Censuses are an important source of international migration flow data. However, their use is limited since they indirectly reflect migration, capturing migrant transitions over long intervals rather than migration events, whilst also underestimating the number of infants and deaths. Censuses also neglect migration of those who are native-born when they only include questions on country of birth, and have sparse temporal availability. We propose a Bayesian hierarchical model to overcome these limitations and produce a set of robust annual migration flow estimates for South American countries. Our model translates five-year transition data from censuses into annual series, corrects biases that arise due to differences in measurement and census data quality across countries, and is grounded in migration theory to impute missing migration data between censuses.

This review summarizes the economic impacts of the pandemic on ethnic minorities, focusing on the city of Manchester. It utilizes multiple reporting sources to explore various dimensions of the economic shock in the UK, linking this to studies of pre-COVID-19 economic and ethnic composition in Manchester and in the combined authority area of Greater Manchester. We then make inferences about the pandemic's short-term impact specific to the city region. Greater Manchester has seen some of the highest rates of COVID-19 and as a result faced particularly stringent "lockdown" regulations. Manchester is the sixth most deprived Local Authority in England, according to 2019 English Indices of Multiple Deprivation. As a consequence, many neighborhoods in the city were always going to be less resilient to the economic shock caused by the pandemic compared with other, less-deprived, areas. Particular challenges for Manchester include the high rates of poor health, low-paid work, low qualifications, poor housing conditions and overcrowding. Ethnic minority groups also faced disparities long before the onset of the pandemic. Within the UK, ethnic minorities were found to be most disadvantaged in terms of employment and housing-particularly in large urban areas containing traditional settlement areas for ethnic minorities. Further, all Black, Asian, and Minority ethnic (BAME) groups in Greater Manchester were less likely to be employed pre-pandemic compared with White people. For example, people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic backgrounds, especially women, have the lowest levels of employment in Greater Manchester. Finally, unprecedented cuts to public spending as a result of austerity have also disproportionately affected women of an ethnic minority background alongside disabled people, the young and those with no or low-level qualifications. This environment has created and sustained a multiplicative disadvantage for Manchester's ethnic minority residents through the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND:Predicting hospital length of stay (LoS) for patients with COVID-19 infection is essential to ensure that adequate bed capacity can be provided without unnecessarily restricting care for patients with other conditions. Here, we demonstrate the utility of three complementary methods for predicting LoS using UK national- and hospital-level data. METHOD:On a national scale, relevant patients were identified from the COVID-19 Hospitalisation in England Surveillance System (CHESS) reports. An Accelerated Failure Time (AFT) survival model and a truncation corrected method (TC), both with underlying Weibull distributions, were fitted to the data to estimate LoS from hospital admission date to an outcome (death or discharge) and from hospital admission date to Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission date. In a second approach we fit a multi-state (MS) survival model to data directly from the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT). We develop a planning tool that uses LoS estimates from these models to predict bed occupancy. RESULTS:All methods produced similar overall estimates of LoS for overall hospital stay, given a patient is not admitted to ICU (8.4, 9.1 and 8.0 days for AFT, TC and MS, respectively). Estimates differ more significantly between the local and national level when considering ICU. National estimates for ICU LoS from AFT and TC were 12.4 and 13.4 days, whereas in local data the MS method produced estimates of 18.9 days. CONCLUSIONS:Given the complexity and partiality of different data sources and the rapidly evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is most appropriate to use multiple analysis methods on multiple datasets. The AFT method accounts for censored cases, but does not allow for simultaneous consideration of different outcomes. The TC method does not include censored cases, instead correcting for truncation in the data, but does consider these different outcomes. The MS method can model complex pathways to different outcomes whilst accounting for censoring, but cannot handle non-random case missingness. Overall, we conclude that data-driven modelling approaches of LoS using these methods is useful in epidemic planning and management, and should be considered for widespread adoption throughout healthcare systems internationally where similar data resources exist.

This rapid review summarises the economic impacts of the pandemic on ethnic minorities, focusing on the city of Manchester. It utilises multiple reporting sources to explore various dimensions of the economic shock in the UK, linking this to studies of pre-COVID-19 economic and ethnic composition in Manchester and in the combined authority area of Greater Manchester. We then make inferences about the pandemic’s impact specific to the city region. Greater Manchester has seen some of the highest rates of COVID-19 and as a result has faced particularly stringent 'lockdown' regulations. Manchester is the sixth most deprived Local Authority in England (according to 2019 English Indices of Multiple Deprivation). As a consequence, many neighbourhoods in the city were always going to be less resilient to the economic shock caused by the pandemic compared with other, less-deprived, areas. Particular challenges for Manchester include the prevalence of poor health, low-paid work, low qualifications, poor housing conditions and overcrowding. Ethnic minority groups also faced disparities long before the onset of the pandemic. Within the UK, ethnic minorities have been found to be most disadvantaged in terms of employment and housing – particularly in large urban areas containing traditional settlement areas for ethnic minorities. Further, all Black, Asian, and Minority ethnic (BAME) groups in Greater Manchester have been found to be less likely to be employed pre-pandemic compared with White people. For example, people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic backgrounds, especially women, have the lowest levels of employment in Greater Manchester. Finally, unprecedented cuts to public spending as a result of austerity have also disproportionately affected women of an ethnic minority background alongside women, disabled people, the young and those with no or low-level qualifications. This environment has created and sustained a multiplicative disadvantage for Manchester’s ethnic minority residents through the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction Length of Stay (LoS) in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) is an important measure for planning beds capacity during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, as the pandemic progresses and we learn more about the disease, treatment and subsequent LoS in ICU may change. Objectives To investigate the LoS in ICUs in England associated with Covid-19, correcting for censoring, and to evaluate the effect of known predictors of Covid-19 outcomes on ICU LoS. Data sources We used retrospective data on Covid-19 patients, admitted to ICU between 6 March and 24 May, from the "Covid-19 Hospitalisation in England Surveillance System" (CHESS) database, collected daily from England's National Health Service, and collated by Public Health England. Methods We used Accelerated Failure Time survival models with Weibull and log-normal distributional assumptions to investigate the effect of predictors, which are known to be associated with poor Covid-19 outcomes, on the LoS in ICU. Results Patients admitted before 25 March had significantly longer LoS in ICU (mean =18.4 days, median =12), controlling for age, sex, whether the patient received Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, and a co-morbid risk factors score, compared with the period after 7 April (mean = 15.4, median =10). The periods of admission reflected the changes in the ICU admission policy in England. Patients aged 50-65 had the longest LoS, while higher co-morbid risk factors score led to shorter LoS. Sex and ethnicity were not associated with ICU LoS. Conclusions The skew of the predicted LoS suggests that a mean LoS, as compared with median, might be better suited as a measure used to assess and plan ICU beds capacity. This is important for the ongoing second and any future waves of Covid-19 cases and potential pressure on the ICU resources. Also, changes in the ICU admission policy are likely to be confounded with improvements in clinical knowledge of Covid-19.

Según el DANE, el 72% de la población en la región Caribe se encuentra concentrada en 10 ciudades (Barranquilla, Cartagena de Indias, Soledad, Santa Marta, Valledupar, Montería, Sincelejo, Riohacha, Malambo y Maicao), las cuales representan tan solo el 6% del territorio de toda la región. Teniendo en cuenta esto, y que las tendencias políticas de la región en las pasadas elecciones presidenciales se orientaron hacia la opción que representaba la paz, la de Juan Manuel Santos, se deduce que existe una dinámica de guerra interna particular en esa región que influye la elección de la población hacia determinadas opciones políticas. Lo anterior, cobra mayor importancia si se tiene en cuenta la posición geográfica de estas zonas, aquello que, a su vez, redunda en el interés de los grupos armados ilegales en los municipios urbanos de dicho territorio, representando un desafío para el Estado. Considerando dicho supuesto, el presente artículo pretende determinar la dinámica espacial de la guerra interna en los municipios urbanos de la región del Caribe. Para ello toma como unidad de análisis los departamentos donde se encuentran contenidos estas zonas y hace una revisión documental de su situación.

Según algunos indicadores de gobernanza mundial, Colombia está clasificada por debajo de países no solo de Norteamérica, sino también de América Latina. El presente artículo estudia las instituciones gubernamentales, específicamente en relación con la desigualdad. Su objetivo principal es determinar la correspondencia entre la eficacia de las instituciones —entendida como el cumplimiento de los mínimos de actividades que debe efectuar un Estado, entre ellas la distribución de la riqueza y la orientación hacia la distribución de las capacidades (igualdad)— y las zonas más desiguales —que en este marco de análisis se definen como los territorios con mayores discrepancias económicas, sociales y culturales entre las personas—. La investigación se articula en tres etapas, a lo largo de las cuales se evidencia que en algunos municipios de Colombia existe una relación, no precisamente inversa, entre los territorios que tienen presencia de instituciones estatales y aquellos con mayores desigualdades. Se utilizaron indicadores de instituciones nacionales e internacionales, como la tasa de eficacia de la justicia, la razón entre la presencia de jueces y el territorio, el índice de desempeño fiscal, el índice de vulnerabilidad por presencia institucional, la tasa de informalidad en la tenencia de la tierra, el índice multidimensional de pobreza y el índice de Necesidades Básicas Insatisfechas (NBI). Los resultados indican que las instituciones en Colombia tienen poco o ningún efecto en la distribución de la riqueza. Dados los índices anteriormente mencionados, se seleccionaron siete regiones para el desarrollo del estudio: 1) los municipios de Santander, 2) los municipios de frontera entre Arauca y Casanare, 3) los municipios localizados entre Cundinamarca y Huila, 4) los municipios del departamento del Cesar, 5) los municipios situados entre Norte de Santander y Boyacá, 6) los municipios del Caquetá y 7) aquellos que están ubicados en el occidente del Casanare.

According to some worldwide government indicators, Colombia is classified as being below countries not only in North America but also in Latin America. The current article studies government institutions, specifically in terms of inequality. Its main objective is to determine the relationship between the efficacy of institutions-understood as complying with the minimum number of activities that should effect a State, among those the distribution of wealth and the orientation toward the distribution of capabilities (equality)-and the most unequal zones-which in this framework of analysis are defined as the territories with the most economic, social, and cultural discrepancies among their inhabitants. The research is divided into three phases, through which is evidenced that in some Colombian villages a relationship exists, not precisely inverse, between the territories that experience the presence of State institutions and those with the most inequalities. Indicators from national and international institutions were used such as the rate of efficiency of justice, the reasoning behind the presence of judges and the territory, the index of fiscal performance, the index of vulnerability due to institutional presence, the rate of informality in property holdings, the multidimensional index of poverty and the index of Unfulfilled Basic Necessities (NBI). The results indicate that the institutions in Colombia have little or no effect on the distribution of wealth. Taking into account the aforementioned indexes, seven regions were selected for the development of the study: 1) the villages of Santander, 2) the border towns between Arauca and Casanare, 3) the towns located between Cundinamarca and Huila, 4) the towns of the department of Cesar, 5) the towns located between North Santander and Boyaca, 6) the towns of Caqueta, and 7) those located in the west of Casanare.

La frontera interna entre el Caribe y la región andina se ha caracterizado por haber tenido -en las últimas dos décadas- un papel relevante en la dinámica de guerra interna nacional. Tanto así, que dentro de las 14 áreas estratégicas que define la fuerza pública, 7 están dentro de esta macroregión. Para conocer la razón de este esfuerzo militar, el presente artículo pretende determinar la dinámica espacial de la guerra interna en los territorios de dicha macroregión. Como se deduce, el presente estudio se inscribe en el campo de la Seguridad Nacional.