Thanks, Shiyi, for drawing attention to the specific needs of older people! Vital to the successful adaptation to an aging society.

Thanks, Kelly! I’m a huge fan of recruiting a volunteer communication task force. There are no foreign language universities in Australia but many international students …

Thanks, Clara! Language access and communication plans need to be part of disaster preparation; and, as you do, reflecting on what worked and what didn’t after a disaster needs to feed into preparation for next time …

Small world 🙂 Dr Yuni was my MA students, too 🙂

Prof. Piller, thank you for sharing Yudha’s article and the new word “infodemic” :). I have just read it. Actually, Yudha is my friend’s friend, but I’ve never met him. Dr. Kamal, your Ph.D. student and his wife, Dr. Yuni are my lecturers when I was doing my undergraduate study.

Thanks PurebearJo! Sorry to hear that the vaccination campaign in S Korea did not go as well as I had assumed. You are absolutely right: botched communication can do so much harm!

Thanks, Quynh! I love the idea of a health worker who is also a language and communication expert!

Thanks, Ayesha! Social media are a double-edged sword – they’ve not only spread information but also misinformation…

Thanks, Abdulla! Slogans can be very powerful devices of mass mobilisation indeed: https://languageonthemove.com/women-life-freedom-the-slogan-swimming-against-the-global-tide/

2. The nucleic acid requirements for sites are inconsistent. Some sites require a negative certificate within 24 hours, and some require 48 hours. When the information is not completely transparent, it is very inconvenient for people to travel.

Suggestion: The setting of normalized nucleic acid points should follow the principles of science and convenience. First, the establishment of normalized nucleic acid detection propagandas should consider the combination of communities, parks, business districts, construction sites, factories, etc., as well as other areas where people are concentrated, and fully consider the laws of personnel activities in the area, adjust measures to local conditions, and set up scientifically; secondly, consider the needs of personnel sampling, allocate and arrange testing forces, and combine the population distribution and the flow of people in each park at the same time , long-term sampling propagandas can be set up in places that cover a wide range of people, large numbers of people, and easy-to-reach places with a small number of nucleic acid testers during normal times , people can merge nearby when the number of people is low. However, when taking these measures, various channels should be taken in advance to notify residents, so that when residents need to do nucleic acid, they can know when to do it, how long to wait in line, etc.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many problems arising from poor public health communication have emerged. This demonstrates the importance of good public health communication during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Therefore, I suggest that the government can recruit students studying public health from foreign language universities across the country as community volunteer workers for multilingual epidemic prevention propaganda and provide in a 7-day 24 hours of external public health information service hotline for these community volunteer workers specifically for foreigners in the community to try to meet the needs of people of different ages. In addition, the government can invest in the production of various types of video and audio that are easy for the illiterate in the community to understand, so as to better spread public health knowledge.

There is only one thing that should be taken into consideration is that for ethnic minorities that live in mountainous areas, I think the government needs to pay more attention to helping them. For example, they can support and connect to the village chief to help villagers if they encounter any problems during the pandemic. It is challenging for them to approach new technology and update the information continuously.

When side effects occurred after people were vaccinated, the initial government stance was “There is no cause and effect relationship.” In the meantime the second vaccinations were strongly recommended by government. The public began to complain about the irresponsible attitude of the government and the lack of insufficient communication and information. My husband and I were also vaccinated the second but not the third. Korea’s third vaccination rate is low at 38.3%. Even though there have been cases in which the government gradually acknowledged the relationship between side effects and vaccines, but the public did not feel they had enough trust in vaccination due to government’s early irresponsible stance and insufficient information.

In Vietnam, information about Covid-19 can be found relatively everywhere in big cities, from visible billboards on roads to mass media, and especially on online platforms. However, in remote areas where many minority groups reside, there is poor access to the Internet and smartphones, so finding health information online is impractical. Moreover, people in these rural areas tend to have low levels of literacy or speak their own tongues that are not official languages.

In order to ensure health information reach minority people, authorities have employed local communication officer on Covid-19 to communicate the key information about the transmissible disease. These officers would go through thorough training and be assigned the role of a health support worker in their communities. On the bumpy and narrow roads, these officers ride their motorbikes with a loudspeaker broadcasting recorded messages about vaccination and Covid-19 measures in both Vietnamese and some minority languages. They also come from house to house and talk with people about the severity of the disease.

This approach has been effective in many areas as the authorities have taken into account the language barrier of minority people as well as their trust issues when talking to people other than their community. This is also being implemented along with promoting the importance of clinic visits and taking medications to ensure good health during and post the pandemic.