Open issues and future research directions

Abstract

Vaccination is considered as the most effective solution to fight against the COVID-19 epidemic as well as other contagious and infectious diseases to bring the world to a "new normal" lifestyle. This lifestyle is defined as a new way of living our work, routines, and interactions with other people to adapt with COVID-19. With the ambition to open up the economy, many countries such as United Arab Emirates, Portugal, and Singapore have achieved the coverage rate of COVID-19 vaccines for the 2nd dose above 80%. However, when the vaccine has not been evenly distributed to all countries worldwide, it means that COVID-19 cannot be ended. This is because fully vaccinated people can still be positive with COVID-19, and the effectiveness of the vaccine also decreases significantly after 6 months. Therefore, protective measures like social distancing, wearing mask, and frequent handwashing must also be practiced simultaneously to enable the "new normal" lifestyle. In this chapter, we discuss the open issues of social distancing implementation such as pandemic mode, hybrid technology solutions, security and privacy concerns, social distancing encouragement, real-time scheduling, and negative effects. Furthermore, potential solutions to these issues are also discussed.