Children and COVID-19 Research Library

This report describes national policy and strategy responses for ensuring educational continuity in the context of widespread school closures implemented as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study focuses on a selection of high-income and low-income contexts. The evidence highlights the current, and rapidly changing status of national policy and strategy responses to date. The report examines key themes emerging form policy and strategy response and reflects on these: which are working, and which are not working so well? The nature of the evidence and material available at this stage of the crisis makes firm conclusions hard to reach. Despite this the report concludes with a set of recommendations supported by the literature as it stands.

This rapid review explores the evidence and lessons learned about engaging girls in life skills interventions at a distance (i.e. through mobile, online, radio or other) both in emergency and non-emergency settings. The purpose of the review is to assist programmes in identifying relevant and effective ways to continue and build girls’ life skills remotely during the widespread school closures and quarantine of the COVID-19 crisis (Albrectsen and Giannini, 2020). The main interest of the review is emergency contexts, however, the limited evidence as well as the potential for learning from programmes from non-emergency settings, led to the inclusion of non-emergency settings in the review.

This rapid review focuses on identifying evidence and lessons learned on the links between life skills interventions in emergency settings and the prevention of unwanted pregnancies and early marriage and return to education post crisis amongst adolescent girls. It seeks to enable learning from past emergencies to inform the design of effective support to adolescent girls throughout the COVID-19 crisis. Due to the focus on adolescent girls and emergency settings, an area with limited rigorous evaluations (Nobel et al., 2019), this report is based on a rapid literature review of academic studies, grey literature and emerging evidence, to enable the capturing of any significant learnings from relevant programmes.

As many as 30 million children are at risk of disease and death because of the secondary impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. World Vision’s Aftershocks report considers what would happen if the devastating secondary impacts of the 2015-2016 Ebola outbreak on children were replicated in the 24 most fragile countries covered by the UN’s COVID-19 humanitarian appeal. Secondary impacts will threaten many more children’s lives than COVID-19 itself. As many as 30 million children’s lives are in danger from secondary health impacts such as deadly diseases like malaria, a lack of immunisation, or increased malnutrition, as health systems are overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients.

This technical note is intended to provide a simple checklist for policy-makers, partners and UNICEF staff as they engage in the design and implementation of COVD-19 related social protection interventions. It builds on the SPIAC-B Joint Statement on the role of social protection in responding to the pandemic, particularly the need for urgent action to prioritise the most vulnerable.

This technical note, developed by the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation, supports the development of preparedness and response plans for addressing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on girls and women at risk of and affected by female genital mutilation.

This brief provides recommendations and resources for responding to the needs of adolescent girls during and after the COVID-19 crisis, and its impact on child marriage. The global pandemic of COVID-19 presents unprecedented challenges for us all.We have developed this brief on child marriage and COVID-19 for all our development partners, including civil society and governments. It provides insights, recommendations and resources for responding to the needs of adolescent girls during and after this crisis, including those at risk of early marriage, married girls, and those in informal unions.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic crisis are posing huge challenges, raising many unknowns and imposing wrenching trade-offs. Both crises are global, but their impacts are deeply local. The policy response to both crises needs to be rapid, even if it is rough around the edges. But countries cannot pull this off on their own—the global crises require global solidarity and coordination.

Across every sphere, from health to the economy, security to social protection, the impacts of COVID-19 are exacerbated for women and girls simply by virtue of their sex. This policy brief focuses on each of these issues in turn, exploring how women and girls’ lives are changing in the face of COVID19, and outlining suggested priority measures to accompany both the immediate response and longer-term recovery efforts.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented situation whereby schooling has been disrupted for almost 1.6 billion children and youth as governments enforce total or partial closures of schools in efforts to contain the spread of the virus. Higher education institutions have also suspended classes. As of late April, UNESCO estimates that 91% of those enrolled in formal education programmes have been affected. The closure of schools, universities, technical and vocational training institutes has also affected refugee learners and students. In these challenging times, displaced and refugee students are at a particular disadvantage and there is a risk that progress in increased enrolment may be eroded. The suspension of school feeding programmes could affect the nutrition and health status of refugee children and youth. Lessons drawn from other pandemic responses that included extended school closures have shown that girls are less likely to return to school and are at greater risk of falling behind1. As many governments move to at-home learning modalities, many refugees are disadvantaged as they experience uneven access to distance education and online learning opportunities and hardware, and do not have access to support services such as language classes.

This brief highlights emerging evidence of the impact of the recent global pandemic of COVID-19 on violence against women and girls. It makes recommendations to be considered by all sectors of society, from governments to international organizations and to civil society organizations, in order to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls, at the onset, during, and after the public health crisis, with examples of actions already taken. It also considers the economic impact of the pandemic and its implications for violence against women and girls in the long term.

It is a living document that draws upon the knowledge and experience of a wide range of experts who support solutions to end violence against women and girls, attentive to the country context in which the crisis is occurring.

The Humanitarian Data Exchange COVID-19 crisis page provides an overview of the spread of COVID-19 in locations with a Humanitarian Response Plan in place. It also lists datasets and draws information from various institutions, including IOM, UNHCR, WHO, UNICEF, The World Bank, as well as Oxford and Johns Hopkins Universities.

Most guidelines on COVID-19 published so far include recommendations for patients regardless of age. Clinicians need a more accurate understanding of the clinical characteristics of children with COVID-19. This review searched studies reporting clinical characteristics in children with COVID-19 published until March 31, 2020. It screened the literature, extracted the data and evaluated the risk of bias and quality of evidence of the included studies. It combined some of the outcomes (symptoms) in a single-arm meta-analysis using a random-effects model.

World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 a pandemic and a global health emergency. Thus, it is necessary to clearly characterize clinical manifestations and management of COVID-19 infection in children to provide accurate information for healthcare workers. Accordingly, the present study was designed to review articles published on clinical manifestations and characteristics of children and infants with COVID-19.

This review aims to evaluate currently reported pediatric cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection. An extensive search strategy was designed to retrieve all articles published from December 1, 2019, to March 3, 2020, by combining the terms coronavirus and coronavirus infection in several electronic databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, and CINAHL), and following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses guidelines. Retrospective cross-sectional and case-control studies, case series and case reports, bulletins, and national reports about the pediatric SARS-CoV-2 infection were included. The risk of bias for eligible observational studies was assessed according to the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology reporting guideline.