impact of covid 19 on people's livelihood essay

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1.  The need for economic resilience to health shocks

2.  false prophets, and naïve linear projection of recent history, 3.  factors that matter, 4.  the proof in the pudding, 5.  lives versus livelihoods, 6.  asian experiences, 7.  unmasking culture, 8.  what is to be done, saving lives and livelihoods in the covid-19 pandemic: what have we learned, particularly from asia.

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Derek Qi Ren Kok , Wing Thye Woo; Saving Lives and Livelihoods in the COVID-19 Pandemic: What Have We Learned, Particularly from Asia?. Asian Economic Papers 2021; 20 (1): 1–29. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/asep_a_00833

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The key practices in successful government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are (1) early border controls to contain the initial spread of the virus from abroad; (2) rapidly increasing the capacity of national health systems in terms of mobilizing staff, securing supplies (e.g., protective equipment and respiratory devices), and optimizing space (e.g., ensuring adequate numbers of acute and intensive care beds) to scale up testing-tracing-treating infrastructure; (3) promoting individual hygienic behavior such as social distancing and face mask use, which requires, respectively, active government enforcement of regulations against holding spreader events, and strong government intervention in the market to ensure adequate supplies; (4) fiscal measures to extend disaster relief to workers, businesses, and vulnerable populations; and (5) clear, concise, and consistent communications from leaders and authorities.

International cooperation must have a key role in the fight against the pandemic. So far, a global response to the crisis has been glaringly absent. Although it is understandable that countries prioritize their own needs, it must be understood that no country is safe until every other country is also safe. Global access to future vaccines, supplies, tests, and treatments is the only way to ensure the virus is truly eradicated within a country. The richer countries should establish a global fund to provide the poor countries with the needed vaccine, and to enhance their efforts in testing, tracing, and treating COVID-19 cases.

The world first woke up to the seriousness of COVID-19 in January 2020; the disease is still marching relentlessly and getting deadlier across the world in February 2021 when this paper is sent for publication. The total number of deaths worldwide soared from 1 million in September 2020 to 2.5 million in February 2021. The number is expected to increase because large European countries like France, Italy, Spain, and Germany are bracing for another wave (the third wave) of infections, with the appearance of more easily transmitted variants of COVID-19. 1

Comparing the Output Consequences of the GFC and the COVID-19 pandemic

Source: 2007–2009 data are from International Monetary Fund, IMF ( 2020 ).

2019–2020 data are from International Monetary Fund, IMF ( 2021 ).

Of these nine large economies in the five regions, there is only one case (Germany) where the GFC inflicted more material damage than COVID-19, and even then only marginally so, −5.7 percent in 2009 versus −5.4 percent in 2020. More tellingly, only one country (China) reported positive growth in 2020. As China is the only country that had the pandemic under control by July 2020, we can see the clear lesson that successful control of COVID-19 is necessary for production and investment to resume their normal courses.

Given the fundamental nature of the COVID-19 threat to life and to livelihoods, the Asian Economic Panel (AEP) mobilized its membership to study this negative public health shock and come up with recommendations on policy suggestions to strengthen economic resilience to future occurrences of this type of shock. This mobilization follows the AEP tradition of publishing special issues of the Asian Economic Papers (ASEP) devoted to understanding important economic developments and large negative shocks, for example, the Spring/Summer 2003 issue of ASEP analyzed the implications of China's full integration into the world economy upon its accession to the WTO in 2001; the Winter 2004 issue explored the impact of the SARS pandemic of 2002–03; the Winter 2009 issue on the GFC sparked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008; the Winter/Spring 2012 issue on the middle-income trap phenomenon; and the Fall 2019 issue on the U.S.–China trade 1 war.

This time, ASEP is devoting two issues, released simultaneously, to examine the COVID-19 phenomenon. These two issues of ASEP place special emphasis on the experiences of the Asian economies because the death rates in East and Southeast Asia pale in comparison with those in the largest European economies and in the United States. To this end, this special edition has convened two groups of papers.

The first group of papers are analyses conducted at the global level to enable us to examine the pandemic's impact on Asian economies vis-à-vis other economies, such as an East–West comparison of policy responses (Sachs); an evaluation of the global economic costs of COVID-19 under different scenarios (McKibbin and Fernando); the pandemic's effects on international trade (Hayakawa and Mukunoki) and financial markets (Azis, Virananda, and Estiko); and changes to our lifestyle and work behaviors (Okubo, Inoue, and Sekijima).

The second group of papers are in-depth analyses of select economies: China (Tian; and Li, Lu, and Zheng), Japan (Konishi, Saito, Ishikawa, Kanai, and Igei), Malaysia (Khalid), the Philippines (Monsod and Gochoco-Bautista), South Korea (Lim, Hong, Mou, and Cheong), Taiwan (Kuo), and Thailand (Tangkitvanich). We have the largely successful stories of China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Korea; and accounts of policy miscalculations, missteps, and mistakes in other economies in the continent like the Philippines and Malaysia.

Any discussion over government responses to the pandemic almost always involves debate over whether lockdowns are the appropriate response to combating and containing the virus. Critics of lockdowns hold that stay-at-home orders wield more devastating consequences than the COVID-19 virus itself. The Great Barrington Declaration typified this line of thought. 2 This proposal argued that lockdown policies would lower childhood vaccination rates, reduce screening for diseases like cancer, and hurt mental health—leading to greater excess mortality than without a lockdown. If government action is needed at all, it should be limited to those most at risk of death from COVID-19, for example, the elderly and people who are immunologically impaired. The uncompromising recommendation is that those with “minimal risk of death”—the majority of the population—should be encouraged to go about their lives normally and build herd immunity to the virus through natural infection.

The best example of this attitude among public health officers is that of Sweden's chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell. Sweden refrained from imposing a lockdown and instead chose to provide its citizens with voluntary social distancing guidelines at its bars, restaurants, parks, public transportation, and schools; and even kept its national borders unconditionally open. This Swedish public health response was starkly different from the other Nordic countries (Denmark, 3 Norway, and Finland), as well as different from the overwhelmingly majority of Western European economies. When it was pointed out to Tegnell in March 2020 that keeping schools open would risk children infecting the 10 percent of Swedish population that is aged, his e-mailed response was, “10 percent might be worth it?” (Bjorklund 2020 ).

Sentiments like that of Tegnell and the Great Barrington Declaration were met with strong responses by most members of the medical community. For example, Alwan et al. ( 2020 ), in a letter to the leading medical journal, Lancet , called the herd immunity proposal “a dangerous fallacy unsupported by the scientific evidence.” If put into practice, the letter warned, the approach would not end the COVID-19 pandemic but would instead result in recurrent epidemics and impose even greater burdens on the economy and health care system. Furthermore, they argued, although lockdowns were disruptive on mental and physical health, and the economy, they were essential to buy time to reduce mortality and establish pandemic response systems. “The evidence is very clear: controlling community spread of COVID-19 is the best way to protect our societies and economies until safe and effective vaccines and therapeutics arrive within the coming months. We cannot afford distractions that undermine an effective response; it is essential that we act urgently based on the evidence.” 4

It is interesting to note that the herd immunity option was also the preferred response of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and U.S. President Donald Trump to the outbreak of COVID-19. 5 We can rule out that the reason that they did so was because it was the politically expedient position to take. If political expediency is the primary determinant of a leader's policy choice, then the fact that the overwhelming majority of democratically elected leaders in Western Europe chose lockdowns instead would mean that lockdowns, not herd immunity (i.e., “look busy” not “be passive”), are the more politically expedient choice. 6

The likely explanation for why Johnson, Trump, and the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration rejected the need for compulsory mask wearing, social distancing, school closing, and border controls is that they were gambling on the COVID-19 pandemic to be in line with recent experiences with other pandemics, the naive projection of which would suggest that COVID-19 was unlikely to have much impact on the richest countries.

Health consequences of selected pandemics

Sources: Center for Disease Control, CDC ( 2019a and 2019b ), Johns Hopkins University ( 2021 ), World Health Organization, WHO ( 2020 and 2021 ).

A key feature revealed in Table 2 is that the influenza virus had been much more deadly than the coronavirus. The number of global deaths and U.S. deaths were, respectively, 50 million and 675,000 for the Spanish flu; and 284,000 and 12,649 for the swine flu. The U.S. share of deaths in these two virus groups were 1.35 percent and 4.45 percent, respectively. For the two previous coronaviruses (SARS and MERS), the number of U.S. deaths was zero in both cases; and the global number of deaths did not exceed 1,000 in either case. And because it has been known since January 2020 that this latest respiratory disease is caused by a coronavirus, it was therefore tempting in early 2020 to guess that history would repeat itself, and that the COVID-19 infection would not be a big killer. Herein lies the empirical basis of the willingness of Johnson, Trump, and Tegnell to gamble on the herd immunity solution to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It turns out, however, that this time, the deadliness of the COVID-19 type of coronavirus greatly exceeded that of SARS and MERS. By the end of February 2021, 2.5 million had been killed worldwide, of which 0.5 million deaths were in the United States alone. The United States accounted for 20 percent of global casualties, a proportion that far exceeded the 1.35 percent in the Spanish flu and the 4.35 percent in the swine flu.

The high proportion of global deaths in the United States reflects the extreme concentration of the occurrence of the disease in that country. At the end of February 2020, the United States accounted for 29.3 million of the 118.8 million cases worldwide, with the U.S. number of cases being substantially greater than the sum of the number of cases in India and Brazil, which had the second and third highest number of cases, at 11.3 million each.

In sum, 2020 COVID-19 has proved itself to be deadly different from the earlier 2002 SARS and 2012 MERS, rendering reckless leaders like Trump humbled humbugs. To the rest of us, this event is a timely reminder that the past is often a very poor guide to the future.

Public health preparedness, death rate, and growth in 2020

Note: Estimates for 2020 GDP growth: IMF ( 2021 ) for Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia, Spain, Thailand, UK and the United States / Kim ( 2021 ) for South Korea / Cheng et al. ( 2021 ) for Taiwan / Stats NZ (2020) for New Zealand / countryeconomy.com (2021) for remaining.

Table 3 shows the surprising absence of a clear negative correlation between the degree of public health preparedness in 2019 and the COVID-19 death rate in 2020. The United States and the United Kingdom are ranked first and second in the GHS index and yet they have among the highest death rates, 184.9 and 156.5 respectively, compared with the lowest ranked economies, India (no. 57) and Russia (no. 63), which had substantially lower death rates, 11.2 and 58.4, respectively. This surprising feature in Table 3 is actually quite a general phenomenon in that all six economies that had death rates above 100 are in the top 19 rank of the 195 economies—that is, these highest-death economies are in the top 10 percent of economies in terms of preparedness for public health emergencies.

Two factors suggest themselves to be relevant here. The first factor is “wrong policies versus right policies.” Although the United States, the UK, and Sweden (with GHS rank of 1, 2, and 7, respectively) had effective responses in place to be implemented, these responses were either not implemented (Sweden), implemented late (UK), or implemented badly and half-heartedly (United States).

The second factor is that geography matters in COVID-19 outcomes. Five of the six economies with death rates over 100 are in Western Europe and four of them are Schengen countries. Eight economies have death rates under 4, with six of them in East and Southeast Asia (Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Thailand, South Korea, and Malaysia) and the other two in Australasia (New Zealand and Australia). There is a Europe–Asia difference in fatality rates.

A geographical perspective on COVID-19 pandemic

Source: See Table 3 .

Age structure of population

One general difference between Europe and Asia is that the proportion of elderly is substantially higher in the former; and it is known that COVID-19 is deadlier for the elderly. Finland and Norway have the lowest death rates (13.45 and 11.70, respectively) in Western Europe, and these rates are at the high end of Asian death rates—India (11.16), Indonesia (13.44), and the Philippines (11.52), which are all young societies—even though Finland and Norway are much higher ranked in the GHS index. The importance of the age structure factor as an explanatory factor is given more credence by the fact that (1) Japan, the most aged society in Northeast Asia, also has the highest death rate; and (2) Russia, an aged society, has a death rate of 58, which is within the range of European fatality rates.

Degree of geographical isolation that can be achieved

The low-population Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, and Norway, which are located on the northern cold fringe of Western Europe, have the lowest death rates in Western Europe. Russia, at the far fringe of Europe, has a death rate that is closer to Denmark than to any of the non-Nordic Western European countries that together contain most of the Schengen area population. The effectiveness of reducing infection and death by the successful control of a country's borders is supported by the low death rates in faraway Australia and New Zealand, which both have low population and tight controls on entry and stringent border health-screening and quarantine.

The geographical partition in Table 4 also allows us to identify more clearly the contribution of “wrong policies” in creating huge disparities in the death rate. The United States is separated from Europe by the large Atlantic Ocean, and from Asia by the even larger Pacific Ocean; and its border with Mexico in the Trump period was a de facto militarized zone (e.g., heavily guarded with night-vision cameras and intensively patrolled by surveillance drones, backed up by rapid-response immigration teams), complete with a high and thick border wall. Yet, until Joseph Biden took over in January 2021, there was no health screening at the entry points, and there were no quarantine requirements. Geographical isolation was possible to achieve, but barriers to entry into the United States were ramped up only for mainland Chinese, poor Latin Americans, and select groups of Muslims.

The age structure of the U.S. population would have also helped to lower the death rate because it is not an aged society like Western Europe, Japan, and Russia, and is also not a rapidly aging society like China, South Korea, and Taiwan. Only Belgium has a death rate (193) that is higher than that of the United States (156). In contrast, the geographically isolated and non-aging societies of Australia and New Zealand have deaths rates of only 3.6 and 0.5, respectively.

Until Trump left office in January 2021, he and the conservative governors of several large states maintained their refusal to promote mask wearing and social distancing. Trump devoted his time, instead, to riling up xenophobic emotions. He escalated his racist rhetoric with remarks such as “China Virus” and “Kung Flu,” 12 and he pulled the United States out of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the midst of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic after claiming that WHO had turned a blind eye to malicious behavior by China. This non-science-based public health position of the Trump administration reflected Trump's political instinct and the tribalist nature of Trump's political movement.

Table 4 also allows us to see the human and material costs of different public policy responses to COVID-19, taking China and Sweden as polar cases. The death rate was 0.35 in China and 125.95 in Sweden; and their GDP growth rates in 2020 were 2.3 percent and −2.8 percent, respectively.

China adopted lockdowns in its strictest sense, deploying a stringent formula of immediate lockdowns and mass testing even at the first signs of infection. There is perhaps no stronger example of this than Wuhan, the initial epicenter of the pandemic, where a complete lockdown of the population was put in place from 23 January to 8 April. The Chinese government also decreased population mobility nationwide—for example, extending the duration of the Lunar New Year holiday break, and closing schools, museums, and provincial public transportation. A nationwide public information campaign was also launched to promote social distancing and hygienic measures, and to discourage the visiting of relatives during the Lunar New Year period.

Sweden, on the other hand, only provided voluntary social distancing guidelines at bars, restaurants, parks, public transportation, and schools. At the height of the coronavirus outbreak in spring, Sweden's death rate was not only one of the highest in Europe, it was also on par with the United States. However, the daily number of new infections in Sweden started declining rapidly in late June, bringing the daily number of deaths from COVID-19 to just three daily deaths in early September compared with a peak of 115 in April. When the number of new cases per capita in Sweden averaged lower than Norway and Denmark, state epidemiologist Tegnell proclaimed that “Sweden has gone from being one of the countries in Europe with the most spread to one that has some of the fewest cases in Europe” (Erdbrink 2020 ).

But the situation reversed after early September. The debate on the wisdom of the herd immunity solution to the COVID-19 challenge was finally settled on 16 November 2020 when Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told the Swedish public: “Don't go to the gym, don't go the library, don't have dinner out, don't have parties—cancel!”; followed by the announcement of strict social distancing measures beginning the week after (Schaverien 2020 ). The next day, King Carl Gustaf posted a royal message on Instagram instructing his subjects to “Hold on tight!” (ibid.). However, Tegnell insisted in a BBC interview that it is “not yet possible to say which country has right strategy” (BBC 2020 c).

A month later, in Gustaf's annual TV interview, he said: “I think we have failed. We have a large number who have died and that is terrible.” Lofven agreed: “Of course the fact that so many have died can't be considered as anything other than a failure” (BBC 2020 c). It seems likely that Tegnell is now one of the few defenders of herd immunity left.

As China is very different from Sweden, the comparison of outcomes is rightly subject to disputes on many dimensions. A comparison among the Nordic countries in Table 4 would come closest to a controlled experiment, given their similarities in economic structure, physical geography, and socioeconomic framework. The unfortunate but unsurprising outcome is that Sweden has a significantly higher death rate than its Nordic neighbors, which had all implemented early lockdowns of their economies. The death rate (up through the end of February 2021) was 125.95 6 in Sweden, 40.69 in Denmark, 13.45 in Finland, and 11.70 in Norway.

The surprising outcome from the comparison of Nordic countries was on the economic front. The 2020 GDP growth rate for Sweden is expected to be −2.8 percent, a bit better than Denmark's (−3.3 percent), almost the same as Finland's (−2.9 percent), but markedly worse than Norway's (−0.8 percent). In short, Sweden allowed many more citizens to die without bringing much more economic benefits to the survivors. It was magical thinking to believe that COVID-19 could be allowed to run its course unimpeded to attain the natural nirvana state of herd immunity in the community.

“Comparing COVID-19 Control in the Asia-Pacific and North-Atlantic Regions” by Jeffrey D. Sachs in this issue quantifies the relative importance of the key factors in determining the virus’ daily reproduction number (R) in 25 economies during the first wave of infection. R tells us the average number of infections that is transmitted by an infectious individual. If R is less than 1, then the infectious individual would infect less than one other individual on average, meaning the number of active cases in the population would decline over time. But if R is larger than 1, each infected individual will, on average, infect more than one person, hence causing the epidemic to expand.

Sachs’ main finding is that the Asia-Pacific Region—which Sachs defines as mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and the ASEAN countries—has effectively controlled the epidemic in comparison with the North Atlantic region, which includes North America and Western Europe. Between the two regions, the Asia-Pacific region reported fewer confirmed cases and deaths per million, with a lower disruption of economic activity.

stopping the entry of infected individuals from other countries;

promoting individual responsibility in avoiding infection through hygienic practices such as wearing face masks and physical distancing;

isolating infected individuals to keep them from infecting others;

protecting vulnerable groups, especially the elderly, from infection;

protecting residents of congregate settings such as care centers, prisons, and worker hostels;

shutting down schools and public events (sports, religious, entertainment); and

shutting down workplaces and order non-essential workers to shelter at home.

He notes that strategies (1), (2), and (3) are low-cost measures. In contrast, the lockdowns espoused in strategies (6) and (7) carry a tremendous cost to the economy.

According to Sachs’ regression results, the variable with the largest magnitude by far is hygienic behavior, which includes four distinct practices: the wearing of face masks, avoiding crowded places, improving personal hygiene, and avoiding touching objects in public. According to Sachs' estimate, varying hygienic behavior from 0 to 1 results in a reduction of R by 2.0. As the frequent point estimate of COVID-19’s R reproduction number is 2.4, universal hygienic practices would thus reduce R to 0.4, which is more than enough to contain the virus.

The indicator with the next largest impact on the regression is the economic shutdown indicator. However, a full lockdown, meaning a 100 percent drop in visits to economic sites, would only result in a modest reduction of the R reproduction number of the virus. Sachs argues that this underscores that lockdowns are “at best a stop-gap policy until more efficient and powerful public health measures—hygiene and isolating—can be scaled up.”

Sachs found that when it comes to deploying the low-cost public health measures of early restrictions on international travel, widespread use of face masks and physical distancing, and testing-isolating-and-tracing, the Asia-Pacific region outperformed the North Atlantic region and were less reliant on costly lockdowns.

This difference translated to the Asia-Pacific region's performance in terms of containing the virus. In contrast to North Atlantic countries, several Asian-Pacific economies showed “superlative results” in suppressing the virus and keeping death rates per million very low, which include Australia, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Lao PDR, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

Sachs’ analysis of the Asia-Pacific experience provides evidence that the pandemic can be contained through public health means such as improved hygiene, face mask wearing, and isolation of infectious individuals, instead of a primary reliance on lockdowns.

In response to Sachs’ findings, Pengfei Li, Ming Lu, and Yilin Zheng, in “A Note on the Role of Cultural, Institutional, and Urbanization Features in the COVID-19 Pandemic,” contend that hygienic behavior like the willingness to wear masks is “related to cultural traditions.” According to the authors, “traditional Confucian culture emphasizes the achievement of social stability via individual internalization of social welfare,” which explains why “governments throughout much of East Asia adopted comprehensive lockdown policies during the initial outbreak of COVID-19 because they judged their citizens to be willing to comply.” In contrast, North Atlantic countries tend to prioritize individual freedom, thus its governments were “less inclined” to impose lockdowns in containing the pandemic.

James K. Galbraith, in his comment on Sachs’ paper, cautions that while the Asia-Pacific region has indeed outperformed the North Atlantic region in terms of containing the virus, “one should be wary of drawing cultural inferences.” Galbraith highlights that Japan's performance in reducing R is not much better than the United States or Canada, and the Philippines, Indonesia, and India have some of the highest cases in the world despite hailing from the Asia-Pacific region. On the other hand, Denmark, Norway, and Finland are doing well despite opting for lockdowns instead of low-cost public health means, as we discussed above. To borrow Galbraith's words, much remains to be explored.

The IMF's World Economic Outlook in October 2020 reports that lockdowns can substantially lower infections (e.g., a stringent lockdown leads to a reduction in cumulated infections of about 40 percent after 30 days. Countries that deployed lockdowns early when the number of cases were still low reported considerably fewer infections compared with countries that introduced lockdowns when cases were already high. Besides the early adoption of lockdowns, the lockdowns must be strict enough to contain infections, suggesting therefore that stringent and short-lived lockdowns would be superior to mild but prolonged measures.

The IMF's analysis also confirmed what many already knew, that lockdowns have a considerable negative effect on economic activity. Interestingly, it found that the recession was also largely driven by people voluntarily reducing their social interactions out of fear of contracting the virus. In fact, the analysis indicates that voluntary social distancing played a near comparable role with lockdowns in the contraction of economic activity. The crucial ramification is that lifting lockdowns would unlikely result in a rise in economic activity as voluntary social distancing would still persist, especially when infection numbers are still high. 13

What is becoming clearer to see from the emerging evidence is that the oft-touted assumption that countries face a trade-off between health and the economy in their responses to COVID-19 is perhaps unfounded. This initial assumption has been revealed to be a false dilemma. Table 3 showed that the three economies with the lowest death rates—Taiwan (0.04), Vietnam (0.04), and China (0.35)—were the only ones with positive GDP growth rates in 2020, suggesting that economies that had managed to control the pandemic had also generally protected their economy. This relationship is a weak one, however. The next group of low-fatality economies—Thailand (0.12) and New Zealand (0.53)—had negative growth rates but there was not a monotonic relationship between death rate and GDP growth rate, as the 2020 GDP growth rate was −6.6 percent for Thailand and −2.2 percent for New Zealand. To quote Bhanupong Nidhiprabha, there is simply “no paradox between the low death rate caused by COVID-19 and the economic hardships caused by COVID-19 because there is no determinate relationship between these two variables” (“Comment on ‘The Paradox of Thailand's Success in Controlling COVID-19’ by Poum Tangkitvanich”).

The evidence just discussed shows that it is possible for countries to achieve good outcomes on both health and economic dimensions in response to COVID-19. But what were the precise strategies taken by these countries and are there lessons to be learned by the rest of the world? Where do Asian economies fall in the divide between lockdown or no lockdown?

The experience of Taiwan, detailed by Chun-Chien Kuo in “COVID-19 in Taiwan: Economic Impacts and Lessons Learned,” is particularly worth examining as Taiwan finds itself with the stunning record of actually recording a positive 1.59 percent GDP growth in the first quarter of 2020, while maintaining one of the lowest death rates in the world without the use of lockdowns. Kuo's analysis reveals that much of its economic rebound can be attributed to a rise in external demand for its information and communications technology and semiconductor products. The author asserts that this is more the exception than the norm, stating that Taiwan's economic success in this specific area seems more the result of being situated in larger global economic contexts, instead of the government's relief package.

If Kuo is hesitant to credit the government's actions for Taiwan's bounce in its information and communications technology and semiconductor exports, any reluctance dissipates in his exposition of Taiwan's implementation of its national “precision-prevention” strategy, which he praises for the minimal health and economic impacts to the society. Taiwan's experience of SARS led to substantial improvements in its public health system, of which the existence of a national health insurance program with 99 percent population coverage played a crucial role in ensuring that all active cases, even foreigners, received proper medical care. A key success factor in the Taiwanese response was how early the government responded to the outbreak, with the creation of a central command center merely weeks after the first cases of an unknown pneumonia were notified to the WHO by China. Although it did not adopt a lockdown, Taiwan was one of the earliest economies to implement border closures, which helped reduce the influx of potentially infectious travelers from China in the early stages of the outbreak. Taiwan also applied its artificial intelligence and big data technology not only to detect and track cases, but also to enforce home isolation and home quarantine policy. For instance, passenger travel histories, medical information of quarantined individuals, and even their cellphone location data are captured by Taiwan's big data cloud system, which makes it easy to test, trace, isolate, and monitor cases.

Similarly, South Korea was able to flatten the curve of its infections with minimal economic disruption, as Byungho Lim et al. recount in “COVID-19 in Korea: Success Based on Past Failure.” Initially deemed as the second most vulnerable country to the virus after China, South Korea has instead become a model nation in the global fight against COVID-19. Its “3T” approach of large-scale testing-tracing-treating has been key to its success, especially the much-heralded use of drive-through testing centers that have been followed by other countries. Instead of imposing a lockdown when numbers surged, the government merely announced work-from-home guidelines and asked the public to reduce non-essential outdoor activities and to wear masks in public. When numbers dropped to single digits in April 2020, the government decided to relax the guidelines and switch to what it calls the “everyday life quarantine” system, whereby, with social distancing and maskwearing in place, Koreans could return to their daily lives with the exception of attendance at high-risk facilities such as sports stadiums, concert halls, and universities. Economically, South Korea's private consumption did not fall as much as the OECD's prediction of a one-third decrease. Instead, fueled with a large fiscal stimulus that is equivalent to 54 percent of its 2020 budget, domestic sales have returned to pre-outbreak levels.

Where Taiwan and South Korea were successful in containing the virus without use of a lockdown, China adopted the most severe lockdowns. In the early stages of the two-month-long lockdown of Wuhan, people were allowed out to purchase food, but this was completely halted by mid-February where no one could leave their home compounds. Wei Tian in “How China Managed the COVID-19 Pandemic” provides us with an explanation as to why such a harsh lockdown was enacted in Wuhan. The month before Wuhan was placed under lockdown coincided with the peak period of population mobility due to the Lunar New Year celebrations, where people usually return to their hometowns for the festivities. The city of Wuhan had the tenth largest population outflow among Chinese cities, with an average daily outflow of 250,000 people. During this peak period, the population outflow from Wuhan to other cities numbered at 4.3 million, which made up 70 percent of total outflow. The lockdown of Wuhan was therefore necessary to avoid a large outflow of people spreading the virus across the country.

In general, China discouraged all travel, both within-country and out-of-country, by reducing flights and train services, closing tourist sites and public events, and enforcing mask-wearing and social distancing. Due to measures like these, intercity population mobility was greatly reduced, helping China to curb massive spreads of the virus across the country. Although China's GDP contracted by 6.8 percent in the first quarter, its rapid containment of the virus has helped its economy to rebound in the second quarter by 3.2 percent, far exceeding the 1.2 percent projection of the IMF and superior to many other economies. Tian's account of the second wave of infections that hit Beijing in June is particularly valuable in understanding how the Chinese government has so efficiently refined its systematic and standard epidemic containment practices, so much so that this second wave was brought under control in less than a month.

If the likes of China and Taiwan's responses exemplify the continent's “gold standard,” a region as large and diverse as Asia would inevitably also carry accounts of government missteps and policy failures.

For instance, the speedy response of Malaysia's Ministry of Health in combining robust contact tracing measures with punitive lockdown orders helped the country to record one of the lowest death rates in the world. There was a severe lockdown from 18 March through 3 May under four consecutive Mobility Control Orders (MCOs), followed by a Conditional MCO between 4 May and 9 June that allowed many businesses to reopen and permitted some interstate travel. With continued decline in COVID-19 cases, a Recovery MCO was proclaimed on 10 June 2020, which allowed the almost complete resumption of normal economic life, but restrictions on international travel remained in place, albeit greatly relaxed. Nevertheless, its 17.1 percent GDP contraction in the second quarter of 2020 was the worst in ASEAN. Muhammed Abdul Khalid, in “COVID-19: Malaysia Experience and Key Lessons,” attributes this to the government's miniscule direct fiscal injection of only 1.9 percent of GDP, far lower than the ASEAN-6 average.

After the completion of Khalid's paper in mid-September 2020, the point at which his account stopped, Malaysia's initial successful response has become a distant memory. At the end of July 2020, the Sabah state government on Borneo island was brought down by defections and new elections were called for 26 September 2020. The enforcement of social distancing regulations at political gatherings was not strict, making all of them superspreader events. Politicians and campaign workers travelled back and forth between Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah in August and September, but quarantining and screening protocols at these airports were deemed unnecessary by health authorities.

Malaysia's case tally started skyrocketing upward in October and a partial lockdown was re-introduced on 9 November 2020. The number of infections continued to climb, however, and on 11 January 2021, the federal government announced the re-imposition of its strictest form of lockdown, the MCO, on 13 January 2021. On the day before, 12 January 2021, the King declared Emergency Rule in Malaysia (whereby the seating of Parliament was suspended) under advice from Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin that this political measure was necessary to “to control and flatten daily COVID-19 positive cases that have breached four figures continuously since December” (Rodzi 2021 ). Previous nationwide emergencies were in 1964 during the Indonesia-Malaysia conflict, and in 1969 during an ethnic clash.

Unlike the temporary success in Malaysia, Thailand was successful in containing the outbreak of the virus within its population. This achievement, however, risks being overshadowed by its economy's largest annual contraction in 22 years during the second quarter of 2020. Poum Tangkitvanich opines in “The Paradox of Thailand's Success in Controlling COVID-19” that the Thai economic lockdown was overly harsh and lasted longer than needed with its repeated extensions despite the fact that daily domestic infections were regularly at zero, although some, like Nidhiprabha, speculate that the prolonged lockdown was more likely to prevent political protests.

If the Thai case shows that a country's economic recovery may not necessarily accompany its epidemiological success, the Philippines stands on the other end of the spectrum. Despite imposing the longest lockdown on Southeast Asia, the country now has the highest number of infections in the sub-region. Despite having strong macroeconomic fundamentals before the pandemic, the Philippines ended up with the second largest GDP contraction in the second quarter of 2020 and the worst projected economic growth outcome in 2020 among its ASEAN neighbors (see Table 4 ). Most commentators and fund managers have attributed this output collapse to the strict community lockdown imposed by the government in March that went on until the third quarter of the year.

However, Toby Melissa C. Monsod and Maria Socorro Gochoco-Bautista (“Rethinking ‘Economic Fundamentals’ in an Era of Global Physical Shocks: Insights from the Philippine Experience with COVID-19”) argue that underlying institutional factors play a larger role in explaining the Philippines’ economic and health outcomes rather than the country's use of lockdowns. According to the authors, the choice of containment measures was a reflection of how organized and prepared public health institutions were in facing global shocks like COVID-19. The authors agree that the lockdown of the country was necessary to contain the pandemic but make the case that the Philippines failed to use the “bought time” from the lockdown to scale up an effective national system of testing and tracing. Specifically, they point at the country's poor pandemic response infrastructure, which would help explain the recent blunders in testing and quarantine protocol amid the return of more than 100,000 overseas workers after losing their jobs abroad.

Citing the Philippines’ robust macroeconomic ratings before the pandemic, the authors assert that the institutional preparedness of governments matter much more in dealing with global shocks than macroeconomic metrics. Using a cross-sectional data set of 24 countries, the authors sought to test this hypothesis by examining the relationship between the projected economic contraction in 2020 and the capability of the national health systems to detect and respond to emergency outbreaks. The regression findings strongly support the authors’ argument that institutional capacities and capabilities influence intercountry difference in post-pandemic economic outcomes more so than other factors such as initial fiscal position, average age of the population, and country-specific geographical effects. Thus, instead of the timing, intensity, or length of lockdowns, the core capacities of countries to detect and respond to the pandemic accounts significantly for the poor economic outcomes of countries like the Philippines.

The Monsod and Gochoco-Bautista results also suggest that, for pandemics, the usual metrics of robust macroeconomic fundamentals either do not matter or, worse, are associated with poorer economic outcomes. The authors opine that that the usual multiplier effects of traditional macroeconomic channels are either not operative or, if they are, are overshadowed by the need for specific core capacities to address the underlying physical causes of disease transmission and progression. Crucially, the authors warn that large fiscal spending can even result in perverse economic effects if it is not directed at addressing the pandemic itself. Fiscal injections to boost a country's national health system capacity should be prioritized over and above other types of traditional stimulus spending, with investments in the former potentially being able to do more for economic recovery than the latter.

Aside from studies of country-level responses to the pandemic, this double special issue of ASEP also features empirical analyses of novel queries that have arisen from the pandemic. Applying a hybrid of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium and computable general equilibrium models, Warwick McKibbin and Roshen Fernando in “The Global Macroeconomic Impacts of COVID-19: Seven Scenarios” look at the potential global economic costs of COVID-19 in 2020 under seven different permutations. Scenarios 1–3 assume that the virus’ epidemiological effects are contained in China but the economic effects spill over from China to other countries through trade, capital flows, and changes in the risk premia in global financial markets. On the other hand, scenarios 4–6 reflect epidemiological shocks occurring in differing degrees in all countries. For scenarios 1–6, it is assumed that the shocks are temporary whereas scenario 7 expects a mild pandemic to recur each year indefinitely.

GDP loss in 2020 (% deviation from the baseline)

Source: McKibbin and Fernando, this issue.

An interesting finding from “Impacts of Lockdown Policies on International Trade” by Kazunobu Hayakawa and Hiroshi Mukunoki is that workplace closure orders do not affect intra-Asian trade. In comparison, Iwan J. Azis, I. G. Sthitaprajna Virananda, and Fauzi I. Estiko (“Financial Spillover in Emerging Asia: A Tale of Three Crises”) found that the scale and nature of spillovers from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is set to be more severe than the financial spillover during the GFC and the 2013 taper tantrum from the phasing of quantitative easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

On the effects of the pandemic at a more micro-level, Toshihiro Okubo, Atsushi Inoue, and Kozue Sekijima (“Teleworker Performance in the COVID-19 Era in Japan”) look at teleworker efficiency in Japan and whether COVID-19 has changed the performance of Japanese teleworkers. Overall, the authors found that: (1) compared with working as normal, the efficiency of most teleworkers is reduced by around 20 percent on average; (2) longer experience in teleworking helps improve efficiency; (3) the employment system, such as flexible working time, can contribute to boosting efficiency; and (4) poorer mental health conditions due to the COVID-19 crisis worsens teleworking efficiency.

What various sources of evidence have shown is that there is much diversity and divergence in terms of both approach and result in the responses of governments to the pandemic. From Table 3 , we know that prior preparedness counts for little when there is failure in execution (UK), leadership (USA), and diagnosis (Sweden). Countries like China and South Korea drew on their past experiences with epidemics (particularly SARS and MERS) to mount successful strategies to contain the virus. It is simply wrong to largely view the solution as a binary choice between lockdown or no lockdown. We see from the success stories in Asia that the appropriate policy combination consists of (a) public health measures like social distancing, mask-wearing, and hygienic behavior; and (b) targeted macro-stimulus aimed at disaster relief, service industries, and small and medium enterprises.

Note: Period is March 2020 through December 2020, except for China data ending on 11 Oct 2020; and Japan data ending on 3 May 2020.

The four Nordic economies and the UK were unusually slow in adopting mask-wearing

In other economies, the proportion of mask-wearers in the population responded quickly to the COVID-19 outbreak in the home economy to reach at least 60 percent in May 2020. In May 2020, the proportion of mask-wearers was less than 10 percent in the Nordic economies, and under 20 percent in the British economy.

One could think of mask-wearing as less needed for sanitary reasons in the “sparsely populated” Nordic economies when interpersonal contact is rarer, but then the UK is definitely not sparsely populated. Does the reluctance to respond quickly to wearing masks in these five populations show a deep cultural difference not only between them and Asians, but also between them, Americans, and other Europeans (France and Germany)? This last question suggests that “culture” is a weak explanation for this “slow to adopt” phenomenon in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

In steady-state, Asian populations had a generally higher proportion of mask-wearing than non-Asian populations

In all eight Asian populations, the proportion of mask-wearing was mostly at or above 80 percent in the May 2020 through December 2020 period. The French proportion of mask-wearers went over 80 percent since late July 2020; the U.S. proportion reached 70 percent in late June 2020, and went over 80 percent only since November; the British proportion climbed upward slower (as noted earlier) to cross 70 percent in mid-August 2020 and then to cross 80 percent on November 2020; and the German proportion stayed put at 60 percent in the May–October 2020 period and moved to 70 percent in November.

This resistance to mask-wearing is most pronounced in the four Nordic economies, where the proportion of mask-wearers in June 2020 was under 10 percent for every country. In September 2020, it was 34 percent in Denmark, 21 percent in Finland, 16 percent in Norway, and 8 percent in Sweden; and the respective numbers in December 2020 were 69 percent, 65 percent, 48 percent, and 16 percent.

Some analysts have attempted to explain this difference between Asian and non-Asian populations by attributing it to the so-called conformist and collectivist cultures of Asian societies whose citizens are more likely to mask themselves and practice social distancing out of respect for government guidelines and the welfare of others, as opposed to “individualistic” Western populations who care more for personal liberty. Others like Sweden's Minister of Health and Social Affairs Lena Hallengren would say that there is no “tradition or culture” of mask wearing in their country, unlike Asia.

Although cultural values can influence a population's response to events such as a pandemic, such essentialist caricatures may obscure and ignore the crucial role of government policy in driving these practices in the first place. It is perhaps a trite point that government policy influences behavioral outcomes. The act of mask-wearing is not endemic to any culture nor did it emerge out of a vacuum. If Asian economies such as Hong Kong and Taiwan appear to have a “culture” of mask-wearing, it is more likely because it is a direct result of experiencing past epidemics such as SARS whereby wearing face masks was a recommended practice.

Strict enforcement, especially when accompanied by punitive actions, can be highly effective. In Malaysia, face masks were made compulsory in crowded public areas from 1 August 2020 onwards. Face mask use in the country jumped from under 50 percent in March to 91 percent by August—Malaysia now records the highest face mask use in the YouGov tracker as of 28 February 2021.

Furthermore, countries with high face mask use often had leaders who not only communicated the importance of such practices but also set an example for their populace. For instance, Western countries like Slovakia and Czech Republic are not the first places that one associates with the prevalent use of face masks, but their leaders have been shown to wear masks in public appearances and this played a crucial role in normalizing its use among their citizens. It is no surprise that face mask usage is so low in countries like the United States where President Trump constantly downplayed the importance of wearing face masks, or in Brazil where President Jair Bolsonaro only started to wear face masks after being ordered to do so by a federal judge.

The contrast in face mask use prevalence between Finland and Sweden is another example. In Sweden, where authorities actually recommend against wearing them, face mask use was at 8 percent in September 2020. In comparison, after Finland reversed its policy in August and recommended that people wear masks in public places, mask use jumped from 7 percent at the end of June to 46 percent on 12 October 2020.

It is also of little use if governments mandate the wearing of masks or other hygienic behavior if there are inadequate supplies of the very items that are needed for these practices, even in countries where mask-wearing is the norm. Once again, the role of government is crucial. In “How Did Japan Cope with COVID-19? Big Data and Purchasing Behavior” by Yoko Konishi, Takashi Saito, Naoya Igei, and Toshiki Ishikawa, the authors use point of sales data from supermarkets, convenience stores, home centers, drug stores, and electronics retail stores to show that mask sales in Japan spiked following the WHO's declaration of a global state of emergency in January, causing a shortage of face masks in the market. This shortage moderated, however, after Japanese authorities implemented a ban on reselling masks and introduced a subsidy for businesses to expand mask-producing capacity.

In Taiwan, Kuo documents how the government pioneered a digital rationing system to facilitate mask distribution for its residents. Citizens could purchase face masks from state-contracted pharmacies either online or in person. For the latter, the digital system assigned citizens to different dates according to the last digit of their national ID number to avoid long queues. An app was also developed that worked to inform citizens of the number of masks in stock at each store, along with information on store names, locations, opening hours, and contact information. A special committee was also established to drive the production of masks domestically—as a result, 60 mask production lines were created that enabled daily domestic mask production to be increased from 1.88 million to 19 million as of the end of April 2020.

Simply put, if governments do not recommend mask use and implement policies that encourage it, citizens will not wear them readily. This is the key differentiating factor instead of a population's alleged primordial propensity to wear masks. Although citizens are individually accountable for their own hygienic behaviors, this does not absolve governments of their crucial role and responsibility to inculcate and encourage such practices, as the Asian experience illustrates.

Early border controls to contain the initial spread of the virus from abroad;

Rapidly increasing the capacity of national health systems in terms of mobilizing staff, securing supplies (e.g., protective equipment and respiratory devices) and optimizing space (e.g., ensuring adequate numbers of acute and intensive care beds) to scale up testing-tracing-treating infrastructure;

Promoting individual hygienic behavior such as social distancing and face mask use, which requires, respectively, active government enforcement of regulations against holding superspreader events, and strong government intervention in the market to ensure adequate supplies;

Fiscal measures to extend disaster relief to workers, businesses, and vulnerable populations; and

Clear, concise, and consistent communications from leaders and authorities.

These common measures seem so intuitive and straightforward, but why then have so many places failed to implement these measures, or when implemented, fail to achieve comparable results?

Sherry Tao Kong in “Comment on ‘COVID-19 in Taiwan: Economic Impacts and Lessons Learned’ by Chun-Chien Kuo” offers a likely explanation. The likelihood of such measures being implemented successfully by a government is “likely to be a function of its prevailing conditions, such as provision of public health service, degree of socioeconomic inequality, household living arrangements, and general attitude towards its government.”

Indeed, as has been often said, the pandemic has laid bare all the social, political, and economic fault lines that have already existed in a society. This is especially true for lower-income countries. If higher-income countries with sophisticated health systems are struggling to contain the virus, what about states with lesser public health infrastructure and weaker social safety nets? Whereas richer countries can have the luxury of choosing whether to implement lockdowns, low-income countries have had no choice but to keep their economies open (or open them prematurely) because they cannot afford fiscal injections to keep individuals and businesses afloat. The fiscal stimulus in the G20 so far is 17 percent of GDP, which is eight times more than the low-income countries’ macro-stimulus of 1.9 percent of GDP (Ragaa and Velde 2021). India, for instance, had lifted lockdown measures prematurely to revive an economy that is likely to hit a 30-year-low, although case numbers have surged to record highs.

This is where international cooperation can play a role. International cooperation against the pandemic will not only assist countries, especially poorer states, to contain the virus and exit the epidemiological crisis in the immediate term, but can also facilitate socioeconomic recovery and help prepare for future pandemics and other global crises in the longer run. But a global response to the crisis has been glaringly absent. Instead, efforts against COVID-19 are largely domestic-centric so far. While it is understandable that countries prioritize their own needs first, the infectious nature of the virus means that no country is safe until every other country is also safe. Global access to future vaccines, supplies, tests, and treatments is the only way to ensure the virus is truly eradicated within a country. Governments of rich countries should commit not only to preserve trade openness for these vital items, but also to ensure that poor countries have access to key medical supplies at affordable prices. All these efforts must be accompanied by fiscal support by developed countries to help countries in need to successfully deploy both epidemiological and economic measures in curbing the virus—rich countries should establish a global fund to provide the poor countries with the needed vaccine, and to enhance their efforts in testing, tracking, and treating COVID-19 cases.

The need for global cooperation has become even more urgent as frequent pandemics could become the new norm. Humanity's relentless encroachment on the environment guarantees this.

In the proof stage of this article, France announced a month-long lockdown of Paris on 18 March 2021.

The Great Barrington Declaration. 4 October 2020; Available at https://gbdeclaration.org .

Denmark even violated the terms of its Schengen membership by banning entry of non-resident foreigners for a month, starting 14 March 2020 (Nikel 2020 ).

Tedros Adhanom, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, pointed out that “never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic” (BBC 2020b ). And Anthony Fauci, head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, called the Declaration “ridiculous,” “total nonsense,” and “very dangerous,” saying that it would lead to a larger number of hospitalizations and avoidable deaths (Higgins-Dunn 2020 ).

Johnson had told the Italian Prime Minister in March 2020 that the UK was going for the herd immunity solution (Payne 2020 ). And Trump had predicted in early February 2020 that the COVID-19 disease would be gone in April 2020 (Bump 2020 ).

We can also rule out the reason for Trump's choice being that he was better informed or more perspicacious than the leaders of Western Europe. Trump's level of (self-proclaimed) genius-ness was plainly revealed on 24 April 2020, when he suggested that injection of disinfectant and exposure to ultraviolet light be the treatment for COVID-19 (BBC 2020a ).

Pitt ( 2020 ) is an excellent succinct exposition of the differences between the influenza virus and the coronavirus. Also see Centers for Disease Control ( 2020 ), and Hewings-Martin ( 2020 ).

China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.

The analyst's decision about which data series to examine is inevitably based at least on an implicit (often vaguely formed) hypothesis about causality and/or the transmission mechanism. The examination of data is arbitrary only when the analyst is totally at sea about how to think about the problem and is looking randomly at data series that are available.

The GHS index was constructed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Healthy Security to rank the degree of preparedness by 195 countries in 2019 to handle negative public health shocks like the emergence and spread of pathogens (enabled by factors like climate change, urbanization, and international mass displacement of people), and accidental or deliberate release of a deadly engineered pathogen.

Vasquez and Klein ( 2020 ) and Lee ( 2020 ). Biden banned this racialization of COVID-19 when he came into office ( The Star Democrat 2021 ).

Analyzing location data from about 45 million mobile devices, Alcott et al. ( 2020 ) confirmed that official stay-at-home orders had very little to do with the huge drop of economic mobility in the United States. Chetty et al. ( 2020 ) found from private sector data that high-income households sharply reduced spending in sectors that require physical interaction due to health concerns and that state-ordered reopening of economies have had only small impacts on spending and employment.

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• Published: 05 December 2023

Exploring the evolving landscape of COVID-19 interfaced with livelihoods

• Tong Li 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Yanfen Wang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5666-9289 1 , 4 , 5 ,
• Lizhen Cui   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4977-7577 6 ,
• Ranjay K. Singh 7   nAff10 ,
• Hongdou Liu 2 ,
• Xiufang Song 8 , 9 ,
• Zhihong Xu 2 &
• Xiaoyong Cui 4 , 6  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  908 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Complex networks
• Development studies
• Environmental studies
• Social policy

The aim of this study was to gain an understanding of the evolving landscape of research on the intricate relationship between COVID-19 and livelihoods, while also identifying research gaps and directions. To achieve this aim, a systematic review methodology was adopted, and metadata was developed using VOSviewer and R software. A total of 1988 relevant articles on COVID-19 and livelihoods were collected since the outbreak of the pandemic. However, after applying exclusion criteria and conducting thorough reviews, only 1503 articles were deemed suitable for analysis. The data was analyzed in relation to three phases of COVID-19 impacts: the early stage of COVID, the middle stages during the outbreak, and the post-recovery phase. We examined the distribution of research disciplines, regions, authors, institutions, and keywords across these phases. The findings revealed that coping strategies, food security, public health, mental health, social vulnerability, and regional differences were extensively researched areas in relation to COVID-19 and livelihoods. It was found that the United States had the highest volume of research on COVID-19 and livelihoods. Additionally, the top 1.28% of journals published 18.76% of the literature, with a predominantly focused on the environmental category. This study offers valuable perspectives into the vulnerability caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on livelihoods. Furthermore, it provides lessons learned, outlines potential future research pathways to understand the dynamics between environmental factors (like COVID-19) and livelihood stress, and includes a comparison of traditional livelihoods research.

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Introduction.

Livelihoods, as defined by Chambers ( 1995 ) and Scoones ( 2009 ), refer to the means of gaining a living through a combination of resources and activities. The dynamics of livelihood encompass the basic and enabling living environment, as well as related security and tools (Singh et al., 2022 ; Li et al., 2023a ). While livelihoods are a global concern, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the global economy, human health, and daily life, placing immense stress on livelihoods (Rasul, 2021 ; Sifat et al., 2022 ). Since the outbreak of the epidemic, governments worldwide have made diligent efforts to manage and control the pandemic (Farrell et al., 2020 ). Researchers from diverse fields have also made significant contributions to the fight against COVID-19 (Cunningham et al., 2021 ). The severity of the virus has been regarded as one of the most fatal in history (Fotiadis et al., 2021 ), resulting in significant disruptions to global economic trade, tourism and employment (Chaplyuk et al., 2021 ). Simultaneously, mobility restrictions and border closures implemented to curb the spread of the virus have had serious consequences for global economic development, leading to increased poverty and negatively affecting the sustainable development of pre-existing livelihoods. These effects present challenges to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, particularly SDG1 (zero poverty) (Marzouk et al. 2022 ; Jeyakumar et al., 2022 ).

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has captured the attention of research scholars worldwide, resulting in numerous literature reviews utilizing scientometric or bibliometric analyses to investigate research topics and themes (Anholon et al., 2022 ; Su et al., 2022 ; Viana-Lora and Nel-lo-Andreu, 2022 ; Xi et al., 2023 ). These analytical approaches have been employed to provide an overview of current trends and evaluate the progress made in COVID-19 research. For instance, within the field of geosciences, a bibliometric analysis combined with machine learning was utilized to review 1171 articles, emphasizing the role of geography in COVID-19 research (Xi et al., 2023 ). Similarly, in the field of business and management research, a bibliometric study of 107 papers demonstrated that COVID-19 has prompted various policy changes (Verma and Gustafsson, 2020 ). Comparable studies have been conducted in the field of social science (Nasir et al., 2020 ) and tourism research (Sigala, 2020 ; Viana-Lora and Nel-lo-Andreu, 2022 ) to investigate different measurement dimensions. However, despite these efforts, there remains a dearth of research on the intricate relationship between COVID-19 and livelihoods. Therefore, it is imperative to assess how research on livelihoods is being contextualized within the framework of COVID-19 and how this influences the developmental process.

Understanding livelihoods within the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and promoting socio-ecological system sustainability are crucial elements of human development. This study utilizes bibliometric analysis of metadata to investigate patterns and trends in research related to COVID-19 and livelihoods. With quantifying the relevant themes and topical dimensions, this research aims to provide valuable insights into expanding body of knowledge on livelihoods and its social impacts during the COVID-19 led pandemic. The findings have the potential to reveal the research frontiers and identify gaps in the field, offering guidance for future research. This research primarily addresses the following questions concerning livelihoods: (i) What is the current paradigm of global-scale research on livelihoods? (ii) Which themes have the most significant impact on people’s livelihoods during the pandemic? and (iii) What are the emerging trends in the impact of COVID-19 on livelihoods in the post-pandemic scenario?

Research methodology and data analyses

Approach of data collection.

We conducted a bibliometric analysis to examine and quantify data on COVID-19 pandemic-related livelihood research. Bibliometric analysis, known as the “science of science” (Zeng et al., 2017 ; Fortunato et al., 2018 ), involves quantitative analyzing large datasets of literature. This approach enables us to evaluate the current state of research and identify potential avenues for future collaborative studies (Viana-Lora and Nel-lo-Andreu, 2022 ). We accessed data from the core collection of the Web of Science (WOS) and used the keywords “Covid-19 and livelihood” in our search (Fig. 1 ), which yielded a total of 1988 documents. To ensure alignment with the purpose of our study, we selected relevant literature based on three criteria: (i) Relevance : To evaluate relevance, we considered whether the literature directly addressed the research topic “Covid-19 and livelihoods”, ensuring alignment with the study purpose by employing keyword matching to ensure alignment manually, (ii) Language : The language of the literature was limited to English was considered to ensure that the research team could accurately understand and analyze the content of the literature, (iii) Time frame : The publication dates of the screened literature ranged from January 2020 to October 2022 to maintain a focus on the most recent research findings during the COVID-19 pandemic. By applying these criteria, our screening process aimed to include documents that met our research objectives while excluding irrelevant or non-English publications published outside the specified time frame. To mitigate bias and ensure consistency, we had another independent team randomly verified the screening process. We selected 30% of the total dataset for manual validation, striking a balance between the need for data accuracy and the practicality of manually checking a large dataset (D’Angelo and van Eck, 2020 ). The manual verification of this subset confirmed the reliability of our data and the effectiveness of our filtering criteria. As a result, we included a total of 1503 documents that matched the objectives of this study for further analysis.

Flowchart of paper selection and data processing process.

Characterization of data and their analyses

Subsequently, relevant information was extracted from the research articles, encompassing the title, author names, institutional affiliations, country of research, abstracts, and keywords. Additionally, we collected data on the geographical distribution of COVID-19 concerning the livelihoods research field, along with the networks of keywords associated with this field and the top journals that published such research. In our research, we have captured the country and institutional affiliation data from each of the target papers. For papers resulting from international collaborations, we have recorded all participating countries and institutions in our database independently, counting each author once without considering their order in the author list. When an author is involved in more than one academic unit, each unit is counted, so the author will be included in each unit’s count. This multiple counts approach has allowed us to accurately portray and analyze the geographical distribution of these papers and provide deeper insights in our study. To facilitate further analysis and visualization, we exported the dataset as target files from the WOS. VOSviewer and R programming language were used for analyzing and visualizing this dataset, particularly “bibiliometrix” package in R , an open-source program that is known for its language-based capabilities and statistical algorithms. Regarding the geographic area, data was analyzed using Scimago Graphica (Hassan-Montero et al., 2022 ). VOSviewer has been extensively employed as a key technique for constructing relationships in bibliometric data and providing visual representations of the current status and groupings within data (Van Eck and Waltman, 2010 ; Van Eck and Waltman, 2017 ; Li et al., 2021 ). The size of the circle in the visualizations represent the number of papers published in each area of research, while connections between distinct circles indicate different clustering modules. Moreover, to better demonstrate the co-authorship analysis network, we set the threshold to two, referring to a requirement that authors must have collaborated on at least two publications to be considered as connected or having a significant co-authorship relationship. Keyword occurrence analysis forms distinct clusters, aiding in the identification of various research themes within the text, thereby enhancing the understanding of research trends and preference, which is applicable at different research stages. On the other hand, the R program provides a comprehensive set of tools for bibliometric analyses that feature high-quality statistical algorithms and integrated data visualization capabilities. These tools facilitate the efficient decomposition and parsing of raw data extracted from literature (Li et al., 2022b ). Leveraging these tools, we identified and analyzed trends and patterns in livelihoods research within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dynamic analysis of stages of development

To capture the progression of the research on pandemic and livelihoods, we divided the developmental stages into three periods based on the nature of the COVID-19 outbreak. Early stage: Outbreak and initial response (January 2020 to July 2020); Middle stage: Widespread transmission and large-scale control measures (August 2020 to December 2021) and Post-recovery stage: Vaccine rollout and gradual return to normal life (January 2022 to the date of analysing the data).

The early stage was chosen because it marked the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic when the impact of the outbreak was just beginning to manifest, and research reflected society’s response to this new threat. The middle stage was selected because it represented a period of further evolution of the pandemic and evolving societal responses to control measures. The post-recovery stage was chosen as it signifies society’s gradual return to normalcy, allowing us to learn from experiences and prepare for potential future public health challenges.

Temporal evolution of COVID-19 and livelihood research

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, a total of 1503 publications related to livelihoods research have been identified. Notably, these research papers have been published in 693 distinct journals, signifying a significant global growth rate of 541.5%. The study period into three phases (Fig. 2 a). These phases are delineated as follows:

a Represents overall trends in publications and their temporal evolution. b Represents the early phase, c represents the middle phase, and d represents the recovery phase of the top 10 categories in the Web of Science.

Early stage

During this phase, the volume of research on the intersection of COVID-19 and livelihoods exhibited a gradual increase. The number of publications rose from 18 in January to 60 by December. Despite the initial severe impacts on livelihoods, such as job losses and shifts in ways of living due to social distancing and lockdown measures, research on this theme was relatively scarce but grew steadily. The primary areas of research during this phase were public environmental occupational health, environmental sciences, and economics (Fig. 2b ).

Middle stage

This phase experienced an exponential surge in research output, reaching its peak with 124 publications in the first month of 2021. This increase coincides with the widespread global transmission of COVID-19, leading to the implementation of large-scale control measures by governments worldwide. The pandemic necessitated adjustments in work and life patterns, making the impact on livelihoods during this stage more complex. While some people adapted to new earning methods, such as remote work, occupations that relied on face-to-face interactions faced significant disruptions. Research priorities shifted during this stage, with a greater emphasis on economics-related research and continued focusing on public environmental occupational health. Additionally, other fields like environmental sciences, environmental studies, and development studies gained prominence (Fig. 2c ).

Post-recovery stage

Throughout this phase, research volume achieved stability, with fluctuations ranging from 52 to 106 publications per month. This stability coincides with a global return to normalcy, which was made possible by widespread vaccine distribution and the implementation of effective control measures. The sector of livelihoods may experience uneven recovery, given that this stage is characterized by reflection and learning from past experiences in preparation for possible future public health crises. During the third stage, research continues to prioritize public environmental occupational health, with a growing focus on economic recovery and the disciplines of environmental sciences, environmental studies, green sustainable science, and technology (Fig. 2 d).

Furthermore, the identification of number of publications the “January Peak” in both 2021 and 2022 may be attributed to various factors, including the commencement of the academic year, the continuation of pandemic-related research, international collaborative efforts, and the dynamic nature of global events.

Study area analysis

Regarding the distribution of research regions, the three phases, as explained earlier, have experienced great changes. With only a few major countries, such as the United States, India, and China, were involved in this theme in the early stages, followed by a large number of scholars (as many as 112 countries and regions) being involved in the research on combating epidemics and sustaining livelihoods. Relatively a smooth development was found in the third phase in which 65 countries (regions) were involved (Fig. 3a–c ). In total, the global geographic distribution of publications on this topic indicated that the United States (575 articles), the United Kingdom (288 articles), India (151 articles), China (134 articles), South Africa (122 articles), Canada (103 articles), and Australia (98 articles) had highly published the articles on COVID-19 and livelihoods (Fig. 3d ). The growing interest to pursue research and publish them on this issues in these countries might be due to the increased vulnerability of livelihoods and the aggravating extent of COVID impact (Buheji et al., 2020 ). Additionally, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) data, these are also the countries those had the greater impacts on human health and livelihoods at the beginning of the virus pandemic (Workie et al., 2020 ; Shang et al., 2021 ) (Fig. 3 ).

a Represents the early phase, b represents the middle phase, c represents the recovery phase, and d represents overall phase.

Journal analysis

Results indicated that the studies were published in a total of 683 journals. Notably, the top 10 journals accounted for 282 (18.76%) of research articles (Fig. 4 ). In contrast, 497 journals (63.35%) published only a single paper.

Top 10 most published journals in COVID-19 and livelihoods research field.

Authorship analysis

The results of authorship data from research studies on the COVID-19 pandemic and livelihoods indicated that 1503 publications involved a total of 8005 authors. The study authors also showed interesting changes, with only 4 main authors involved in the early phase of the epidemic and livelihoods research. It has been gradually increased as the epidemic continued to develop and expand. In the middle phrase of COVID-19, there were mainly 150 authors (only shown 9 in current network). Whereas in the third phase of COVID-19 pandemic, there were 36 authors (only shown 5 authors in the current network). In the phase third, a clear pattern of network patchiness was observed, which in turn illustrated the regional and localized nature of the research as a result of the impact of the epidemic (Fig. 5a–c ). Notably, independent authors accounted for 11.5% of the total publications, indicating a significant amount of collaboration in the development of these studies. The rate of international collaboration was observed to be over 42%, at least 5 researchers per article, and an average number of authors per article were to a tune of 5.69. Results presented in Fig. 5d exhibited how the most relevant authors stand out, with Bodrud-Doza M. and Rahman M. M. publishing 6 articles receptively. Brookes VJ and Gupta A published 5 articles each. If we take at least 2 publications as a determining factor, we got 297 authors, whereas with at least 3 articles, 59 authors were mapped who led research on COVID-19 and livelihood perspectives.

a Represents the early phase, b represents the middle phase; c represents the recovery phase. In ( b , c ), some of the 150/36 items in network are not connected to each other. The largest set of connected items consists of 9/5 items. In the figure, only this set of items is shown instead of all items. d Represents overall phase.

In terms of author affiliation, 2954 research units were involved, with significant shifts those occurred across the three phases in leading the research on COVID-19. During the early stages, Oxford University, among the others, was the primary contributor. However, as the pandemic progressed into the middle and later phases, research powerhouses began to diversify. North American institutions such as Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Toronto took the helm, alongside European entities like Oxford University and the University of Edinburgh. Additionally, the involvement of institutions in South and East Asia and newcomers from countries like South Africa, including Cape Town University and the University of South Africa, added complexity to the collaborative network (Fig. 6a–c ). It’s important to note that despite the substantial number of research institutions and overall publications from China and India, their research was learned to be somewhat fragmented. This fragmentation has led to a lack of a centralized body of researchers, even with multiple entities publishing more than ten papers and actively exploring this area. In conclusion, among the institutions with more than 30 publications, the University of Oxford had the highest number with 58 publications, followed by Cape Town University with 53 publications, the University of Toronto with 43 publications, the University of California, Los Angeles with 40 publications, Columbus University with 38 publications, Johns Hopkins University with 37 publications, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine with 30 publications, as depicted in Fig. 6d .

a Represents the early phase, b represents the middle phase; c represents the recovery phase, and d represents overall phase.

In summary, our results of authorship revealed a collaborative effort involving 8005 authors across 1503 publications. International collaboration was prominent, with over 42% of articles involving researchers from multiple countries. Leading institutions evolved across pandemic phases, with Oxford University, Cape Town University, and the University of Toronto emerging as key contributors.

Keywords analysis

This section focuses on the most relevant keywords in the field of COVID-19 and livelihood research, highlighting hot topics and potential future research areas. A keyword co-occurrence analysis was conducted using VOSviewer, with a minimum threshold limit of 5 occurrences per word (Li et al., 2022a ). A total of 3795 author keywords with an average of more than 12 citations per article. The resulting network of 194 keywords revealed COVID-19 was the most frequently occurring keyword, with 1072 occurrences. Notably, terms such as Sars-cov-2, Coronavirus, and COVID-19 pandemic were unified under the term COVID-19. By employing an automated algorithm, 8 clusters were formed based on the network relationships of these keywords. The analysis showed that keywords such as poverty (175 times), food security (56 times), public health (56 times), mental health (56 times) and resilience (46 times) were highly frequent (Fig. 7d ). Furthermore, in addition to analyzing each stage’s keyword co-occurrence (Fig. 7a–c ), we also paid attention to the evolution of high-frequency words. For example, along with related viral terms like ‘COVID-19’, the keyword ‘poverty’ emerged as a significant term during the early stage (Fig. 7b ). While during the middle phase of COVID, the central themes noted to be revolved around ‘public health’, ‘policy’, and ‘housing’ (Fig. 7b ). In contrast, the later stage witnessed a shift towards keywords such as ‘mental health’, ‘vulnerability’, ‘children’, and ‘food security’ (Fig. 7c ). Moreover, to show more clearly the clusters at different stages of development and the related keywords, we have counted the clusters formed at each stage as well as the keywords and its frequency at each stage, as detailed in the online resources.

a The early phase, b the middle phase, c the recovery phase, and d integral phase.

Our analysis identified significant shifts in keyword clusters during the COVID-19 pandemic, indicating evolving research interests. Researchers showed distinct preferences at different stages, with early focus on epidemiology-related clusters and later attention on mental health and resilience. Simultaneous research on multiple topics highlighted the multifaceted nature of the pandemic’s challenges.

The analysis of these groups allowed us to identify the specific themes of the study. These themes included cluster 1 (red in color) which focused on COVID-19 treatment measures and potential impacts, such as city closures and epidemiology (Fig. 7d ). The second cluster (depicted in green) encompassed studies related to public health and health policy. While cluster 3 (blue in color) contained around the topics such as food safety, agricultural sustainability and malnutrition. Vulnerability among different population groups was highlighted in Cluster 4 (yellow in color), whereas cluster 5 (purple in color) appeared to further exhibit the impact of COVID-19 on livelihoods from a gender perspective. The cluster 6 (light blue in color) highlighted social justice, human rights, and social protection among others. The cluster 7 (orange in color) reflected how mental health and illness were captured as part of keywords network. Whereas cluster 8 (brown in color) exhibited the clustering characteristics of the study regions, such as South Africa and Bangladesh.

The COVID-19 pandemic has engendered widespread disruptions to global livelihoods, and the response measures implemented by the governments (including restrictions) have placed significant constraints on livelihoods. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, research on this global issue has been increasing due to uncertainty about the sustainability of livelihoods that needed adaptive and coping-up measures by the population The analysis of keywords allowed us to identify a new trend to see the crisis as an opportunity to promote new, more sustainable livelihood development models. By clustering these keywords, we were able to categorize research findings into eight clusters, coalescing around six main thematic directions (Fig. 8 ).

Six main research themes on COVID-19 and livelihoods research studies.

Coping strategies (cluster 1)

The COVID-19 pandemic have given rise to various measures and policies aimed at mitigating its spread, such as social distancing and government-imposed travel restrictions (Stockwell et al., 2021 ). However, certain measures like blockades and mobility restrictions may have unintended consequences that limit the movement of economic factors and impede population mobility. As a result, employment opportunities and earning potential have been adversely affected (Atalan, 2020 ), leading to direct impact on income loss and purchasing power. Especially for low-income households it has further exacerbated the unsustainability of their livelihoods. At the same time, it has also significantly limited the educational opportunities for the youth (Dunn et al., 2020 ). Closing schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic would have a tremendous impact on workforce utilization (Smood et al., 2021 ), and the loss of this labor resource could have incalculable consequences (Joshi et al., 2022 ). However, evidence suggests that risk has also increased for the people living in overcrowded housing, large neighborhoods, and households where segregated people mix with vulnerable people and people who go to work or school (Berkowitz et al., 2021 ). Furthermore, social renters and those with low incomes were noted to be more likely than the general population to experience lockdowns or segregation within their homes (Singu et al., 2020 ). Despite these challenges, social tenants, low-income individuals, and minorities often lack the necessary space and facilities required for safe screening or isolation (Gaudron et al., 2022 ; Tunstall, 2022 ). Therefore, living in proximity without access to clean-living environments is ill-advised when combating a pandemic. The instability of income resulting from lockdown measures and other restrictions poses a significant risk to livelihoods.

Health disparities (cluster 2)

As data from the pandemic accumulate, COVID-19 may affect some segments of society more than others. Evidence suggest that blacks, Hispanics, and Asians had much higher rates of infection, hospitalization and mortality compared to whites, while African Americans had a higher incidence of COVID-19 cases (2.6 times), hospitalizations (4.7 times) and deaths (2.1 times) compared to non-Hispanic whites (Selden and Berdahl, 2020 ). These have caused a dramatic change in the pattern of human capital, and thus livelihood sustainability (Lopez et al., 2021 ). The discrepancies in the level of development across countries and regions further amplify these differences, leading to significant disparities in the availability of medical supplies, life-saving treatments, and post-rehabilitation care, particularly in poorer regions. This exacerbates health resource inequalities, posing an even greater risk of infection.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 risk factors significantly overlap with pre-existing health disparities, such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, and immune disorders (Poojitha and Narendra, 2020 ). One of the most troubling aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic is the disproportionate harm it causes to socio-politically marginalized groups (Hashim et al., 2020 ).

Poverty and food (cluster 3)

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected food security worldwide (Sereenonchai and Arunrat, 2021 ). The pandemic, along with associated policy responses, triggered a massive economic downturn and major disruptions in the food value chain, especially for low- and middle-income countries, affecting their local food systems and other shocks and stressors for their actors in different ways, with a dramatic impact on the food and nutrition security of the poor (Béné, 2020 ). Some studies have shown that COVID-19 has a greater impact on food security and nutrition for the poor than for the rich (Swinnen and McDermott, 2020 ). The evidence suggested that even food grain production could loss up to 23% due to the labor shortage (human capital) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the environmental pollution due to the agricultural operations (residue burning) was anticipated to compound the health risks (across the human population) with COVID-19 resurgence (Singh et al., 2020 ).

The COVID-19 pandemic will have an impact on families who have lost family members to the virus, further exacerbating the play of human capital (Béné, 2020 ). The impact of the epidemic on the sustainable livelihoods of poor farm households might be large in terms of natural capital and financial capital, large in terms of social capital and human capital, and small in terms of physical capital (Chan et al., 2022 ). To reduce the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the sustainable livelihoods of material resource-poor farmers, the governments can introduce relevant policies to encourage farmers to actively participate in agricultural production and enhance the sustainability of the livelihoods of material resource-poor farmers. Although many food systems were severely damaged, others were more resilient and food supply was relatively unaffected (Swinnen and McDermott, 2020 ).

Mental health (cluster 4)

In addition to the physical damage caused by the new pneumonia pandemic and the physical damage caused by the virus itself, there was also the psychological stress caused by people’s fear of it (Usher et al., 2020 ). The mental stress caused by the blockade and restrictive measures could also incalculably damaged (Jiloha, 2020 ). Moreover, these psychological impairments can directly affect interest, engagement, and efficiency in future work, which can also affect livelihoods in the long run (Gaudron et al., 2022 ). In addition to the significant health burden of COVID, there is also the stigma and discrimination associated with the disease that could lead to the relationship breakdowns and problems at the work (Nostlinger et al., 2022 ). As a result this may cause the significant additional suffering, which in itself can impact treatment and affect a person’s mental health (Saeed et al., 2020 ). The long-term research on the extended conditions by asthma, depression and AIDS like issues have shown that associated stigma has terrible consequences for public health (Turner-Musa et al., 2020 ). Fear of such stigma can also drive people away from the health services and other supports, which over time can have a negative impact on people’s physical and mental health (Zheng, 2023 ). These interrelated processes of stresses have adverse implications on productive human capital that primarily shape the livelihood.

Social vulnerability (cluster 5, 6 & 7)

The COVID-19 pandemic was widespread worldwide, but its impact was observed to vary across different social classes based on their adaptive capacity (Barton et al., 2021 ; Herbers et al., 2021 ). People with low income were learned to be more susceptible contract the virus (Bauer et al., 2021 ), and faced increased health risks and financial burdens (Paul et al., 2021 ). There has been much media coverage of how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequality (Bessell, 2022 ; Escalante and Maisonnave, 2022 ; Van Wyngaard, 2022 ). Many public opinion polls also showed that most people believed that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the poor (Ronkko et al., 2022 ). Moreover, it affected the people differently from gender to age group to varying degrees (Vakili et al., 2020 ). Key insights from the past suggest it is not only the elderly, children and women, but there were also racial differences in terms of impacts and vulnerability caused by this pandemic (Gaynor and Wilson, 2020 ). The social inequalities could further exacerbate in remote and resource-poor areas (Power et al., 2020 ), which may increase the pressure on family labor income. Scholars observed that the loss of learning from school closures during a pandemic may further exacerbate inequalities between the countries (Gambau et al., 2022 ), and result poor human resources development. Students acquired skills are particularly affected in countries with prolonged school closures and a lack of effective online educational infrastructure (Özdemir et al., 2022 ). Therefore, improving human capital will be crucial to enhancing social resilience for the stress like COVID-19 pandemic.

Regional concerns (cluster 8)

From a global perspective, regions concentrated in South Asia (India and Bangladesh), Latin America region, and South Africa region (South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, etc.) were the critical areas for sustainable livelihood research prior to the pandemic (Mbunge, 2020 ). The outbreak of the epidemic has severely disrupted the coordination of livelihood capital in these areas, resulting in substantial challenges for health and socio-economic systems. The elderly population is expected to face more difficulties in coping with the pandemic and may further experience difficulties in the later life, due to the much higher risk of death faced by the elderly (Heid et al., 2021 ). The urban/rural scale analysis is also important because remote rural areas are also areas of concentration of older adults (Kashnitsky and Aburto, 2020 ). Therefore, these areas are important elements that need to be prioritized for recovery and development in the next decade. They are also elements that will help make up for the shortcomings of the SDGs and should be given attention.

COVID-19’s impact on livelihood studies: a comparative perspective

The unprecedented pandemic of COVID-19 has dramatically reshaped various academic fields (You et al., 2020 ), including the sphere of livelihood studies. As global communities struggle to adapt to the new normal, understanding the shifts in the focus and methodology of livelihood studies is of utmost importance. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, livelihood studies largely concentrated on examining socio-economic factors, development policies, and environmental aspects influencing people’s livelihoods (De and Zoomers, 2005; Ofosu et al., 2020 ; Li et al., 2022a ). The quantitative analysis (Blundo-Canto et al., 2018 ; Li et al., 2023b ), field surveys (Li et al., 2022c ), and case studies (Piggott-McKellar et al., 2020 ; Li et al., 2023c ) were common research methodologies, revealing insights into diverse local contexts and the effects of global trends on communities. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, has compelled a pivot in these studies (Swinnen and Vos, 2021 ). New research questions have emerged, focusing on the pandemic’s effects on livelihoods, food security (Swinnen and McDermott, 2020 ), employment (Chaplyuk et al., 2021 ), and health (Saeed et al., 2020 ; Turner-Musa et al., 2020 ), among others. The virus’s differential impact on various socio-economic groups and regions has emphasized the need for more inclusive and nuanced studies. The urgency of the situation has also necessitated rapid research techniques, including online surveys and remote data collection, altering the methodologies traditionally used in livelihood studies (Jeyakumar et al. 2022 ; Paul et al., 2021 ). Furthermore, the pandemic’s disruptive effects on global economies and local livelihoods have brought new insights and perspectives to the fore (Swinnen and Vos, 2021 ; Piquer-Rodríguez et al., 2023 ). The centrality of health in maintaining sustainable livelihoods, the role of social protection schemes in crisis situations, and the need for resilient and adaptable livelihood strategies have become evident in the wake of the COVID led crisis.

Looking ahead, these changes herald new directions for livelihood studies. Future research will need to further explore the long-term effects of the pandemic, the efficacy of different coping strategies, and the lessons learned for improving resilience and adaptability of livelihoods. In addition, the crisis has highlighted the need for multidisciplinary approaches, incorporating health (Usher et al., 2020 ), economics (Gaudron et al., 2022 ; Tunstall, 2022 ), sociology (Barton et al., 2021 ; Herbers et al., 2021 ), and environmental sciences (Swinnen and McDermott, 2020 ; Zhu et al., 2023 ), among others. Therefore, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly altered livelihood studies, shifting research questions, methodologies, and conclusions. It is crucial to recognize and understand these changes to effectively respond to the current crisis and to prepare for similar emergencies in the future.

Conclusion and policy insights

The primary objective of this study was to conduct a quantitative bibliometric analysis of scientific outcomes in the field of COVID-19 and livelihoods. This study provides valuable insights on the intersection of COVID-19 pandemic and livelihood perspectives under different scenarios. Specifically, we identified the main geographical distribution of studies, significant journals and subject areas, research institutions, notable authors, and co-occurrence clustering analysis of the keywords related to COVID-19 and livelihood in three distinct phases of pandemic occurrence. This study demonstrated that pandemics and the consequent human control measures brought about significant shifts in livelihoods and COVID-19 research, both at granular regional levels and on a broader global scale. There was a rapid escalation in research output during the early phase, peaking in the mid-term. This body of work has spanned from local to global scales, with the primary emphasis on North America, Europe, East Asia, South Asia, and South Africa. The network analysis illustrates that, regardless of the authors’ affiliations, institutional relationship networks, or keyword networks, the fragmentation within the network significantly increased during the middle and later studies, leading to a more complex network.

The authorship analysis revealed the involvement of 8005 authors across 1503 publications in COVID-19 and livelihoods research. Notably, over 42% of these articles showcased international collaboration, indicating a significant level of cooperation among researchers from various countries. However, despite the presence of numerous research institutions, we observed an increasing dispersion in institutional collaboration. This dispersion has impacted the comprehensive representation of the network, suggesting that regional collaboration tends to outweigh global cooperation in these studies. Moreover, the leading institutions contributing to this research evolved as the pandemic progressed through its phases. In the early stages, Oxford University played a significant role. Still, as the pandemic continued, research powerhouses such as Cape Town University and the University of Toronto emerged as key contributors to this evolving landscape. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the current focus and future trends in livelihoods research, offering important data support and theoretical foundations towards achieving the SDGs by 2030. Given the increasing number of publications on this topic, it is crucial to assess the quality of the papers presented in order to obtain the most relevant information.

Our study identified six major directions for livelihoods research, providing targeted response strategies and recommendations for achieving sustainable livelihoods. An important insight from our research highlights the need for effective data sharing and collaborative research mechanisms among scholars to address the physical and mental stress on livelihoods caused by the pandemic. By conducting paradigm studies, such efforts can enhance the global sustainability of human livelihoods, improve human well-being, and work towards eradicating poverty. This study is probably the first of its kind to examine the intricate relations between COVID-19 and livelihoods, offering valuable lessons and future pathways regarding the vulnerability caused by the pandemic and its impacts on livelihoods. They key insights derived from this research also contribute to enhancing the transfer of knowledge from livelihoods theory research to livelihoods improvement research, helping mitigate the consequences of the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic presents significant challenges to the livelihoods of the global population, particularly those on the verge of poverty. Consequently, exploring effective approaches to address these challenges at different levels of government, scientist, and society—including policy mechanisms, research priorities, and exploration of key regions—will be an important focus of the future research.

Limitation of the study

One of the limitations of the current study is its exclusive focus on English-language publications. This approach may have led to the omission of valuable research available in other languages. Recognizing the potential benefits of exploring research conducted in diverse languages, it is important to acknowledge that doing so could provide new insights and perspectives on COVID-19 and sustainable livelihoods. Despite this limitation, the key results and findings of our study can function as a significant starting point for other scholars to pursue similar research in other languages. Replicating these studies in various languages would contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of COVID-19 and sustainable livelihoods, thereby enhancing the existing theory of sustainable livelihoods.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the International Partnership Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant number 121311KYSB20170004-04), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 42041005) and the CAS Strategic Priority Research Program (grant number XDA20050103) and TL received the Griffith University Postgraduate Research Scholarship for his Ph.D. project.

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Ranjay K. Singh

Present address: Division of Agricultural Extension, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi, 110012, India

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College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

Tong Li & Yanfen Wang

Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security, School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Nathan, Brisbane, QLD, 4111, Australia

Tong Li, Hongdou Liu & Zhihong Xu

School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD, Australia

Beijing Yanshan Earth Critical Zone National Research Station, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 101408, China

Yanfen Wang & Xiaoyong Cui

State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System Science (LATPES), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

Yanfen Wang

College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

Lizhen Cui & Xiaoyong Cui

ICAR-Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal, 132001, Haryana, India

National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

Xiufang Song

Department of Library, Information and Archives Management, School of Economics and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

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Credit authorship contribution statement Conceptualization, TL, ZX, YW; Data collection, TL, HL, LC; Funding acquisition, XC, TL, YW; Methodology, TL, RKS, ZX, XS, XC; Resources, ZX, YW; Software, TL; Supervision, ZX and XC; Visualization, LC, TL, Writing—original draft, TL, LC, ZX; Writing—review and editing, TL, RKS, LC, HL, XC, XS, ZX. Language editing, ZX, RKS, LC, HL; Academic editing, RKS, XC, YW. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Li, T., Wang, Y., Cui, L. et al. Exploring the evolving landscape of COVID-19 interfaced with livelihoods. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 908 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02391-6

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Research for Policy and Practice Report

The impact of covid-19 on livelihoods and food security.

Published on 30 June 2021

Studies of livelihoods and food systems since the start of the global pandemic in 2020 have shown a consistent pattern: the primary risks to food and livelihood security are at the household level.

Covid-19 is having a major impact on households’ production and access to quality, nutritious food, due to losses of income, combined with increasing food prices, and restrictions to movements of people, inputs and products. The studies included in this Research for Policy and Practice Report and supported by the Covid-19 Responses for Equity (CORE) Programme span several continents and are coordinated by leading research organisations with a detailed understanding of local food system dynamics and associated equity and livelihood issues in their regions:

• the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa;
• supporting small and medium enterprises, food security, and evolving social protection mechanisms to deal with Covid-19 in Pakistan; and
• impact of Covid-19 on family farming and food security in Latin America: evidence-based public policy responses.

This R4PP is available in English, French, and Spanish.

Cite this publication

Thompson, J.; Ndung’u, N.; Albacete, M.; Suleri, A.Q.; Zahid, J. and Aftab, R. (2021) The Impact of Covid-19 on Livelihoods and Food Security , Covid-19 Responses for Equity (CORE) Research for Policy and Practice Report, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, DOI: 10.19088/CORE.2021.001

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Lockdowns, lives and livelihoods: the impact of COVID-19 and public health responses to conflict affected populations - a remote qualitative study in Baidoa and Mogadishu, Somalia

• Dorien H. Braam 1 ,
• Sharath Srinivasan 2 ,
• Luke Church 3 ,
• Zakaria Sheikh 4 ,
• Freya L. Jephcott 1 &
• Salome Bukachi 5  

Conflict and Health volume  15 , Article number:  47 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Authorities in Somalia responded with drastic measures after the first confirmed COVID-19 case in mid-March 2020, closing borders, schools, limiting travel and prohibiting most group functions. However, the impact of the pandemic in Somalia thereafter remained unclear. This study employs a novel remote qualitative research method in a conflict-affected setting to look at how some of the most at-risk internally displaced and host populations were impacted by COVID-19, what determined their responses, and how this affected their health and socio-economic vulnerability.

We conducted a remote qualitative study, using Katikati, a 1-to-1 conversation management and analysis platform using short message service (SMS) developed by Lark Systems with Africa’s Voices Foundation (AVF), for semi-structured interviews over three months with participants in Mogadishu and Baidoa. We recruited a gender balanced cohort across age groups, and used an analytical framework on the social determinants of health for a narrative analysis on major themes discussed, triangulating data with existing peer-reviewed and grey literature.

The remote research approach demonstrated efficacy in sustaining trusted and meaningful conversations for gathering qualitative data from hard-to-reach conflict-affected communities. The major themes discussed by the 35 participants included health, livelihoods and education. Two participants contracted the disease, while others reported family or community members affected by COVID-19. Almost all participants faced a loss of income and/or education, primarily as a result of the strict public health measures. Some of those who were heavily affected economically but did not directly experienced disease, denied the pandemic. Religion played an important role in participants’ beliefs in protection against and salvation from the disease. As lockdowns were lifted in August 2020, many believed the pandemic to be over.

Conclusions

While the official COVID-19 burden has remained relatively low in Somalia, the impact to people’s daily lives, income and livelihoods due to public health responses, has been significant. Participants describe those ‘secondary’ outcomes as the main impact of the pandemic, serving as a stark reminder of the need to broaden the public health response beyond disease prevention to include social and economic interventions to decrease people’s vulnerability to future shocks.

By October 2020, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases surpassed 40 million worldwide, with over one million fatalities, primarily affecting the United States, India and Brazil, while many countries relatively unaffected during the ‘first wave’ experienced dramatic increases in cases (WP, 20 Oct; WHO, 21 Oct). Early on, global health experts warned of the potential for devastating COVID-19 outbreaks in low- and middle-income settings (LMIS) due to a lack of availability, inadequate capacity and poor access of healthcare systems, however confirmed caseloads across the African continent have remained relatively low, including in Somalia.

For decades, Somalia’s status as a fragile and conflict-affected state has corresponded with weak health systems and poor health outcomes for the majority of its population. Somalia, with an estimated population of 15.9 million, consists of five federal states and its capital Mogadishu in Benadir province under federal authority, with varied levels of economic development depending on the states’ level of political stability and security [ 1 ]. Two of the country’s main economic sectors of livestock trade and remittances were negatively affected by the pandemic, including as a result of movement restrictions to control the spread of the virus [ 2 ]. The country is among the poorest countries in the Horn of Africa and designated as a ‘least developed country’ by the United Nations (UN), with its economic development affected by protracted crises causing widespread destruction and displacement, all further complicated by the pandemic [ 2 ]. With almost 70 % of the population living in poverty, by mid-2020 almost a third of the population was in need of humanitarian assistance due to crisis including floods, droughts, locusts invasions and COVID-19 [ 1 ]. The pandemic was projected to reduce the expected economic growth from 3.2 % to a negative 2.5 % in 2020, while inflation increased due to nationwide price increases [ 3 ].

The country lacks comprehensive health services, healthcare professionals and infrastructure, alongside unequal distribution of facilities and resources, means that many people lack access to healthcare altogether [ 4 ]. This is reflected in the World Health Organization (WHO) key health indicators for Somalia, which are among the lowest in the world, including high neonatal and maternal mortality rates, and a low life expectancy of 56.5 years [ 5 ]. In response to COVID-19, the Federal Government of Somalia pledged US$5 million towards a healthcare response fund, to develop and rehabilitate nationwide healthcare facilities [ 3 ]. However, the lack of current facilities means that COVID-19 testing is limited to suspected cases, thereby likely underestimating the burden of disease, with most testing taking place in the main urban centers [ 6 ].

The low case numbers in LMIS have to a large extent been attributed to limited testing capacities, exacerbated in fragile and conflict-affected countries such as Somalia [ 7 ]. Some researchers argue however, that the rapid government responses, fewer (international) travel movements, limited urbanization and a relatively young demographic in LMIS has limited infection rates, as morbidity and mortality rates are associated with older age [ 8 , 9 ]. Modelling studies assessing the potential impact of COVID-19 in LMIS acknowledge significant uncertainties, due to a lack of primary data on transmission and health outcomes [ 8 , 10 ].

Due to a lack of access, including through COVID-19 related movement restrictions and the ongoing complex humanitarian emergency, there has been little evidence on the actual status of the pandemic in Somalia. The proportion of confirmed positive tests remained fairly stable throughout March – October, 2020. Meanwhile, WHO data shows a varied picture across the country, which makes it difficult to draw conclusions [ 11 ].

Somali authorities implemented rapid and drastic measures to curb the spread of the pandemic in a challenging environment. As soon as Somalia identified its first COVID-19 cases in mid-March, the Federal Government established a national response committee and an incident management system. At the onset of the pandemic, Somalia had no laboratory capacity to diagnose the disease, and screening started with temperature checks at airports and isolation of suspected cases [ 6 ]. The Ministry of Health established a multisectoral emergency task force, deployed health workers at airports, and established isolation facilities for those arriving from high-risk countries [ 12 ]. Subsequently border crossings were closed and in-country movements restricted, while isolation center- and critical care capacity was increased [ 13 ]. The Ministry further developed a National Preparedness and Response Plan and Risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) strategies and taskforce, supported by national and international relief organizations [ 12 , 14 ]. RCCE strategies through formal and informal channels initiated to prevent and control disease spread included the provision of a toll-free number for general advice, the use of radio, television and social media for mass health communications, with a focus on social distancing and hygiene [ 15 ]. Community Health Workers (CHW) conducted outreach, visiting communities to identify cases based on syndromic surveillance, tracing contacts and raising awareness [ 16 ].

By late September 2020, Somalia had confirmed 3588 COVID-19 cases, with 99 fatalities, while the utilization rate of isolation facilities remained low at 17 % [ 17 ]. The impact of the disease is difficult to investigate and assess however, not only due to a limited testing capacity, but also a lack of access to hard-to-reach populations in the ongoing complex humanitarian emergency, in particular during COVID-19, resulting in gaps in epidemiological trend data [ 18 ]. As a result of the protracted emergency, malnutrition rates are high and health outcomes poor, exacerbated by the lack of health services, which puts people at increased risk of infectious diseases, including COVID-19 [ 19 ]. Meanwhile, experts warned about the economic impact of curfews and lockdowns, control measures developed based on middle- and high-income contexts, potentially unsuitable to the local population [ 20 ].

The contribution of the pandemic to the existing barriers to access to populations in need poses an ongoing challenge for ensuring an effective response grounded in community experiences and priorities. Through this study, we deploy a novel remote qualitative research approach suited to fragile and conflict affected settings to gain a rapid grounded overview of how the disease and formal intervention measures impacted internally displaced and host populations, and how policy measures, local context and community responses influenced disease transmission, social and economic vulnerabilities.

• Internal displacement

Currently, there are an estimated 2.6 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Somalia (IOM, 2020), primarily displaced due to the impact of floods or drought (72 %) and conflict (25 %) [ 21 ]. The most recent displacement was caused by severe flooding affected the southern regions, with over 650,000 newly displaced since June 2020. One of our participants was recently displaced due to droughts and locusts destroying crops and agricultural land. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) often depend on daily wages and have limited or no access to health facilities. Acute watery diarrhea, including suspected cholera, and measles are regularly reported in clinics serving IDPs [ 22 ].

IDPs in informal camps were considered most at risk of COVID-19, due to continuous in- and out movements and low-quality shelters [ 23 ]. Displaced populations often live in marginalized areas, in substandard and crowded living conditions in camps or slum settings, lacking sanitation and access to public health and social services, which puts them at higher risk of infectious diseases, including syndemic health risks such as malnutrition and underlying conditions, which often remain untreated [ 24 , 25 ].

One of the main challenges of responders remains restricted humanitarian access due to ongoing insecurity, in particular in south and central Somalia. Refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) further increase the pressure on limited health system capacity, with people often relying on private services when resources are available, or those provided by non-profit organizations [ 4 ]. People relying on services provided by relief agencies, such as health supplies, food and cash distributions, are likely to be greatly impacted by movement restrictions. Humanitarian responders therefore rapidly drafted plans to control COVID-19, focusing on strengthening of health systems, provision of protective equipment and RCCE. International and national nonprofit organizations provided training on COVID-19 surveillance, case management and RCCE, increased investigation and testing capacity, established health and (underutilized) isolation facilities. Community Health Workers (CHW) conducted outreach, visiting communities to identify cases, tracing contacts and raising awareness (WHO, August 2020). Nonetheless a first case was confirmed in an IDP camp on 28 April [ 26 ]. Our study takes a closer look at the experiences of these hard-to-reach populations during the early months of the pandemic.

Social determinants of health

Disease infection and transmission does not only depend on the presence of pathogens, but on complex interactions of biomedical, environmental, socio-economic and political factors [ 27 ]. Socio-economic and health inequalities related to political and economic processes increase disease risks of resource-poor communities, especially those in countries with limited resources facing complex emergencies and limited healthcare [ 28 ]. Globally, COVID-19 has made these health inequalities even more visible. Pre-existing poor health conditions, which put people more at risk of the disease, may be caused or exacerbated by crowded, poor living conditions and a lack of sanitation, which characterize IDP camps [ 29 ]. These factors play a role in the risk of severe COVID-19, the ability to adhere to preventive measures, and the impact of public health approaches to lives and livelihoods. We therefore analyze our findings using a conceptual framework of social determinants of health developed by Solar and Irwin [ 30 ] for the World Health Organization (WHO), which explicitly aims to not only guide empirical work, but also influence policy making [ 30 ]. The strength of the framework lies in its inclusion of structural drivers of the social determinants, with political context particularly relevant in considering the impact of COVID-19 policies.

The aim of our study was to capture the burden of COVID-19 disease and socio-economic impact in households and communities on which there is limited data available, explore responses to the disease and increase understanding how these may influence vulnerability and wider determinants of health. We hope that this study and the learnings on the remote research method and tools that it employed will inform responses to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other infectious diseases in vulnerable hard-to-reach populations.

Study design and setting

We used a remote web-based conversation and analysis platform, Katikati, to open, sustain and analyse 1-to-1 SMS text message interactions with research subjects over an extended period. This allowed us to capture qualitative interview data on the impact of COVID-19 to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and host populations, including on their health status, responses to the disease, protective practices and what determined their response. Sending and receiving SMS was free for respondents. Through this method, we were able to capture the voices of participants at a time where travel restrictions and insecurity limit physical access to hard-to-reach populations. We conducted our study in Baidoa, the capital of Somalia’s Southwest state, and Mogadishu, the federal capital in Benadir province, which are among the largest urban centers in the country and host to respectively 246,000 and 497,000 IDPs, the largest such populations in Somalia. We contacted IDPs and host populations in Daynile district, Mogadishu and Baidoa, two places where IDPs are considered most at risk of COVID-19, based on indicators developed by IOM, related to the site location and size, frequency of new arrivals, shelter space and type, access to water and health support, and available information on humanitarian services, affecting infectious disease risk and options for disease prevention [ 31 ].

Materials and participants

The study utilized a qualitative longitudinal case study approach, that recruited research subjects from audiences who had engaged with AVF’s COVID-19 RCCE interactive radio and SMS programming. To design the questionnaire, we used existing data on Somali IDPs, the COVID-19 response and WHO and CDC information on COVID-19 symptoms and transmission, as well as previously published studies on infectious diseases and epidemics in resource-poor settings. Following basic demographic questions to confirm people’s status as displaced or host population, we started with an open-ended question on how lives were impacted by COVID-19 to determine the focus of the conversation. Subsequently, we personalized the conversations dependent on participants’ responses, discussing themes including disease prevention, responses and health systems and socio-economic impact.

Study participants were recruited from the self-selected AVF ‘Imaqal’ interactive media programme participant database, a gender equality and social inclusion focused communications programme in South Central Somalia and Puntland, through which they previously received radio and SMS messages on COVID-19 symptoms and measures. Participants were informed in Somali language about the voluntary bases of participation at the start of data collection through a consent flow protocol. Based on available demographic data from the Imaqal participant database, we sampled and invited 121 people to participate, of which 51 opted in. Following the introductory messages, 13 participants did not further engage, while we dismissed three conversations for analysis as the participants were underage. The final sample used for analysis consisted of 35 conversations, of which 17 were female − 12 in Mogadishu (4 IDP), 5 in Baidoa (1 IDP), and 18 male participants − 10 in Mogadishu (4 IDP), 8 in Baidoa (4 IDP) (Fig.  1 ). The youngest age group was considerably more responsive, with 30 participants in the age group 18–35, 3 participants between 36 and 54 and only 1 over 55 years old, which is reflective of a population where only 42 % falls within the working age group (15–64) [ 32 ].

Gender distribution of participants across the study sites

Data collection

The qualitative study was conducted over three months, with text messages sent out from Monday – Friday, through the online 1-to-1 SMS conversations interface in ‘Katikati’. Messages were designed in English by DB and translated into Somali by ZS, checked by AVF colleagues. Responses were collected by DB and translated by ZS. A total of 1563 messages was sent, out of which 745 response messages were received, including recruitment and exit messages. Individual conversations lasted 2–9 weeks, with the most active conversations sharing 100 messages back and forth. Engagement among participants was varied, and decreased significantly when government restrictions were lifted throughout July and August.

Responses were collected in a database, coded using a grounded theory to establish the main emerging themes as discussed by participants [ 33 ]. We conducted a narrative analysis, triangulating data with published data from quantitative surveys and other literature.

Health and economic impact

The majority of participants ( n  = 29) reported being affected either directly or indirectly by COVID-19. Two participants reported contracting the disease themselves and/or their family members, while others had seen people with symptoms in their community ( n  = 7). Two participants lost relatives due to the disease, both in Somalia and among the Diaspora in the United Kingdom.

“Yes, it has affected us in a big way, we have lost some of our relatives, I have personally contracted the virus and my children also but we have survived, we have used some herbal medicine. It has also affected my daily income and the economy in general” (male, age 37, Daynile, host population).

Besides the two personal cases, which were confirmed by testing according to the participants, only one other participant mentioned family members receiving a COVID-19 test. Host population participants reported that free testing is available in Martini hospital in Mogadishu and Central Hospital Baidoa, while others reported a lack of testing facilities, or a refusal to test. As there is no treatment for COVID-19, people opted for traditional methods such as ginger and lemon, as well as self-isolation while displaying disease symptoms. Quarantine is considered difficult however for people in large households living in small accommodations.

Notably, four participants did not feel affected by the disease at all, in terms of health or otherwise. All of these were female members of the host population between 18 and 24 years old, and reported not knowing of any COVID-19 cases in their family or communities. Two 25 year old male participants initially claimed not to be affected by COVID-19, however did see a deterioration of the economic situation in their community, while another 25 year old male put COVID-19 into perspective, as he perceived the biggest health risk to be the lack of medication for other endemic diseases. Several participants ( n  = 3) point out that the economy and/or their lack of income is a bigger concern.

‘I don’t think there is coronavirus in the community; there a lot of changes [in] health, economy and community finance; one of the health challenges is that the hospitals don’t have enough medicine; [for] many diseases like Hepatitis typhoid and other diseases’ (male, age 25, Baidoa, host population).

‘It has impacted me in a big way financially; it has affected the market, everything has become expensive, food in shops are expensive; I have not received any kind of assistance from anyone and nobody asked me if I need help; I am buying cheap items nowadays’ (male, age 18, Daynile, host population).

By far the largest impact of the pandemic to participants was a result of government-imposed curfews, lockdowns and travel restrictions, unsurprising in a population highly dependent on daily wage labour. Ten people responded that their education was affected, while sixteen people lost income and/or their job, and others noticed that the disease had more generally affected their community. The level to which people were affected economically, depended on the type of livelihood or other daily activity such as education or household responsibilities.

‘Coronavirus has had a big impact on me, it has affected my economy and my education; it has reduced movement and transport, nothing is leaving or entering the city; because of that the economy has gone down’ (female, age 20, Baidoa, host population).

‘I was a teacher when the virus reached the country schools were closed and that is how my salary and income stopped and now I have joined the IDPs of Baidoa’ (male, age 25, Baidoa, IDP).

Income of - internal displaced - people selling goods or services on the market ( n  = 2), and restaurant staff ( n  = 2) decreased, or lost altogether, as they received fewer customers due to social distancing and curfews, while those selling products on the streets ( n  = 2 female, male IDP) and operating ‘Bajaaj’ taxis faced limitations to their business due to movement restrictions. The closure of schools affected two teachers who lost their jobs, as well as students. Meanwhile, some - host population - participants mentioned that prices increased ( n  = 2), while remittances received from the Diaspora decreased. One male IDP could no longer send his children to school due to the loss in income.

‘Coronavirus has greatly affected my life; I have lost the finances which I used to pay my bills like electricity, water and children’s education, the reality right now is that I have stopped my children from going to school and Madrasas’ (male, age 32, Baidoa, IDP).

‘It has affected the economy and the consumption of goods in the market is very low, this is because the remittance money people used to receive from their relatives in the diaspora have stopped due coronavirus’ (male, age 18, Daynile, host population).

Responses and coping mechanisms

Coping mechanisms depended on the remaining income and livelihood opportunities, available savings, (extended) family support, religion, and the availability of and trust in health services. Some participants reported buying less, other using savings or relying on family, as they faced a reduction or loss of income. One teacher manages to survive as he lives with his family, while another participant moved in with her mother-in-law. While one participant got newly displaced, another young IDP returned from Daynile to Marka in April to start up a new business.

‘my grandfather, grandmother and uncle have died because of it, and they died in Mogadishu and England, those are the people who I depended on for finances; I [now] live with the mother of my ex-husband so that I can afford milk for my infant child’ (female, age 27, Daynile, host population).

Some participants used free healthcare facilities for other diseases, while others used private or NGO hospitals, although for some the costs of healthcare facilities are too high.

‘appointment with the doctor costs money, testing costs money, medicine costs money and everything costs money and the people cannot afford it’ (female, age 33, Daynile, IDP).

Participants believe that healthcare services have been greatly affected, mentioning a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medication, as well as a lack of doctors. The lack of equipment and medication available to doctors was noted by one participant as causing reluctance to treat other health issues in hospitals during COVID-19.

‘[community leaders] started sharing health guidelines similar to those of health experts, we expected them to set up testing centers where people who think they have COVID-19 can go and get tested; it has affected [access to healthcare] in a big way; things like medicine and lack of hospital equipment, doctors are protecting themselves against this virus and are afraid to engage with the sick people’ (male, age 18, Daynile, host population).

Awareness and religion

People across age/ gender groups received RCCE messaging through media channels, primarily radio, social media, SMS, door-to-door visits by officials, and friends. As our participants previously participated in an AVF COVID-19 RCCE interactive radio-SMS project, all had a basic level of awareness, but their uptake differed, while some expressed concern about corruption and misinformation.

‘Somalis are difficult people to talk and they don’t the risks of COVID-19, coronavirus is real we need to be careful’ (female, age 25, Daynile, host population).

‘they share it [through] SMS, radio and people who visit houses to create awareness; I have heard from the ministry of health of the South West State of Somalia’ (female, age 20, Baidoa, host population).

‘I believe COVID-19 is a virus that exists but it does not exist in Somalia, the media and government agencies just want to take contracts for coronavirus’ (male, age 20, Daynile, IDP).

Most participants knew the COVID-19 symptoms. Two female participants - both IDPs - mentioned that elderly and/ or people with underlying conditions - high blood pressure and diabetes - are more at risk of COVID-19. Two other female participants are aware that the disease can spread by asymptomatic people through air/ germs, learned in school about other diseases.

‘the things that are dangerous are places where there is a crowd like hotels, marriage ceremonies and restaurants; we put effort on hygiene like washing our hands, we avoid places where there are many people, we give extra caution to elder people; I wear a face mask and the reason is this virus spreads in the air, so it’s good to protect yourself against this dangerous disease’ (female, age 18, Daynile, IDP).

‘The things that puts people at risk are lack of hygiene, people with pre-existing conditions like blood pressure and diabetes and also crowded places; I protect myself by wearing face masks, I wear gloves on my hands and distance myself from other people; I take this measures every time since the dangers of coronavirus were mentioned; awareness creation is done day and night through radio stations and other media which has led to people to learn a lot about this virus because it’s something we have never heard of before’ (female, age 30, Daynile, IDP).

Most participants were aware of the government guidelines, including social/ physical distancing ( n  = 8), avoid crowded places ( n  = 5), the need to practice hygiene ( n  = 5) including washing hands, using personal protective equipment such as facemasks ( n  = 5) and gloves ( n  = 1), although three male participants found it hard to find, buy and/or wear these. Two male participants - both host community members - mentioned sharing the guidelines within their household and/or community.

‘It’s hard to get a mask and other things that prevent against the spread of coronavirus and some of the people cannot afford it; first there is no specific place where masks are sold, I see them in health centers and few people who work for NGO’s that given the masks to distribute to the community but instead they are selling the masks for 0.5 dollar’ (male, age 22, Baidoa, IDP).

Religion played an important role in people’s lived experience during COVID-19, across all age groups, genders and population types. People put their faith in the help of God to prevent them or the community from getting infected, end the pandemic, or revive the economy. While most were aware that the disease does not discriminate based on religion, some of those who were not personally affected attributed this to their religion, while others believed Somalia was spared as a Muslim country. One participant believed ‘going against the religion’ posed a potential infection risk.

‘The community are assisted; by God, because we are a Muslim community; coronavirus has ended; because God has ended it’ (female, age 24, Daynile, host population).

‘God has protected me from it but I am not sure about what I would do; because it is hard to quarantine when you are at home and people live with you’ (female, age 20, Baidoa, host population).

‘I don’t think there is coronavirus/ COVID-19 in the community thanks to God for ending this virus; I think it has ended because the people have started behaving like they used to before corona and they have forgotten about corona and how it has affected the world’ (male, age 22, Baidoa, IDP).

Prevention and disease

The risk of disease is higher among populations lacking access to resources and services, with socio-economic status influenced by education and occupation [ 30 ]. IDPs are at particularly high risk, as they often live in precarious conditions, are dependent on external assistance and often unable to take measures to prevent disease. As the participants in our research self-selected from a cohort which previously participated in AVF COVID-19 RCCE interactive radio-SMS programming, they were generally aware of COVID-19 symptoms, increased vulnerabilities and protective measures. Already in March, a survey conducted by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) found that three-quarters of participants were familiar with vulnerabilities to and the symptoms of the disease, while 58 % of people knew about protective measures, which might be attributed to the rapid and drastic government measures early on in the pandemic, supported by response agencies already present in-country due to the ongoing complex humanitarian emergency [ 34 ].

In our study, most participants were aware of the risk of infection through contact with an infected person, while one participant was aware of asymptomatic disease transmission. These findings reflect a survey conducted by Save the Children, which found that two-thirds of participants believed the disease is transferred through direct contact with an infected person, 58 % knows it is airborne, while 54 % mentioned contaminated surfaces and 49 % through droplets [ 35 ].

The lack of sanitation and handwashing facilities is a major risk for COVID-19 transmission, especially in Somalia where only 42 % has access to fresh water and 65 % to improved water sources [ 32 ], and 50 % lacks access to soap [ 36 ]. Online surveys measuring the adherence to government recommendations of five main preventive measures - physical distancing, face mask use, hand hygiene, mouth covering when coughing/sneezing, and avoidance of touching the face - found that adherence depended on gender, being a healthcare worker, obtaining information from official sources and level of education [ 6 ]. High uptake of preventive measures was reported by Alawa et al. [ 18 ], with over 77 % of participants taking at least one protective measure. Some participants in our study identified challenges with following the measures however, in particular related to inadequate shelter.

Even though official COVID-19 case numbers have remained low, in our small sample we found a number of people who had experienced COVID-19 themselves, or among family members. A nationally representative household survey found that almost a third of participants experienced at least one COVID-19 symptom, although only 12 % of these were tested, due to a lack of the availability or access testing facilities due to costs and transportation issues [ 36 ]. While a third of people used traditional remedies such as ginger, 30 % of the people experiencing symptoms denied it could be COVID-19 [ 36 ]. Some reports indicate that stigma and the lack of quality healthcare limits the number of people coming forward with symptoms for tests [ 37 ].

Up to 60 % of the Somali population does not have access to health services, while less than one-fifth of facilities have adequate equipment and medical supplies [ 12 ], noted as a major concern by several of our participants. Distance, medical fees, the lack of medication and personnel, and discrimination affect access to medical care [ 32 , 34 ]. Lacking access to healthcare facilities in non-pandemic times, due to COVID-19 people have been even more reluctant to visit clinics for primary healthcare visits and vaccinations, resulting in untreated infectious diseases [ 38 ]. Walker et al. [ 8 ] warn that ‘mitigation strategies that slow but do not interrupt transmission will still lead to COVID-19 epidemics rapidly overwhelming health systems’, while the reduction in healthcare seeking during the pandemic might also lead to excess morbidity and mortality.

Work and income

As a country dependent on imported goods, the closure of airports and cancellation of flights had a direct effect on market prices, as reported by our participants and confirmed by data from FEWS NET [ 39 , 40 ]. While the government has tried to offset the price increases by temporary tax exemptions on basic commodities, this had limited effect as retailers started stockpiling [ 39 ]. Surveys showed that the increase in prices led to 34 % participants unable to buy essential food items [ 18 ], and up to 70 % started skipping meals [ 34 ].

As reported by our participants, international responses to COVID-19 further affected the Diaspora and remittances, which decreased by about 36 % in April [ 40 ]. By September, at least half of people surveyed nationwide reported receiving less remittances [ 34 , 36 ].

In the March NRC survey, a vast majority of participants mentioned the negative impact of the closure of schools and madrasas (92 %), market inflation (67 %), community panic (64 %) and work stoppages (60 %). In April AVF reported that 8.1 % of participants was unable to go to work and 16.8 % lost their jobs, while by September surveys showed under- and unemployment now affected over two-thirds of the population, resulting in substantial decreases in household income, with IDPs disproportionally affected [ 34 , 36 , 41 ], reflected in our study. The closure of schools affected over one million children in Somalia according to the UN [ 17 ], reflected in our findings among students and their parents. This in turn has longer term health implications, as education is an important indicator not only for socio-economic status, but also influences disease prevention knowledge and uptake of RCCE messaging [ 30 ].

Communication and trust

Participants received awareness messages and guidance through (social) media, radio, SMS and in-person conversations with community leaders and friends. As most households in Somalia have access to a mobile phone with radio [ 32 ], surveys conducted by NRC and Save the Children in March and April 2020, showed that the majority of participants used radio as primary source of RCCE messaging, followed by social media or phone, television, and local authorities, community leaders, neighbours or other community members [ 34 , 35 ], although awareness among women and IDPs remained relatively low [ 18 , 42 ]. Religious leaders and radio shows are considered the most trustworthy sources of information, together with health officials and aid workers [ 18 , 42 ], with some organizations engaging religious leaders to share important messages on COVID-19 and safe practices on radio shows [ 41 ].

While only 12.5 % cited the importance of prayer or other religious practices in the NRC survey, in our study most participants refer to religion in relation to protection or salvation from the pandemic. Other surveys show that for at least a third of the population religious practices and guidance is important [ 18 , 41 ]. Save the Children’s RCCE assessment found that some believed that only religion could protect them against the virus [ 35 ].

We found that participants were sometimes misinformed about disease symptoms, but more importantly some lacked trust in authorities, healthcare services and humanitarian responders. IOM [ 14 ] points out the importance of ‘adopting an inclusive and integrated approach to counter misinformation and stigma’. A study by AVF in April 2020 found that over 10 % of participants reported stigma or misinformation, in particular IDPs outside of Benadir [ 41 ]. WHO and partners developed the RCCE (Risk Communication and Community Engagement) guidelines in response to the Ebola epidemic, to reduce stigmatization, enable prevention and access to services, by promoting a two-way communication strategy [ 35 ].

Coronavirus is over

Most COVID-19 restrictions imposed by the Somali authorities were lifted and international flights were reinstated by early August, reflected in our study as we started receiving messages across the cohort claiming that the number of COVID-19 cases was ‘going down’ and that ‘coronavirus is over’.

One participant described the pandemic in Somalia in two ‘phases’: while the initial government measures and restrictions raised the awareness of the disease and protection measures, by the end of July restrictions were lifted and life returned to ‘normal’, and schools reopened by mid-August. Ahmed et al. [ 6 ] showed that adherence to government guidance decreased between April and July, even though twice as many people reported flu-like symptoms by July.

Participants who did not experience a COVID-19 case in their household or community believed the disease had ‘ended’ or never affected Somalia at all. One male participant claimed to have heard from friends that a vaccine was found. By mid-August, once restrictions were lifted, several participants disengaged from the conversation as they believed the disease was no longer impacting the country. Only three participants remained cautious and warned that Somalis should remain vigilant and keep taking the disease risk seriously.

Study limitations

While the remote method provided an opportunity to engage with participants during lockdown and access restrictions, the method is dependent on participants’ access to mobile phones and electricity, and ability to use SMS, potentially resulting in a relatively young cohort of respondents. The method does not allow for participant verification, and it is therefore possible that several people engaged on the same mobile phone over time. The study is not meant to provide a representative sample for extrapolation onto a wider population. Rather the study approach aims to deliver timely contextually-grounded qualitative findings from deeply personal experiences that may in turn guide further research or inform response decision-making.

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected the people of Somalia, their resilience depending primarily on health and economic outcomes of the pandemic, as well as the level of awareness of the disease and preventive measures. We found multiple individuals and households reporting COVID-19 symptoms, disease and community transmission. People whose health was affected by the disease remained predictably more careful in their responses to the pandemic. However, following a global trend, with the lifting of lockdown in August, general resistance against measures such as facemasks and social distancing increased (WHO, July 2020). While the confirmed number of cases in Somalia is relatively low, lack of availability of and access to testing facilities, combined with denial, stigma, and a lack of trust in health services, the unofficial disease burden remains unclear. The resurgence of COVID-19 in countries which managed to retain low caseloads during the ‘first wave’ should count as a warning against complacency.

Perhaps more importantly, the pandemic has affected people’s vulnerability to further shocks, affecting socio-economic health determinants such as livelihoods, remittances and household income – reflected in the COVID-19 related displacement of two of our participants. Authorities have duplicated international policy responses, including physical isolation and movement restrictions, sometimes exacerbating local vulnerabilities by limiting access to food and medical supplies, discounting local experiences and community responses. While these issues are not unique to Somalia, the socio-economic risks of rigid public health response are much higher in this conflict-affected context, but less of a focus of authorities and supporting agencies. For an effective response planning, more data is required beyond the localized, selective COVID-19 surveys conducted so far, and needs to include qualitative contextualized information beyond basic demographic, economic and health data, including spatial and social data, and citizen-generated knowledge[ 20 ]. There is a need for a multidisciplinary, intersectoral, inclusive response, focused on social and economic interventions, as well as public health control measures. Continuous awareness raising, improved free and accessible health services, income support and a return to- or alternative education need to be addressed to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Availability of data and materials

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article.

Abbreviations

Africa’s Voices Foundation

Camp Coordination and Management

Displacement Tracking Matrix

Internally Displaced Persons

International Organization for Migration

Low and middle-income settings

Ministry of Health

Norwegian Refugee Council

Personal Protective Equipment

Risk Communication and Community Engagement

United Kingdom

United Nations

World Health Organization

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NEXUS. The significant impacts of COVID-19 on the livelihoods and health of Somali communities: Findings from a nationally representative household survey. Mogadishu: Federal Government of Somalia; 2020.

Jerving S. Stigma. and weak systems hamper the Somali COVID-19 response. Washington: Devex; 2020. Available from: https://www.devex.com/news/stigma-and-weak-systems-hamper-the-somali-covid-19-response-97895 . [cited 2020 Sep 30].

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all participants for their commitment and AVF for facilitating this study.

DB is supported by the Gates Cambridge Trust (OPP1144). The fieldwork for this study was funded by a Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund COVID-19 Emergency Award. The Trust did not have a role in the design of the study, collection, analysis or interpretation of data.

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Disease Dynamics Unit, Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Dorien H. Braam & Freya L. Jephcott

Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Sharath Srinivasan

Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Luke Church

Africa’s Voices Foundation, Nairobi, Kenya

Zakaria Sheikh

Institute of Anthropology, Gender and African Studies, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya

Salome Bukachi

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Contributions

All authors contributed to the conceptualisation of the research design and protocol. The study was implemented by DB and ZS, in close consultation with the other authors. Coding was done by DB and analysis reviewed by SB. DB and SB wrote the draft manuscript, while SS, LC and ZS provided feedback to the manuscript and revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Dorien H. Braam .

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The study protocol was approved by the Human Biology Ethics Committee at the University of Cambridge (protocol number HBREC.2020.22). In Somalia, Africa’s Voices Foundation is registered to operate to conduct programmatic work that involves data collection and analysis to improve policy and practice. Participants were informed in Somali language about the voluntary bases of participation at the start of data collection through a consent flow protocol.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Braam, D.H., Srinivasan, S., Church, L. et al. Lockdowns, lives and livelihoods: the impact of COVID-19 and public health responses to conflict affected populations - a remote qualitative study in Baidoa and Mogadishu, Somalia. Confl Health 15 , 47 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-021-00382-5

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Received : 11 January 2021

Accepted : 03 June 2021

Published : 12 June 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-021-00382-5

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Symposium Report: The Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Vulnerable Communities in the Philippines

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the loss of millions of lives, disrupted the global economy, and created secondary impacts on livelihoods, education, and mental health across the globe. No country or economic group has been immune to the direct impacts of the pandemic, but marginalized communities are particularly vulnerable to the secondary impacts including some public health measures like extended lockdowns. Marginalized populations are those excluded from mainstream social, economic, educational, political, and/or cultural life. They can be excluded or discriminated due to multiple factors such as their race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion, language, and/or displacement, among others. The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative's (HHI) Resilient Communities Program sought to understand how vulnerable or marginalized communities in the Philippines experienced COVID-19, and how communities coped and adapted in response to direct and indirect effects of COVID-19, including public health measures. To do this, HHI invited Filipino authors exploring this central question to submit papers for consideration to be selected to present and share in a symposium. In addition to its research objectives, the symposium sought to connect researchers and practitioners to create a network of professionals dedicated to serving the needs of marginalized communities in the country.

Watch the full symposium:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zC1FzWRUuo

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Impact of covid-19 on people's livelihoods, their health and our food systems.

Joint statement by ILO, FAO, IFAD and WHO

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic loss of human life worldwide and presents an unprecedented challenge to public health, food systems and the world of work. The economic and social disruption caused by the pandemic is devastating: tens of millions of people are at risk of falling into extreme poverty, while the number of undernourished people, currently estimated at nearly 690 million, could increase by up to 132 million by the end of the year.

Millions of enterprises face an existential threat. Nearly half of the world's 3.3 billion global workforce are at risk of losing their livelihoods. Informal economy workers are particularly vulnerable because the majority lack social protection and access to quality health care and have lost access to productive assets. Without the means to earn an income during lockdowns, many are unable to feed themselves and their families. For most, no income means no food, or, at best, less food and less nutritious food.

The pandemic has been affecting the entire food system and has laid bare its fragility. Border closures, trade restrictions and confinement measures have been preventing farmers from accessing markets, including for buying inputs and selling their produce, and agricultural workers from harvesting crops, thus disrupting domestic and international food supply chains and reducing access to healthy, safe and diverse diets. The pandemic has decimated jobs and placed millions of livelihoods at risk. As breadwinners lose jobs, fall ill and die, the food security and nutrition of millions of women and men are under threat, with those in low-income countries, particularly the most marginalized populations, which include small-scale farmers and indigenous peoples, being hardest hit.

Millions of agricultural workers -- waged and self-employed -- while feeding the world, regularly face high levels of working poverty, malnutrition and poor health, and suffer from a lack of safety and labour protection as well as other types of abuse. With low and irregular incomes and a lack of social support, many of them are spurred to continue working, often in unsafe conditions, thus exposing themselves and their families to additional risks. Further, when experiencing income losses, they may resort to negative coping strategies, such as distress sale of assets, predatory loans or child labour. Migrant agricultural workers are particularly vulnerable, because they face risks in their transport, working and living conditions and struggle to access support measures put in place by governments. Guaranteeing the safety and health of all agri-food workers -- from primary producers to those involved in food processing, transport and retail, including street food vendors -- as well as better incomes and protection, will be critical to saving lives and protecting public health, people's livelihoods and food security.

In the COVID-19 crisis food security, public health, and employment and labour issues, in particular workers' health and safety, converge. Adhering to workplace safety and health practices and ensuring access to decent work and the protection of labour rights in all industries will be crucial in addressing the human dimension of the crisis. Immediate and purposeful action to save lives and livelihoods should include extending social protection towards universal health coverage and income support for those most affected. These include workers in the informal economy and in poorly protected and low-paid jobs, including youth, older workers, and migrants. Particular attention must be paid to the situation of women, who are over-represented in low-paid jobs and care roles. Different forms of support are key, including cash transfers, child allowances and healthy school meals, shelter and food relief initiatives, support for employment retention and recovery, and financial relief for businesses, including micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. In designing and implementing such measures it is essential that governments work closely with employers and workers.

Countries dealing with existing humanitarian crises or emergencies are particularly exposed to the effects of COVID-19. Responding swiftly to the pandemic, while ensuring that humanitarian and recovery assistance reaches those most in need, is critical.

Now is the time for global solidarity and support, especially with the most vulnerable in our societies, particularly in the emerging and developing world. Only together can we overcome the intertwined health and social and economic impacts of the pandemic and prevent its escalation into a protracted humanitarian and food security catastrophe, with the potential loss of already achieved development gains.

We must recognize this opportunity to build back better, as noted in the Policy Brief issued by the United Nations Secretary-General. We are committed to pooling our expertise and experience to support countries in their crisis response measures and efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. We need to develop long-term sustainable strategies to address the challenges facing the health and agri-food sectors. Priority should be given to addressing underlying food security and malnutrition challenges, tackling rural poverty, in particular through more and better jobs in the rural economy, extending social protection to all, facilitating safe migration pathways and promoting the formalization of the informal economy.

We must rethink the future of our environment and tackle climate change and environmental degradation with ambition and urgency. Only then can we protect the health, livelihoods, food security and nutrition of all people, and ensure that our 'new normal' is a better one.

Media Contacts Kimberly Chriscaden Communications Officer World Health Organization Email: [email protected]

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National Statistical

News and insight from the office for national statistics, exploring the changing impact of covid-19 on our lives.

• September 3, 2021

In March 2020, as the nation was urged to stay at home and only to leave for essential reasons, our lives were turned upside down.  At the ONS, most staff moved to homeworking, and those of us with children found ourselves, in common with millions of others, trying to combine childcare and home-schooling with working in new ways.  Here Tim Vizard looks back over the impact we’ve seen the pandemic having on people’s lives.

The word ‘unprecedented’ has been over-used to describe the past 18 months, but that was the position the ONS found itself in last March when the UK Government tasked us with providing real time statistics to understand how adults in Great Britain were coping as circumstances changed.

In a matter of days, we adapted our Opinions and Lifestyle survey to provide robust weekly estimates of the impacts living with COVID-19 were having on people’s daily lives.  Since March 2020, over 200,000 adults have taken part in our survey across Great Britain and to date, we have published weekly reports reflecting how people were feeling, and the evolving challenges they were facing.

Early priorities were to establish whether people understood how to protect themselves from the virus and if they were taking measures to do so, such as handwashing with soap and water. During these early days, wearing face coverings were not on the agenda in those first surveys of March and April 2020s.

TV and social media were playing important roles in providing information and it was clear that people were taking the coronavirus seriously, with 86% of adults worried that they or someone in their family would be infected. Despite this, many people were rallying round to help each other: 84% of people aged 70+ said someone had offered to organise or deliver food and essential items if they needed to self-isolate.

Yet in those early weeks of the first lockdown, half of adults thought life would return to normal within 6 months.  Last week, just 16% felt life would return to normal within 6 months, with “over a year” the view of 28% of adults.

The extent to which we have learned to “live with COVID” is seen in responses over time. Support for, and compliance with, protective measures such as hand-washing and wearing face coverings have remained high throughout.

People’s behaviour in each weekly report has reflected changing circumstances and the regulations in place over the past 18 months, from moves towards outdoor socialising and going to cafes and restaurants last summer to the growing restrictions towards the year’s end and then into early 2021.

Over time, worry about the impact of COVID-19 on our lives has fallen from 86% back in March 2020 to 48% at the end of August 2021.  We’ve been able to track the numbers of adults working from home and travelling to work throughout the pandemic, and provided insights into how many adults who would like to continue some form of hybrid working in the future. As young people are returning to schools and colleges, we’ve seen how concerned parents were about the effect that home-schooling had on their children’s wellbeing and the strain it placed on adults too.

Nevertheless, nearly half of adults are still ‘very or somewhat worried’ about the impacts of COVID-19.  Personal wellbeing across all measures is still worse than pre-pandemic. Seeing the nation’s wellbeing in real time have brought home the impact the pandemic has had on levels of anxiety in the population, particularly at the start of 2021. In the first three months of this year , more than one in five adults were experiencing some form of depression: double the rate found before the pandemic.

At the end of 2020, we also started watched with interest the roll out of COVID-19 vaccinations. We’ve seen people become increasingly positive about the COVID-19 vaccines, with 96% of adults saying they having already had it or would be likely if offered. Most recently, 94% of people who have received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine said they would be very or fairly likely to have a booster vaccine if offered .

As someone who has worked on this survey since the start of 2020, I have found each week’s results fascinating, often resonating with my own experience and that of my colleagues. Delivering weekly results has required a hugely dedicated team across ONS, working long hours to provide timely estimates to our colleagues across Government.  As we move to a fortnightly survey, with the next results published on 10 September, we will continue to explore the impacts, old and new, that COVID-19 is having on our lives.  The fortnightly survey will give our participants more time to respond, and us more time to reflect on findings and incorporate new issues into the survey as life continues to change.

If you are one of the 200,000 people who have taken part in the survey – or any of the others we are conducting – I’d like to say thank you on behalf of all of us at ONS. Your responses have been hugely important in understanding the wide reaching impacts of COVID-19 has had on our lives.

Tim Vizard, Policy Evidence and Analysis Team at the ONS.

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Working Paper The livelihood impacts of COVID-19 in urban South Africa

A view from below.

This paper investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related policy measures on livelihoods in urban South Africa. Using qualitative research methods, we analyse two rounds of semi-structured phone interviews, conducted between June and September 2020 in the township of Khayelitsha, Cape Town. We contextualise these by presenting a snapshot of the nationwide dynamics using quantitative panel data.

Our findings describe how the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened the economic vulnerability which preceded the crisis. Survivalist livelihood strategies were undermined by the economic disruption to the informal sector, while the co-variate nature of the shock rendered social networks and informal insurance mechanisms ineffective, causing households to liquidate savings, default on insurance payments, and deepen their reliance on government grants. In addition, the impact of the pandemic on schooling may deepen existing inequalities and constrain future upward mobility.

Simone Schotte

Rocco Zizzamia

WIDER Working Paper 56/2021

https://doi.org/10.35188/UNU-WIDER/ 2021/994-5

© UNU-WIDER 2021

• South Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

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