COVID-19 and children

In 2020, it was projected that the global socioeconomic crisis caused by the pandemic could push 142 million more children into monetary poor households in developing countries. Thus, the total number of children living in monetary poor households in developing countries could reach just over 725 million in the absence of any mitigating policies. Nearly two-thirds of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Since then, as vaccines, masks and other interventions eased the risk and spread of the pandemic, economics have started to recover (albeit unevenly). As a result, the projections for 2021 indicate a slight recovery, with an estimated increase of 60 million more children living in monetary poor households in 2021 compared to 2019.

In 2020, it was projected that approximately 150 million additional children would be living in multidimensional poverty – without access to education, health care, housing, nutrition, sanitation or water – due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the analysis jointly carried out by Save the Children and UNICEF. Estimates derived from data from more than 70 countries indicate that around 47-48 per cent of children were severely deprived of at least one of these critical needs before the coronavirus pandemic even hit. Although the revised projections, based on schools reopening and health centers not being overburden in most countries, do not paint as a dire picture, the situation for children living in multidimensional poverty is still expected to be worse than prior to the pandemic by around 100 million children – unless national governments and the international community step up to soften the blow.

Furthermore,  nearly 147 million children missed more than half of their in-person schooling 2 years into the pandemic, with more than 27 million of them having missed at least three-quarters of in-person schooling. This amounts to 2 trillion hours of lost in-person learning globally. Emerging evidence shows that many children did not even return to school when their classrooms reopened.

At the peak of the pandemic, 188 countries imposed countrywide school closures, affecting more than 1.6 billion children and youth. Even prior to this, however, children’s learning was in crisis, and the pandemic has only sharpened these inequities, hitting school children in poorer countries particularly hard. Globally, many schools lack the resources to invest in digital learning, and many children from poorer households do not have internet access.

At least one in three of the world’s schoolchildren – 463 million children globally – were unable to access remote learning when COVID-19 shuttered their schools. And the actual number of students who cannot be reached is likely significantly higher than this estimate. In many situations, despite remote learning policies and the presence of the necessary technology at home, children may be unable to learn due to skills gaps among their teachers or a lack of parental support.

Though national governments around the world have been quick to implement remote learning, new health protocols and reopening plans, these policies have varied widely based on each country’s wealth. Even short disruptions in children’s schooling can have long-lasting negative impacts due to factors including the lack of structured programmes for catching up. In the past, school closures have led to an increase in child marriage and child labour which often prevent children from continuing their education.

Quite simply, we are looking at a nearly insurmountable scale of loss to children’s schooling. While the disruptions to learning must end, just reopening schools is not enough. Students need intensive support to recover lost education.

COVID-19 is also likely to increase the number of stillbirths.  Nearly 200,000 additional stillbirths could occur in 12 months as women are less likely or able to access health services. This senseless loss of life can often be prevented with quality antenatal and delivery care but even before the pandemic hit, few women were receiving the necessary care to prevent stillbirths.

The pandemic threatens to reverse decades of progress made around the world toward eliminating preventable child deaths.

Additionally, almost 6 million children received some but not all vaccines required for full protection against many life-threatening diseases. With COVID-19 putting enormous pressure on already weak or overstretched health systems, the number of unvaccinated and undervaccinated children is expected to increase, exacerbating existing inequities and putting the lives of many children at serious risk of disease or death.

More than 94 million children are at risk of missing measles vaccines because of paused measles campaigns in 26 countries due to efforts to control COVID-19 (as of November 2020), threatening to exacerbate ongoing measles outbreaks. Worldwide, cases of measles surged to nearly 870,000 in 2019, the highest number of reported cases in the past 23 years.  And global measles deaths have climbed nearly 50 percent since 2016, claiming an estimated 207,500 lives in 2019 alone.

The risk of child marriage increases through various pathways, including economic shocks, school closures and interruptions in services. It is well known, for example, that economic insecurity can lead to child marriage as a way to relieve financial pressure on a family. The evidence is also clear that education is a protective factor against child marriage. Thus, school closures such as those triggered by COVID-19 may, in effect, push girls towards marriage since school is no longer an option. Additionally, the disruption of ‘non-essential’ services including reproductive health services have a direct impact on teenage pregnancy and subsequently on marriage.