack of safe, well-connected transport infrastructure means that they are denied mobility and the opportunities that come with it. Mexico’s government must look at transport through a gender lens as the country emerges from the COVID-19 crisis, write Catarina Heeckt (LSE Cities) and Ana María Martínez (WRI Cities).

The Covid-19 pandemic is a global crisis, yet it has largely been managed by states acting independently. Arvind Ashta argues that in light of the pandemic, we should seriously consider the potential advantages of moving toward a world federal government. In a previous EUROPP article written during the first wave of the pandemic in Europe, ... Continued

Street vending provides many Ugandans a livelihood, but the long-standing marginalisation of these workers in Kampala has led to a lack of government support during the country’s lockdown. A COVID-19 recovery programme in Uganda must include a new regulatory framework for street vendors, says Ghida Ismail, to include this large workforce in development processes.

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

Several COVID-19 vaccines are now licensed, and the success of a rollout often depends on people’s willingness to accept any of them. Health workers are in a unique position to influence the public. Jan Priebe (German Institute for Global and Area Studies), Henning Silber, Christoph Beuthner, Steffen Pötzschke, Bernd Weiß, and Jessica Daikeler (GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) show how their recommendations change when they are given different types of information about vaccines.

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

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

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, to view a copy of the license, see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Funding Information: The publication of this work is kindly supported by the Hungarian National Consortium (Electronic Information Service National Programme, EISZ) . ZD’s contribution was supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office ( KKP126835 ; K128614 ; K134807 ). MNP was supported by the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling, Children and Screens, and the National Institute of Mental Health RF1 MH128614 . Funding Information: ZD reports no conflicts of interest with respect to the content of this manuscript. ZD’s contribution was supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (KKP126835; K128614; K134807). The ELTE Eötvös Loránd University receives funding from the Szerencsejáték Ltd. to maintain a telephone helpline service for problematic gambling. ZD has also been involved in research on responsible gambling funded by Szerencsejáték Ltd. and the Gambling Supervision Board and provided educational materials for the Szerencsejáték Ltd’s responsible gambling program. The University of Gibraltar receives funding from the Gibraltar Gambling Care Foundation. ZD has been member of a WHO advisory group on the public health consequences of addictive behaviors. In this capacity he has been eligible for travel support from WHO or the host center to attend advisory group meetings but have not been remunerated for their work. However, these funding aren’t related to this study and the funding institution had no role or any influence on this publication. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors People from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) represent large portions of the world population, often occupy less favorable living conditions, and typically suffer greater health risks, yet frequently receive little research and global health attention. The present study reviews emerging evidence on problematic use of the Internet (PUI) in LMICs prior/during the COVID-19 pandemic. Analyzed studies mainly focused on general properties of PUI in university students, problematic gaming in youth, or problematic use of social media in adults, registering higher prevalence estimates, as compared with earlier reports. Research mainly focused on initially affected regions and COVID-exposed populations. Overall, unfavorable circumstances, including poor social support, family relationships, and lifestyle tendencies/habits, may present potential risk for PUI in LMICs, likely exacerbated during the pandemic. Peer reviewed

Background: the success of early dexamethasone therapy for hospitalised COVID-19 cases in treatment of Sars-CoV-2 infection may predominantly reflect its anti-inflammatory action against a hyperinflammation (HI) response. It is likely that there is substantial heterogeneity in HI responses in COVID-19.Methods: blood CRP, ferritin, neutrophil, lymphocyte and platelet counts were scored to assess HI (HI5) and combined with a validated measure of generalised medical deterioration (NEWS2) before day 2. Our primary outcome was 28 day mortality from early treatment with dexamethasone stratified by HI5-NEWS2 status.Findings: of 1265 patients, high risk of HI (high HI5-NEWS2) (n=367, 29.0%) conferred a strikingly increased mortality (36.0% vs 7.8%; Age adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) 5.9; 95% CI 3.6-9.8, p<0.001) compared to the low risk group (n= 455, 36.0%). An intermediate risk group (n= 443, 35.0%) also showed significantly higher mortality than the low risk group (17.6% vs 7.8%), aHR 2.2, p=0.005). Early dexamethasone treatment conferred a 50.0% reduction in mortality in the high risk group (36.0% to 18.0%, aHR 0.56, p=0.007). The intermediate risk group showed a trend to reduction in mortality (17.8% to 10.3%, aHR 0.82, p=0.46) which was not observed in the low risk group (7.8% to 9.2%, aHR 1.4, p =0.31).Interpretation: the HI5-NEWS2 measured at COVID-19 diagnosis, strongly predicts mortality at 28 days. Significant reduction in mortality with early dexamethasone treatment was only observed in the high risk group. Therefore, the HI5-NEWS2 score could be utilised to stratify randomised clinical trials to test whether intensified anti-inflammatory therapy would further benefit high risk patients and whether alternative approaches would benefit low risk groups. Considering its recognised morbidity, we suggest that early dexamethasone should not be routinely prescribed for HI5-NEWS2 low risk individuals with COVID-19 and clinicians should cautiously assess the risk benefit of this intervention.

How long will China continue to try to eliminate COVID? A change of strategy is not very likely, argue Hao Zha (Tsinghua), Yuxi Zhang (LSE), and Thomas Hale (Oxford) who collect and analyse China’s data for the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker.