*Economic Impacts:*

In Chapter 25, "Consistency in Leadership during a Pandemic: Managing Academics at a Private Higher Education Institution in South Africa", Willy H. Engelbrecht finds that most managers required only minor adjustments to their leadership approaches to transition to remote work and that various leadership styles applied in specific contexts helped to enhance leader efficiency.

In Chapter 26, "Measuring the Systematic Risk of Sectors within the US Market via Principal Components Analysis: Before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic", Jaime González Maiz Jiménez and Adán Reyes Santiago use a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) technique to examine how ten economic sectors evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors selected five stocks per sector with the greatest market capitalization from the American Stock Market to measure the systematic risk of each sector. The chapter shows that the restaurant, clothing, and insurance industries had the greatest increase in exposure to systematic risk during the pandemic. Conversely, the auto and tobacco industries showed the greatest decrease in terms of exposure to systematic risk.

In Chapter 27, "Cases of Principal Leadership Responses in a Volatile, Uncertain and Complex School Environment", Bongani Sibusiso Mchunu investigates how teachers and principals responded to the implementation of social distancing and COVID-19 regulations in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment. The findings suggest that principals were able to achieve their goals, whereas teachers tended to leave their positions, thus contributing to teacher shortages.

In Chapter 28, "Challenges and Futures of Long-Term Care Industry after COVID-19 Pandemic", Jia Yu analyzes the impact and challenges of COVID-19 on residential care homes in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia and addresses possible implications for the long-term care market post- pandemic.

In Chapter 29, "Companies and Covid-19: Emerging Challenges and Recovery Strategies through Technological Upgrading", Adalberto Rangone outlines the challenges faced by businesses and prescribes, based on the "poker strategy," possible solutions for rapid recovery of production and commercial activities. The author recommends businesses invest in innovation rather than give up, so that they can maintain the trust of all stakeholders and regain market share.

In Chapter 30, "Deciphering Economic Effects of COVID-19", Fitzgerald Witika provides a critical approach to understanding the nature of the positive and negative effects of COVID-19 on economies. He uses the Aggregate Supply and Aggregate Demand (AS-AD) model to decipher the economic effects of COVID-19 on economies worldwide with reference to theoretical literature in economics on the operationalization of market forces.

In Chapter 31, "Perspective Chapter: Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Field of Orthopedics", Chia-Hao Hsu, Chung-Hwan Chen and Hsuan-Ti Huang report on the pandemic's effects on the field of orthopedics. The rates of all surgeries and elective surgeries decreased by 15.6%–49.4% and 43.5%–100%, respectively, as a result of staff redeployment and training to training for regular telemedicine in response to the pandemic. Furthermore, other problems accounted for include the low service volume for users and heavy workload impact, personal practice change, and psychological impact for medical staff.

In Chapter 32, "Analysis of the Concept of Deaths per Million in the Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020", Goodluck A.K. Ohanube and Uchejeso M. Obeta address the need for accurate methods of assessing public health measures, especially because there is no effective, reliable international comparable index. This chapter analyzes the case fatality ratio and mortality rate, which are existing public health indices, and the deaths per million index. The authors suggest that deaths per million is a good tool to use to determine the most appropriate time to impose lockdowns and other public health measures.

Our thanks to all the chapter authors and the staff at IntechOpen for all their assistance throughout the publication process.

> **José Carlos Sánchez-García** Full Professor, Social Psychology Department, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

**Brizeida Hernández-Sánchez** Academic Coordinator of the Training Program, Chair of Entrepreneurship, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
