Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has tested Canada's readiness capacity as emergency health needs continue to exceed some communities' capacity to respond. To address this variance, the Canadian Red Cross (in collaboration with local, provincial, territorial, national, and Indigenous partners) have leveraged international experience in humanitarian response and preparedness, developing innovative new response services, delivery modalities, and protocol through which to mitigate and manage risk. This approach breaks down emergency management into two main streams – health interventions and disaster management – to innovatively and effectively cope with increasingly complex and frequent requests for support. Using internal data from within the Canadian Red Cross, this paper presents and discusses the services, roles and expectations of this two-stream approach which has been designed to (i.) support COVID-19 testing and vaccination, (ii.) support outbreak crisis management, especially through epidemic, prevention, and control interventions, and (iii.) support traditional emergency management responses in the midst of a pandemic. It concludes by reporting on the successes of the two-stream approach to date while scoping further the potential evolutionary track of some of these services, their underpinning methodology, and appetite for recovery operations in the near future. This approach may therefore be of value to other organizations or practitioners coping with emergency management challenges during a pandemic.

Abstract: During the COVID-19 health crisis, local public offcials expend considerable energy encouraging citizens to comply with prevention measures in order to reduce the spread of infection. During the pandemic, mask-wearing has been accepted among health offcials as a simple preventative measure; however, some local areas have been more likely to comply than others. This paper explores methods to better understand local attitudes towards mask-wearing as a tool for public health offcials' situational awareness when preparing public messaging campaigns. This exploration compares three methods to explore local attitudes: sentiment analysis, n-grams, and hashtags. We also explore hashtag co-occurrence networks as a starting point to begin the filtering process. The results show that while sentiment analysis is quick and easy to employ, the results oer little insight into specific local attitudes towards mask-wearing, while examining hashtags and hashtag co-occurrence networks may be used a tool for a more robust understanding of local areas when attempting to gain situational awareness.

Abstract: Face mask scarcity in the United States hindered early infection control efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Areas with a history of racial segregation and poverty experienced differential COVID-19 death and morbidity rates. Supplying masks equitably and rapidly became an urgent public health priority. A partnership between a local manufacturer with available polypropylene fabric and the Medical College of Wisconsin, which had the capability to assemble and distribute masks, was formed in April, 2020. An improvised logistics framework allowed for rapid distribution more than 250,000 masks, and later facilitated hand-off to other organizations to distribute over 3 million masks. Using an action research framework three phases of the effort are considered, 1) initial deliveries to community clinics, 2) equitable distribution to community agencies while under “safer at home” orders, and 3) depot deliveries and transfer of logistics management as larger agencies recovered. A multi-actor view was used to interrogate the information needs of faculty and staff remotely directing distribution, medical student volunteers delivering masks, and the manufacturer monitorng overall inventory. Logistics information was managed using Google Sheets augmented with a small SQLite component. A phenomenological view, toggling back and forth from the “socio” to the “technical” provides detailed insight into the strengths and limitations of digital solutions for humanitarian logistics, highlighting where paper-based processes remain more efficient. This case study suggests that rather than building bespoke logistics software, supporting relief efforts with non-traditional responders may benefit from extensible components that augment widely used digital tools.