Children and COVID-19 Research Library

In Kenya, millions of children have limited access to nurturing care. With the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, it is anticipated that vulnerable children will bear the biggest brunt of the direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic. This review aimed to deepen understanding of the effects of COVID-19 on nurturing care from conception to four years of age, a period where the care of children is often delivered through caregivers or other informal platforms. The review has drawn upon the empirical evidence from previous pandemics and epidemics, and anecdotal and emerging evidence from the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. Multifactorial impacts fall into five key domains: direct health; health and nutrition systems; economic protection; social and child protection; and child development and early learning. The review proposes program and policy strategies to guide the reorientation of nurturing care, prevent the detrimental effects associated with deteriorating nurturing care environments, and support the optimal development of the youngest and most vulnerable children. These include the provision of cash transfers and essential supplies for vulnerable households and strengthening of community-based platforms for nurturing care.

This study aims to examine pregnancy and birth planning during COVID-19 and the effects of a tele- education offered to pregnant women for this planning process on prenatal distress and pregnancy-related anxiety. The population of this quasi-experimental study was composed of pregnant women who applied for the antenatal education class of a public hospital in the east of Turkey during their past prenatal follow-ups and wrote their contact details in the registration book to participate in group trainings. The sample of the study consisted of a total of 96 pregnant women, including 48 in the experiment and 48 in the control groups, who were selected using power analysis and non-probability random sampling method.

Coronavirus disease 2019 is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Kenya reported its first case on March 13, 2020 and by March 16, 2020 she instituted physical distancing strategies to reduce transmission and flatten the epidemic curve. An age-structured compartmental model was developed to assess the impact of the strategies on COVID-19 severity and burden. Contacts between different ages are incorporated via contact matrices. Simulation results show that 45% reduction in contacts for 60-days period resulted to 11.5–13% reduction of infections severity and deaths, while for the 190-days period yielded 18.8–22.7% reduction. The peak of infections in the 60-days mitigation was higher and happened about 2 months after the relaxation of mitigation as compared to that of the 190-days mitigation, which happened a month after mitigations were relaxed. Low numbers of cases in children under 15 years was attributed to high number of asymptomatic cases. High numbers of cases are reported in the 15–29 years and 30–59 years age bands. Two mitigation periods, considered in the study, resulted to reductions in severe and critical cases, attack rates, hospital and ICU bed demands, as well as deaths, with the 190-days period giving higher reductions.

The knowledge of COVID-19 is evolving with new aspects of the disease continuing to emerge. Children and adolescents younger than 20 years of age constitute 10·6% of the total reported confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Pakistan as of July 8, 2020, with a mortality of 0·3% for those aged 10 years or younger and 0·5% for those aged 11–20 years. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), also known as paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome temporally associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (PIMS-TS) is being reported primarily from Europe and the USA. Many of these children meet the criteria for complete or incomplete Kawasaki disease, but different clinical presentations of this inflammatory disorder are being reported. The ethnic origin of reported cases show that Black, Hispanic, and Asian children might be disproportionally affected. Similarly, unlike Kawasaki disease, these cases have occurred in older children and adolescents.

Education, and its precarity for young women around the world, is a major theme in the UNICEF video essay series, “Coping with COVID-19”, which invited 16 adolescent girls from nine countries to film their lives under lockdown—“unfiltered, unscripted, 100% real”. These young women face complex interconnected challenges. Having access to safe, reliable, high-quality education can help them make choices that will benefit their goals relating to future work, relationships, and community involvement.

COVID-19 and its direct and indirect economic impacts particularly affect rural populations, leading to an increase in hunger and poverty. To cope with this situation, rural households may likely resort to using child labour among other negative coping strategies, facilitated by the closure of schools in response to the spread of the virus. The prevalence of child labour remains high in agricultural sub-sectors. Because social protection coverage remains limited and cash payments and other types of support to subsistence farmers, forest communities, fisherfolk and artisanal fishers are often scarce or irregular, FAO encourages the expansion of social protection to rural areas as an effective strategy for eliminating child labour. This information note aims at outlining what are child labour and social protection, how social protection can significantly contribute to eliminating child labour in agriculture, and what are FAO’s planned efforts to leverage on social protection interventions to generate knowledge and increase impact at country level on child labour elimination. 

The COVID-19 outbreak is posing an unprecedented context that has greatly tested the resolve and resilience of the global population. Whilst Sierra Leone may not have recorded a high COVID-19 caseload, the impact on economic and social activities has evidently been profound, triggering the not too distant memories of the 2014-15 Ebola Virus Disease outbreak. The June 2020 Emergency Food Security Monitoring System again provides critical and timely data to enhance our understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerability and food security. Concerningly, the E-FSMS again shows an increase in the proportion of food insecure Sierra Leoneans, from 47 percent in January 2020 to 63 percent in June 2020, demonstrating the considerable impact of COVID-19 on households that rely on fragile livelihoods.

All children are being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, often in multiple ways.  

The COVID-19 pandemic is a universal crisis that has been devastating for children, families and communities, and shows no signs of abating as 2021 approaches. Ex­amining the available evidence to understand the poten­tial and actual societal effects on children and identifying viable evidence-based solutions are critical pathways to inform timely policy and programmatic responses. This Executive Summary of the UNICEF Innocenti report Beyond Masks: Societal impacts of COVID-19 and accelerated solutions for children and adolescents provides a review of literature on the societal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as past health and economic shocks, and possible solutions for mitigating impact at individual, household and societal levels.   

The evidence base on the societal impacts of the pandemic is still nascent. For children, it is weaker still, largely due to the paucity of age-disaggregated data and the relatively low number of paediatric studies, particu­larly in low- and middle-income countries and especially beyond the biomedical sphere. Consequently, in order to best inform child-sensitive responses, we also examined evidence from prior epidemics and shocks to find in­sights to inform the current COVID-19 crisis. We looked at the prior societal impacts of previous infectious dis­ease epidemics, including Ebola, Zika, SARS, MERS and tuberculosis, and particularly HIV/AIDS where there is a very robust evidence base.  

While there are promising signs of potential break­throughs for vaccines, rapid non-invasive tests and treatment options – all of which will help to slow and address the impacts of the pandemic – it is likely to be a long time before these interventions are available to all children and families, and particularly the poorest and most disadvantaged. As a result, there is an urgent need to find scalable and cost-effective solutions to the continued and deepening impact of the COVID-19 crisis on them.

COVID-19 in Asia-Pacific has added to the multitude of risks that the region faces intersecting with natural hazards, conflicts and fragility. More than any previous disaster, the novel coronavirus has exposed underlying risks and vulnerabilities and challenged the traditional notion of risk. The impact on population groups with pre-existing vulnerabilities has been particularly severe especially where the health crisis has turned into a humanitarian and economic crisis. Moreover, national and local crises are currently exacerbated by the simultaneous sufferings of over 200 countries due to COVID-19. As the waves of the pandemic rise and fall, lessons from past disasters and epidemics can offer valuable insights for COVID-19 socioeconomic recovery. The study highlights learnings from past disasters and features 10 lessons and good practices from Asia-Pacific.

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.

In May, Save the Children conducted a survey with 87 beneficiaries of projects that have been implemented in partnership with CESESMA, FUNARTE, Los Pipitos, MILAVF, and the City Hall of Cua. The survey was aimed at parents of children and adolescents to gain better knowledge of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results set the foundation for this document and will support the definition and adaptation of current and future Save the Children interventions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education systems in history, affecting nearly 1.6 billion school-age children in more than 190 countries. Already last year, 250 million school-age children being out of school, the world was facing a “learning crisis”. But now with the COVID-19 pandemic, this crisis could turn into a generational catastrophe. While many children will continue with their education once schools reopen, others may never return to school. Current estimates indicate that 24 million children will never return to the classroom and among those, disproportional number of girls. To avert this crisis, we need to reimagine how we deliver good quality and inclusive education to the world children. Among other things, this calls for urgent investments in school health and nutrition programmes and create the conditions for children to lead healthy lives. This also includes health and nutrition literacy offered through the curriculum and through counselling in the school health services which provides young people with knowledge, skills, values, culture and behaviours they need to lead healthy, empowered lives.

Adolescent girls' education contributes to a virtuous cycle that has proven positive impact on sustainable development. This report aims to examine progress and persistent gaps in our efforts to achieve gender equality in and through education since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995, and to identify priority actions to be implemented within the Beijing+25 process, the Generation Equality Forum's Action Coalitions, and the Sustainable Development Goals. It shows the importance of adolescent girls' education and provides recommendations for collective action – in particular on three priority levers: Comprehensive sexuality education; the participation of adolescent girls in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); and the development of adolescent girls' leadership – drawing in particular on consultation processes among international organizations, civil society and adolescent girls in the run-up to the Forum. In all areas, specific levers, intersectoral approaches and multi-stakeholder partnerships are promoted.

This report presents a future-focused vision of education, which demands a major shift towards a culture of lifelong learning by 2050. It argues that the challenges humanity faces, those resulting from the climate crisis and from technological and demographic change, not to mention those posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the inequalities it has exacerbated, call for societies that understand themselves as learning societies and people who identify themselves as learners throughout their lives.