Preliminary Report: Study on Socio-Economic aspects of COVID-19 in the Maldives (Round One)

Novel coronavirus or Covid-19 pandemic continues to spread across the world. As of 11 August 2020, 213 countries and territories were affected with 20,394,035 confirmed cases, 741,807 deaths and 13, 283,685 have recovered. Maldives reported its first case on 7th March 2020 and as of 11 August 2020 reported 5223 confirmed cases and 2849 recoveries with 20 deaths. The country reported its first community case on 15th April 2020 which triggered lockdown of greater Male’ area with travel restrictions between islands.

While the pandemic is primarily a health issue, the measures to contain Covid-19 have wide social and economic implications. There are reports of economic impact this pandemic has created globally and a number of countries has taken measures to manage this economic impact. Emerging literature on the social impacts of the Covid-19 have noted the huge social psycho-social impact of this pandemic. While Maldives has announced a number of interventions to cushion the vulnerabilities that are emerging out of this Covid-19 pandemic, considering the society wide impacts expected from the pandemic, a study was registered at the Maldives National University (RR/2020/S-02) with ethics approval from the National Health Research Council (NHRC/2020/006). This included periodic online surveys and interviews with key informants to assess the socio-economic effects of the containment measures.

This report presents the preliminary results of the first round of online survey launched on the 14th of May 2020 to obtain information of the socio-economic challenges the people experienced since the lockdown on 15th April. The objective of the survey was to understand the extent of knowledge, perceptions and attitudes related to Covid-19 and its prevention, perceptions and concerns about population health, access to essential services and understand the effects on employment and income.