AUTHOR=Nawyn Stephanie , Karaoğlu Ezgi , Gasteyer Stephen , Mansour Rania , Ghassani Ali , Marquart-Pyatt Sandra 

TITLE=Resilience to Nested Crises: The Effects of the Beirut Explosion on COVID-19 Safety Protocol Adherence During Humanitarian Assistance to Refugees

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.870158

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2022.870158

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=To provide services safely to refugees during the COVID-19 pandemic, humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have instituted public health safety protocols to mitigate the risk of spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, it can be difficult for people to adhere to protocols under the best of circumstances, and in situations of nested crises, in which one crisis contributes to a cascade of additional crises, adherence can further deterioriate. Such a nested crises situation occurred to Beirut, Lebanon, when a massive explosion in the city injured or killed thousands and destroyed essential infrastructure. Using data from a study on COVID-19 safety protocol adherence during refugee humanitarian assistance in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, we conduct a cross-country comparison to determine whether the nested crises in Beirut led to a deterioration of protocol adherence--the “fragile rationalism” theory--or whether adherence remained robust--the “collective resilience” theory (Reicher and Bauld 2021. We found greater evidence for collective resilience, and from those findings make public health recommendations for service provision occurring in disaster areas.