Covid-19 vs. Ebola: Impact on households and small businesses in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Stoop, Nik Desbureaux, Sébastien Kaota, Audacieux Lunanga, Elie Verpoorten, Marijke
Copyright Year	2020
Abstract	In April 2020, the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo was facing two major infectious disease outbreaks: Covid-19 and Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). We highlight large differences in the socioeconomic impact of these two outbreaks. The data come from a phone survey that we conducted in the period May-July 2020 with 637 households and 363 small firms from a megacity and two rural communes in the province of North Kivu. While 3,470 EVD cases and 2,287 EVD deaths were confirmed since August 2018, self-reported impacts of EVD on revenues, access to food and behavior were limited. In contrast, only 251 Covid-19 cases were reported as of July 22nd but respondents reported sizable effects on livelihoods, especially in the large urban hub, and in part driven by substantial job losses. Our results show that different infectious disease outbreaks can have very different effects, largely unrelated to case numbers of the disease. Moderately lethal but highly transmissible viruses such as Covid-19 can trigger a steep economic downturn, especially in areas with high economic interconnectedness, reflecting both national and international policies to contain the pandemic.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC8446712&blobtype=pdf
ISSN	0305750X
Journal	World Development [World Dev]
Volume Number	140
DOI	10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105352
PubMed Central reference number	PMC8446712
PubMed reference number	34548742
e-ISSN	0305750X
Language	English
Publisher	Elsevier Ltd.
Publisher Date	2020-12-15
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Subject Keyword	COVID-19 Ebola Democratic Republic of Congo Emerging infectious diseases Socio-economic impact
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Sociology and Political Science Geography, Planning and Development Development Economics and Econometrics