A virtual funeral is a funeral ceremony streamed online. [1] [2] This type of ceremony became widespread during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the public health restrictions. [3] [4] For a virtual funeral it is used an online video conference platform, such as Zoom, Skype, Google Meet.
A virtual event is an online event that involves people interacting in a virtual environment on the web, rather than meeting in a physical location. Virtual events are typically multi-session online events that often feature webinars and webcasts. They are highly interactive, often aiming to create as similar an experience as possible to their physical counterparts.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana was a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The first two cases in Ghana were confirmed on 12 March 2020, when two infected people came to Ghana, one from Norway and the other from Turkey.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a sudden and substantial impact on the arts and cultural heritage sector. The global health crisis and the uncertainty resulting from it profoundly affected organisations' operations as well as individuals—both employed and independent—across the sector. Arts and culture sector organisations attempted to uphold their mission to provide access to cultural heritage to the community; maintain the safety of their employees, collections, and the public; while reacting to the unexpected change in their business model with an unknown end.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected educational systems across the world. The number of cases of COVID-19 started to rise in March 2020 and many educational institutions and universities underwent closure. Most countries decided to temporarily close the educational institutions in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19. UNESCO estimates that at the height of the closures in April 2020, national educational shutdowns affected nearly 1.6 billion students in 200 countries: 94% of the student population and one-fifth of the global population. Closures are estimated to have lasted for an average of 41 weeks. They have had significant negative effects on student learning, which are predicted to have substantial long-term implications for both education and earnings. During the pandemic, education budgets and official aid program budgets for education had decreased.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted religion in various ways, including the cancellation of the worship services of various faiths and the closure of Sunday schools, as well as the cancellation of pilgrimages, ceremonies and festivals. Many churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples have offered worship through livestream amidst the pandemic, or held interactive sessions on Zoom.
The COVID-19 pandemic was publicly reported to have reached the U.S. state of Maine on March 12, 2020. As of February 2, 2021, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services reported 131,530 confirmed cases and 46,971 probable cases in the state, with 1,777 deaths attributed to the virus.
The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed by diagnostic test to have reached the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda on 18 March 2020; with individuals having arrived from the UK and US. Those individuals had been traced to back to the fourth and sixth of March. This was the first it was confirmed and some believe that COVID-19 could have been on island undetected with asymptomatic individuals before that time.
Social media became an important platform for interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic, coinciding with the onset of social distancing. According to a study conducted by Facebook's analytics department, messaging rates rose by over 50% during this period. Individuals confined to their homes utilized social media not only to maintain social connections but also as a source of entertainment to alleviate boredom. Concerns arose regarding the overreliance on social media for primary social interactions, particularly given the constraints imposed by the pandemic.
The video game industry has been substantially impacted by COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in various ways, most often due to concerns over travel to and from China or elsewhere, and delays in the manufacturing processes within China.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted inequities experienced by marginalized populations, and has had a significant impact on the LGBT community. Pride events were cancelled or postponed worldwide. More than 220 gay pride celebrations around the world were canceled or postponed in 2020, and in response a Global Pride event was hosted online. LGBTQ+ people also tend to be more likely to have pre-existing health conditions, such as asthma, HIV/AIDS, cancer, or obesity, that would worsen their chances of survival if they became infected with COVID-19. They are also more likely to smoke.
Virtual cinema is a term referring to video-on-demand streaming services facilitated by independent film distributors and art-house theaters to release new films and to share profits. Under the service, part of the admission price supports a physically located theater.
Beyond Live is an online live concert streaming service and concert series by South Korean entertainment company SM Entertainment in partnership with Naver. It is a paid concert streaming service. It provides full-scaled live online concerts using technology such as augmented reality and with real-time interactions between artists and live audience enabled. On its establishment, the platform has been regarded by global media as a relevant response in substituting traditional concerts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first live concert of the Beyond Live series was headlined by South Korean boy supergroup SuperM with the concert titled SuperM: Beyond the Future on April 26, 2020; the live concert recorded over 75,000 virtual tickets sold, playing to real-time audiences from 109 countries. In August 2020, JYP Entertainment joined with SM Entertainment to create the Beyond Live Corporation, a joint venture operating and expanding the Beyond Live platform. It was launched on December 23, 2021. Since its creation, multiple artists from SM and JYP have delivered full-length live online concerts within the Beyond Live series, and other K-pop entertainment enterprises started to produce virtual live concerts in a similar format.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the fashion industry was primarily caused by the sudden and global store closures worldwide which strongly impacted the fashion industry. The complete absence of revenue from physical stores caused a deep drop of revenue for fashion retailers, a complete reconfiguration of the stocks for fashion brands, and consequently a drop of orders for garment manufacturers. Many fashion retailers filed for bankruptcy in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Dear Class of 2020 was a 2020 online event streamed live on June 7, 2020 on YouTube. It was a virtual commencement event that features speeches and performances from prominent personalities aimed at graduating students of all levels whose actual ceremonies were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event also highlighted the George Floyd protest following the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, and the shooting of Breonna Taylor. Originally scheduled on June 6, the event was rescheduled the day after to avoid clashing with the memorial service for George Floyd held on that date in Raeford, North Carolina.
The 2020 Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) is the 46th edition of the annual Metro Manila Film Festival. It is organized by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA). It is the first edition of the festival to be held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and also the first to make its entries available to an audience outside the Philippines as part of the festival's official run.
The COVID-19 pandemic that started in 2020 has significantly impacted liturgical celebrations of the Catholic Church worldwide. The Pontifical Foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) stated that the pandemic has become not "just a medical, social and economic problem, but also a pastoral problem", which led ACN to start encouraging a special program for the actions of priests and religious against the virus spread.
Blockeley is a Minecraft server created by students of the University of California, Berkeley, which is a 1:1 scale reconstruction of the university campus.
The COVID-19 pandemic swept the world in the early months of 2020, causing massive economic and social disruption. In addition to the disease itself, populations have often dealt with lockdowns, shortages and pandemic fatigue, political and cultural turmoil. This has made the pandemic era a time of exceptional stress. The pandemic has driven some people to seek peaceful escapism in media, but others towards fictional pandemics as an alternate form of escapism.
In 2020, school systems in the United States began to close down in March because of the spread of COVID-19. This was a historic event in the history of the United States schooling system because it forced schools to shut-down. At the very peak of school closures, COVID-19 affected 55.1 million students in 124,000 public and private U.S. schools. The effects of widespread school shut-downs were felt nationwide, and aggravated several social inequalities in gender, technology, educational achievement, and mental health.
We Met in Virtual Reality is a 2022 documentary film that takes place entirely within the video game VRChat. It explores the social relations developed by the users of VRChat during the pandemic, and how their lives were changed by their time on the platform. It was created by Joe Hunting, who was the director and writer of the script.