UNICEF: Children Will Need Almost a Decade to Recover from Lockdowns

Children from low-income families worldwide will need “seven to eight years to recover and return to pre-COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] child poverty levels” according to a recently published report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Latin American news site Infobae reported Monday.

The ongoing Chinese coronavirus pandemic, which began in March 2020, has been “the worst crisis for children in UNICEF’s 75-year history” according to the organization’s report entitled Preventing a Lost Decade.

“In less than two years, 100 million more children have fallen into poverty, a 10 percent increase since 2019,” UNICEF, a U.N. agency that provides humanitarian and developmental aid to poor children globally, wrote on December 9.

The report included a call to “resume in-person learning” for school-aged children, millions of whom have been affected by ongoing coronavirus lockdowns that either shut down local schools or prohibit in-person classes.

“By September 2021, schoolchildren around the world have lost an estimated 1.8 trillion hours of in-person learning due to COVID-related school closures, which will have profound long-term, unequal social and economic effects,” UNICEF revealed. – READ MORE