Children and COVID-19 Research Library

This brief summarizes the impact of COVID-19 on the education of girls in countries across the East Asia and Pacific region and proposes considerations for national stakeholders and policy makers in their school reopening efforts and beyond. The Brief also highlights and provides specific examples of UNICEF’s programmatic interventions to ensure that girls are not left behind in the efforts to reimagine more inclusive and equitable quality education systems after COVID-19.

This Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA) builds on the secondary data analysis done in May 2020 by the Gender Hub, UN Women, CARE and OXFAM. This RGA aims to answer the following research questions: 1) How has COVID-19 impacted women, girls, men and boys and key vulnerable and marginalised groups’ ability to meet their basic needs and entitlements? 2) What achievements made on gender equality and the empowerment of women, girls and LGBTQ groups are now at risk of being undone by COVID-19? 3) What new or heightened protection and safety risks are arising from COVID-19? 4) How can women, girls, men and boys, and key vulnerable and marginalised groups participate and lead in the COVID-19 response?

2020 was supposed to be a once-in-a-generation opportunity for women and girls. The year when governments, businesses, organisations and individuals who believe in equal treatment for all people were going to develop a five-year plan for how to work together to accelerate progress for gender equality, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Then COVID-19 struck. Now, 2020 risks being a year of irreversible setbacks and lost progress for girls. Unless the world acts fast and decisively, the impact on girls’ futures – and on all our futures – will be devastating.

Children aged <10 years can transmit SARS-CoV-2 in school settings, but less is known about COVID-19 incidence, characteristics, and health outcomes among school-aged children (aged 5–17 years) with COVID-19. Since March, 277,285 COVID-19 cases in children have been reported. COVID-19 incidence among adolescents aged 12–17 years was approximately twice that in children aged 5–11 years. Underlying conditions were more common among school-aged children with severe outcomes related to COVID-19. Weekly incidence, SARS-CoV-2 test volume, and percentage of tests positive among school-aged children varied over time and by region of the United States. It is important for schools and communities to monitor multiple indicators of COVID-19 among school-aged children and layer prevention strategies to reduce COVID-19 disease risk for students, teachers, school staff, and families. These results can provide a baseline for monitoring trends and evaluating mitigation strategies.

As COVID-19 spread across the globe, gender-based violence experts and women’s rights activists around the world raised the alarm that the pandemic and its ensuing movement restrictions would negatively impact the safety of women and girls. From the first week of March, the media regularly highlighted the increased risk of violence faced by women and girls locked into homes with their abusers and the barriers they experienced in trying to access lifesaving services. This rapid recognition of the link between COVID-related restrictions and violence against women and girls was echoed within the humanitarian sector.

Lack of legal protection to protect women from domestic violence and sexual abuse, as well as gender inequality when it comes to accessing political and economic opportunities are some of the remaining challenges faced by girls and women across Africa. When COVID-19 struck, rather than being the year of opportunity and change, 2020 risks being a year of irreversible setbacks and lost progress for girls. Unless the world acts fast and decisively, the impact on girls’ futures – and on all our futures – will be devastating. Even before the COVID-19 crisis hit, progress for girls on some issues was already under threat.

This briefing has three specific aims: 1) to assess the latest developments in government expenditure and revenue trends in low and lower-middle income countries, to understand how the protracted crisis is impacting; 2) to review latest available information about government budgetary allocations to education, health and social protection; 3) to provide recommendations for governments, international agencies and the private sector.

The Initiative for Child Rights in the Global Compacts is a multi-stakeholder partnership bringing together over 30 UN, civil society and philanthropic organizations around a shared agenda: to ensure that children’s rights are at the heart of the two global compacts on migration and on refugees in practice and to create a continuum of care, protection and support for all migrant and refugee children.

At the time of writing, the world is facing an education catastrophe. The measures taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has impacted education for children all over the world. Due to school closures, hundreds of millions of children are not learning or getting services that are vital for their development and well-being. Many of the world’s children were not learning even before the pandemic, and without rapid action, this learning crisis is likely to spread. This paper sets out seven priority action areas to deliver changes crucial to advert an education catastrophe for the world's children.

Pakistan was among the first countries in the world to institute widespread school closures as a result of Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19). This note presents results from a series of simulations that aim to capture the impacts that school closures in Pakistan may have on the learning levels, enrollment, and future earnings of children and students. In this note, the authors present an overview of how these numbers are calculated and how to interpret them. This note draws on a simulation exercise for all countries on which data is available, including Pakistan, conducted by researchers at the World Bank.

This national survey examines how the pandemic and mitigation efforts affected the physical and emotional well-being of parents and children in the United States. Since March 2020, 27% of parents reported worsening mental health for themselves, and 14% reported worsening behavioral health for their children. The proportion of families with moderate or severe food insecurity increased from 6% before March 2020 to 8% after, employer-sponsored insurance coverage of children decreased from 63% to 60%, and 24% of parents reported a loss of regular child care. Worsening mental health for parents occurred alongside worsening behavioral health for children in nearly 1 in 10 families, among whom 48% reported loss of regular child care, 16% reported change in insurance status, and 11% reported worsening food security. The study concludes that coronavirus disease pandemic has had a substantial tandem impact on parents and children in the United States. As policy makers consider additional measures to mitigate the health and economic effects of the pandemic, they should consider the unique needs of families with children.

 

Research and data are important to draw attention to the experiences of children during the COVID-19 pandemic, to advocate for a range of protection services to be available during the crisis and beyond, and to inform the design of violence against children (VAC) prevention and response programmes. That said, the need for evidence must be balanced against the substantial risks to children, families and even researchers participating in violence-related research and data collection efforts. These risks are always present, but are likely to be amplified in the context of COVID-19, which may require rapid research, often via remote methods such as mobile phones or the Internet. This new UNICEF publication, Research on Violence against Children during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Guidance to inform ethical data collection and evidence generation, addresses key questions on generating VAC evidence that may arise during the pandemic and includes a decision tree (below) to guide those considering conducting research and data collection on VAC during COVID-19.

 

The risk of vertical and perinatal transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19), the most appropriate management, and the neonate's risk of developing COVID-19 during the perinatal period are unknown. This observational cohort study, conducted on neonates born to mothers positive for SARS-CoV-2 at delivery, aims to identify best practices in infection control within mother–newborn dyads, as well as potential risk factors associated with transmission. 

According to this new report published by UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank, schoolchildren in low- and lower-middle-income countries have already lost nearly four months of schooling since the start of the pandemic, compared to an average of six weeks among high-income countries. Compiling data from surveys on national education responses to COVID-19 from 149 countries between July and October, the report also finds that schoolchildren in low- and lower-middle income countries were less likely to have access to remote learning or to be monitored on a day-to-day basis by teachers and were more likely to have delays in their schools reopening.

This study examines the role of palliative care for families of patients with Covid-19 in hospital settings. Multicomponenet interdisciplinary interventions have been implemented to enhance the ability to create a therapeutic alliance with family members and facilitate the provision of goal concordant care to patients with COVID-19. Findings show that families and patients benefit from targeted psycho-social support through the difficult process of making complex medical and end-of-life decisions during this unprecedented time.