Children and COVID-19 Research Library

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted food supply chains and economic systems worldwide. With countries facing disrupted livelihoods, restricted movements, disrupted markets, border closures and rising food prices, this study aimed to understand how these disruptions may have impacted cost and affordability of the diet. The pilot aimed to leverage existing price data to adapt the HEA and CotD methodologies for real-time monitoring of the cost and affordability of a nutritious diet changes over time in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This brief presents key learnings for policy makers and technical learnings for practitioners.

This technical brief highlights the emerging evidence on the impacts of COVID-19 on fertility. It provides a historical overview on fertility in times of crises, data on reproductive behaviour during COVID-19 in countries throughout Europe and North America, as well as new data from four UNFPA programme countries. The technical brief highlights the crucial importance of classifying sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services as “essential services” during the pandemic, and underscores the responsibility of governments to assure that all persons can exercise their reproductive rights, even during a global pandemic. Lastly, the brief warns not to resort to population alarmism in response to short-term changes in fertility caused by COVID-19, but to ensure the provision of SRH services at all times.

This action brief summarizes the latest status and trends of key areas related to women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and well-being from a global perspective. It aims to promote coordinated action among global and national partners to recognize and overcome the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women, children and adolescents and to accelerate progress to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Rise, Respond, Recover is an update to Protect the Progress: 2020 progress report on Every Woman Every Child Global Strategy for Women’s, Childrens’ and Adolescents’ Health (September 2020), capturing key evidence points presented in May 2021 to the World Health Assembly as well as top priorities and activities among partners.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted every aspect of society. In mid-April 2020, 192 countries had closed their schools, putting 9 out of 10 enrolled children out of school.

These closures disproportionately affected marginalized children, worsening existing inequities across education systems worldwide.

This brief draws on the experience of five UNICEF education country programmes supported by the Let Us Learn (LUL) initiative, to document tangible lessons in adapting education programmes to support the most marginalized children during school and learning centre closures.

The evidence in this brief stems from a series of semi-structured interviews with Education and Child Protection specialists, as well as a document review of available COVID-19 response studies, in the five LUL-supported UNICEF Country Offices.

This paper presents a new estimate that pre-primary school closures in 2020 may cost today’s young children US$1.6 trillion in lost earnings over their lifetimes. Children in middle-income countries will be most greatly affected. However, most low- and middle- income countries are leaving pre-primary education out of their responses to COVID-19. This paper also draws lessons from evaluations of accelerated, bridging and remedial programmes on how introducing or expanding these transition programmes in the early years can mitigate the long-term impact on learning from pre-primary school closures.

COVID-19 has grossly impacted lives of people across the globe. In particular, children have also been affected due to closure of schools, therapy, and day care centers. Families have been challenged with new circumstances, and mental health professionals are coming up with novel ways to help these families who have children with mental health issues. This article describes experiences of families who have children with a diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorder with comorbid mental health difficulties and their ways of coping with the pandemic challenges. The series will throw light on ground level experiences of families during the pandemic, give insights into their ways of adapting, and brings out problem areas which healthcare professionals must work on, to design novel ways of care. The case series is novel and a similar report has probably not been presented from India or other low and middle income countries.

The purpose of this brief is to summarize current evi[1]dence and guidance for maintaining safe and effec[1]tive care across the spectrum of maternal, newborn and infant care while protecting mother and child and health care providers during COVID-19. Furthermore, we review implications of the principle of “do no harm” for maternal, newborn and infant care deliv[1]ery during COVID-19, so that this information is con[1]veniently and readily available to clinical and health system policy leaders and stakeholders in countries and communities. Additionally, considerations for safe oxygen delivery as well as key Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) measures at home and in health[1]care facilities for pregnant women, newborns and children are described in detail later in the brief.

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc upon global learning, with many countries facing severe school disruptions and closures. An emerging literature based on household survey data points to the pandemic as having exacerbated inequalities in education and learning in countries from Italy to Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This brief offers new analysis on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on learning outcomes for six sub-Saharan African countries. We analyze detailed householdlevel data from several rounds of panel phone surveys collected by the World Bank in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, and Uganda.

Adolescents with mental health disorders are a high‐risk population, and problems during COVID‐19 lockdowns have included increasing, widespread anxiety, fear, anger and uncertainty. Somatic symptom disorder (SSD) is characterised by disproportionate thoughts, feelings and behaviours about physical symptoms associated with the distress and disruption of everyday functioning. SSD accounts for 15%–25% of adolescent mental health cases in primary care paediatric settings, and 8.6% of non‐traumatic adolescent pain in emergency departments. This cross‐sectional observational study evaluated how the Italian COVID‐19 lockdown, from 9 March to 4 May 2020, affected Italian adolescents aged 13–18 with and without SSD.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the largest disruption of education in history. Throughout 2020 most governments around the world temporarily closed schools and other learning spaces in an attempt to contain the spread of the virus. At the peak of the pandemic in April 2020, schooling was disrupted for over 1.5 billion learners in more than 190 countries. This unprecedented disruption to education has the potential to roll back substantial gains made on girls’ education inrecent decades, with broader immediate and longer-term effects on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, including those related to poverty reduction, health and well-being, inclusive quality education and gender equality.

Although anyone can be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, it may cause additional concern for people with chronic conditions. Epilepsy is the most common neurological disease in childhood and adolescence. The aim of this study was to determine anxiety levels among the mothers of children under follow-up for epilepsy in our clinic during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is a report on the perinatal outcomes of pregnant patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) from 2 hospitals in Montréal, Québec. Outcomes of 45 patients with SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy were compared with those of 225 patients without infection. Sixteen percent of patients with SARS-CoV-2 delivered preterm, compared with 9% of patients without (P = 0.28). Median gestational age at delivery (39.3 (interquartile range [IQR] 37.7–40.4) wk vs. 39.1 [IQR 38.3-40.1] wk) and median birthweight (3250 [IQR 2780-3530] g vs. 3340 [IQR 3025-3665] g) were similar between groups. The rate of cesarean delivery was 29% for patients with SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, we did not find important differences in outcomes associated with SARS-CoV-2. Our findings may be limited to women with mild COVID-19 diagnosed in the third trimester.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated an existing learning crisis in Sierra Leone, and has disrupted the learning of over 2.4 million children across the country. The most marginalised and deprived children, including girls, children from poor households, and children from rural areas, already had limited access to good quality education prior to the pandemic, and are now at an increased risk of being left behind, and not returning to school at all. Save the Children are calling on the Government of Sierra Leone to commit to realising the right to quality education for all children by ensuring that all children are able to return to school safely, and that long-term, systemic issues with the education system damaging the quality of learning are acted on to ensure that all children are able to access good quality education.

Parents of children with intellectual disability (ID) report comparatively lower levels of well‐being than parents of children without ID. Similarly, children with ID, and to a lesser extent their siblings, are reported to show comparatively higher levels of behaviour and emotional problems. Psychological problems may be accentuated by restrictions associated with the COVID‐19 pandemic, due to increased social, caring and economic stressors and reduced social support. However, existing studies have not been able to examine the impact of COVID‐19 restrictions accounting for pre‐COVID levels of well‐being in these families. In a naturalistic design, this study examined outcomes for parents, siblings and children with ID in a two‐wave longitudinal study where Wave 2 data were gathered for some families before and some during COVID‐19 restrictions.