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Introduction
Pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan, China was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) Country Office in China on 31 December 2019. By 30 January 2020, the outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) and on 11 February 2020, WHO announced a name for the new coronavirus disease: COVID-19. It is argued that the COVID-19 virus may have emerged as a result of humans entering a bat cave to hunt wild life for sale or humans eating and illegally trafficking in wild life, namely, pangolins (Xie, 2020; Bale, 2020; Nature, 2020; Cohen and Kupferschmidt, 2020). COVID-19 is believed to be spread by inhaling infected respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or exhales. It is also thought to spread through touching a contaminated surface and then touching one's eyes, nose or mouth. Within three months of the onset of this virus, it had spread to more than 123 countries, with over 132,000 cases and 5,000 deaths. On 10 March 2020, Jamaica recorded its first case of COVID-19. On 11 March 2020, WHO made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic (WHO, 2020). By June 9, 2020, there were 7,273,274 cases, 411,730 deaths and 3,581,653 recoveries across 215 countries; in Jamaica, there were 599 cases, 10 deaths and 405 recoveries (Worldometer, 2020). Consequently, many countries worldwide, including Jamaica, closed their borders, issued restrictions on mass gatherings, implemented work-from-home orders, issued curfews, closed businesses, schools, universities, libraries, churches and many public spaces. With the absence of effective vaccine and antiviral drugs, this pandemic has led to the global use of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) also known as community mitigation strategies, such as reduced facial touch, social/physical distancing, mask wearing in public spaces, frequent hand-sanitizing with an alcohol-based sanitizer, increased hand-washing with a soap, good respiratory hygiene, and temperature checks, aimed at slowing the spread of the new coronavirus disease.
Although there have been previous pandemics, but infrequently, for example, the 1918 Spanish Flu, and although academic libraries have existed for centuries, an online search reveals limited published scholarly research on pandemic management in academic libraries or pandemic response or management plans in academic libraries prior to COVID-19. In the absence of this, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (2010–2011...