Children and COVID-19 Research Library

The aftershocks of COVID-19 threaten to undo decades of development gains across the Pacific region. World Vision surveyed 752 households in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste and Vanuatu between July and December 2020 to gather first-hand accounts of the impacts of COVID-19 and its aftershocks on communities, families and their children. The findings highlight the human cost of the severe economic recession that has befallen the broader Pacific region since the pandemic, laying bare the region’s vulnerability to future shocks, stresses, and uncertainties.

The COVID-19 pandemic is significantly impacting the provision of vital health, nutrition, education, child protection, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services to women and children. UNICEF is conducting quarterly surveys to better understand the level of disruption to essential services for women and children, the reasons for these disruptions, and government response measures. This brochure provides an overview of the findings from the past three survey rounds and reveals that all countries – not only those with ongoing humanitarian response – continue to face some severe service disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and response.

Community attachments are thought to promote adolescents’ engagement in public health behaviors. To date, past research has exclusively examined the social benefits of community attachments among adolescents in the United States and less is known about these benefits among youth in low-income adolescent-dense countries such as Pakistan. The present study examined associations between Pakistani adolescents’ community attachments and COVID-19 public health behaviors, including social distancing, disinfecting, hoarding, news monitoring. Adolescents living in Pakistan (N = 1,110; 13–18 years; M = 16.70) reported on their COVID-19 public health behavior (social distancing, disinfecting behaviors, hoarding behaviors, news monitoring) and community attachments (social responsibility values, social trust, self-interest values).

While it is well know that the pandemic and its social isolation, loss of school experiences, increased screen use, and financial stress have likely had a psychological impact upon children and teens, little research has been done directly with youth to assess social and emotional factors during the pandemic and in its immediate aftermath. In this study, a sample of 240 youth reported on their experiences with bullying, fighting, sexting, cyberbullying, anxiety, and depression during the period from March 2020 to April 2021.

Schools, depending on their access to and quality of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and the implementation of healthy behaviours, can be critical for the control and spread of many infectious diseases, including COVID-19. Schools provide opportunities for pupils to learn about the importance of hygiene and WASH-related practice, and build healthy habits and skills, with beneficial medium- and long-term consequences particularly in low- and middle-income countries: reducing pupils' absenteeism due to diseases, promoting physical, mental and social health, and improving learning outcomes. WASH services alone are often not sufficient and need to be combined with educational programmes. As pupils disseminate their acquired health-promoting knowledge to their (extended) families, improved WASH provisions and education in schools have beneficial effects also on the community. International organisations frequently roll out interventions in schools to improve WASH services and, in some cases, train pupils and teachers on safe WASH behaviours. How such interventions relate to local school education on WASH, health promotion and disease prevention knowledge, whether and how such knowledge and school books are integrated into WASH education interventions in schools, are knowledge gaps this study fills.

The Asia-Pacific region faces the challenge of having 369 million people without access to basic sanitation services and 163 million people lacking access to basic drinking water. UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office (EAPRO) has been working in the area of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in 26 countries in the region with the intent of helping countries reach Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which targets universal and equitable water, sanitation and hygiene for all by 2030.  This report provides a summary of the progress, major WASH results achieved, and lessons learned in the East Asia and Pacific Region in 2020. It also provides a brief financial analysis as well as a narrative on challenges that the region faces— dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the report offers a look into the WASH programme in 2021 and what the future of WASH must look like in order for us to meet national goals as well as the SDGs.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has raised awareness about the vital role school nurses have in improving the overall health of children. School nurses provide health promotion within schools, yet over 60% of schools have only a part-time nurse or no nurse. Nursing students may be valuable partners for health promotion and academic–community partnerships may be mutually beneficial to schools of nursing and local schools. Using a nursing student team to teach hand hygiene while school health staff were present provided an opportunity for hands-on training to help the staff master curriculum content and ensure competency. This article describes a collaborative partnership initiative that expanded access to health promotion education in schools to increase knowledge about reducing the spread of infectious disease, such as COVID-19, while providing valuable clinical experiences for nursing students.

This global progress report on water, sanitation, hygiene, waste management and cleaning (WASH) in health care facilities comes at an unprecedented moment, when coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is exposing key vulnerabilities in health systems, such as inadequate infection prevention and control. WASH services in health care facilities, so often taken for granted – or as this report highlights, outright neglected – are needed more than ever to protect vulnerable health workers and patients. The report identifies major global gaps in WASH services: one third of health care facilities do not have what is needed to clean hands where care is provided; one in four facilities lack basic water services, and one in 10 have no sanitation services.

After almost one year since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the impact of the virus on the world’s children and young people is becoming clearer – and increasingly alarming. Children face a trifecta of threats: direct consequences of the disease itself, interruption in essential services and increasing poverty and inequality.

Despite being less affected than any other age group, emerging data suggest that children and young people’s health may be more directly impacted by COVID-19 than originally anticipated when the crisis began in late 2019. Disruptions to essential services such as education, health care, nutrition and child protection interventions are harming children. A severe global economic recession is impoverishing children and compounding deep pre-existing inequalities and exclusion.

On World Children’s Day, UNICEF is taking stock of the global impact of COVID-19 on children and young people, laying out what we know from the latest available data and research, highlighting what is still unclear as well as the options for action, and urging the world to take bold and unprecedented steps to reimagine a better future for children.

This document presents the results of a survey assessing the WASH readiness of schools in UN-HCR-supported refugee camps and refugee settlements. UNHCR and partners are using the results to improve water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) COVID-19 mitigation measures in schools and design targeted improvements to WASH facilities to allow for safe operation of schools.

Hand hygiene is one of the most effective ways to remove germs, prevent the spread of infectious pathogens, and avoid getting sick. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, health authorities have been advocating good hand hygiene practices. The primary aim of this study is to field test a prototype smart handwashing station deployed in a school setting during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This dashboard is based on quarterly updates of recent data collection efforts from UNICEF country offices drawing on best available sources in each country, including administrative data or representative survey data collected in the last 3 months; or where necessary, extrapolations from reliable localized quantitative and/or qualitative reports. Estimates may not accurately represent the full national response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the challenges of traditional data collection efforts during the pandemic, this dashboard offers relevant early indication of impacts on the disruption of essential services.

With the global emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, digital development has become an integral component of UNICEF’s work as national programmes shifted to distance and remote delivery means.

This report highlights examples of country-level COVID-19 response initiatives employing digital innovation and T4D approaches, in support of both its humanitarian action and development programmes. It further demonstrates how the scale-up of T4D’s strategic integration in programming and digital innovations has allowed UNICEF to support programme partners in closing gaps to meet children’s needs, often under complex environments, and in line with existing national systems. These initiatives span UNICEF programmes worldwide and help address children’s health, nutrition, education, protection, access to water, sanitation and hygiene, and inclusion.