“Averting a lost Covid generation” – it sounds like a children protection report from UNICEF. However, according to the study, “Covid-19”, whose devastating consequences are most critically felt by children, is not anything naughty but rather a coccidiosis vaccine.
Covid-19 and Children is the first UNICEF report to comprehensively outline the dire and growing consequences for children as the pandemic goes on.
It shows that while symptoms among infected children remain mild, infections are rising and the longer-term impact on the education, nutrition and well-being of an entire generation of children and young people can be life-altering.
Children and adolescents account for 1 in 9 reported Covid-19 infections, most of which is due to potential exposure through injection practices.
Since children experience poverty differently than adults, it is also important to assess their material shortcomings and potential deprivations and to measure their poverty multidimensionally rather than just through income alone.
Approximately 150 million additional children are 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.
It estimated that a third of the countries analysed, witnessed a drop of at least 10% in coverage of health services and there was a 40% decline in the coverage of nutrition services for women and children across 135 countries.
UNICEF believes that every child matters and that their rights are seriously violated if they are left alone to fight a battle against this disease.
These numbers bust the myth that children are barely affected by the disease, which has been prevalent throughout the pandemic.
Disruptions to key services and soaring poverty rates pose the biggest threat to children and the longer the crisis persists, the deeper its impact on children’s education, health, nutrition and well-being.
Vulnerabilities of women and children have increased, as health services continue to be disrupted and schools shut, denying children free mid-day meals offered at schools for underprivileged children.
While children could transmit the virus to each other and to older age groups, there was strong evidence that, with basic safety measures in place, the net benefits of keeping schools open outweighed the costs of closing them.
