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Background Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) exposed weaknesses in the health systems of countries such as Nigeria, which affected the effectiveness of the health system response to the pandemic. This paper provides new knowledge on the level of the availability, effectiveness and equity of resources in response to COVID-19 in Nigeria. This is valuable information for improving the delivery of countermeasures against future pandemics. Methods The study was conducted at the federal level and in two states in Nigeria. The states were Lagos in the southwest and Enugu in the southeast. In-depth interviews were undertaken with 34 key informants. NVivo version 12 software was used for coding and thematic analysis. Results There were inadequate, inequitable and suboptimal resources (human, financial, equipment and materials) for the response. In some of the countermeasures, only people that were employed in the formal sector benefitted from the distribution of welfare materials and financial packages; the informal sector, which constitutes the majority of the poor population in Nigeria, was excluded. Conclusions Inequity and suboptimal availability of resources to control COVID-19 led to reduced effectiveness of the health system response to the disease in Nigeria. Such negative factors must be mitigated in future responses to pandemics in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the subject of numerous scholarly discussions. However, scholars have yet to pay more attention to the link between its official containment measures and the struggle of informal workers for sustainable livelihoods in Nigeria. This study argues that the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown policing was one aspect of the state-society encounter that had a deleterious effect on the economic security of vulnerable populations. The research employs the thesis of neoliberalism and a qualitative-dominant mixed methods approach to explore this state-society encounter during the pandemic. It concludes that a subtle and humane approach to policing in emergencies presents a more civil engagement in policy enforcement that would foster happier encounters between security forces and the general public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the everyday lived realities of Southeast Asian migrant workers who left the formal sector of the labour market and entered the informal agricultural sector before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic in Taiwan. Drawing on observations of migrants' daily lives and farm work and 19 in‐depth interviews, it delves into migrants' subjective experiences of vulnerability, paternalism, exploitation, and control at work due to a lack of legal protection and the illegality of their employment. Although the literature has identified a link between 'running away' from formal employment and seeking freedom, this research suggests a continuum between experiences of work in the formal and informal economic sectors. The paper sheds new light on mobility, work, illegality, and informality and how these have constantly shaped 'runaway' workers' subjective experiences of freedom and unfreedom during the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does research on informal sector workers and the state entail in the time of Covid-19? The pandemic has limited possibilities for in-person interactions and required adaptations in research approaches. These challenges are exacerbated when the subjects of the research are informal sector workers with limited access to technology and undefined spaces of work. In this article, we argue that the Covid-19 pandemic has magnified distances: between researchers located globally; between researchers and respondents; and between the state and people within informal employment. However, these distances also create new ways of working and opportunities for doing research. We discuss the challenges faced in the field, document the adaptations introduced to ensure robust research in difficult settings, and set out the limitations that remain. We also examine the ethical dimension of confronting dangerous misinformation related to the pandemic while conducting interviews, and the questions it raises about the distance between research and prescriptive advocacy in academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current international pandemic context, the risks of the underground economy through its most perverse forms, corruption, undeclared work, tax evasion, etc., have been greatly exacerbated by urgently favouring the restriction of freedoms, the infusion of important resources into the economy and not least the interest of Pharma. The turbulent and unprepared international framework has created the premise that in this unfortunate period an activity in the underground economy that influences all its forms, namely corruption, will flourish. According to press reports, the sale of masks, medicines and anti-pandemic health products was a real El Dorado of Romania. Fabulous surcharge purchases made by UNIFARM are known, as well as worldwide, according to a World Bank report, due to the elimination of normal public procurement control filters. The pandemic generated by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, both globally and nationally, has had various influences on the underground economy, some favorable for the public sector but most unfavourable for the private sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has severely impacted the society not only in terms of health but also in terms of economic survival of individuals. Unless adequate support is provided, the pandemic will have long-lasting effects, especially on the lives of the most vulnerable, often working in the informal sector. In this article, we present a case study drawing on systems thinking and complexity theory, outlining how the city of Mumbai has responded to COVID-19. We find a multifaceted scenario where non-profit organizations, businesses and citizen volunteers operate alongside government bodies to support Mumbai's population to overcome this pandemic. We provide broader policy lessons, as well as more specific lessons in relation to particular actors, from the first wave of the pandemic stressing the importance of becoming 'systems thinkers' and highlighting the importance of forming new partnerships and exploring new modes of knowledge sharing to effectively respond to crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global economy faces a loss of production capacity among the most severe in at least the past half-century as a result of the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It will take several years of persistent investment efforts to restore the pre-pandemic level of capacity and put global output back to potential. By using a production function based on the incremental capital-output ratio, we estimate the loss of production capacity for the global economy and for the two main world locomotives, the U.S. and China. To do this, we estimate the production capacity implied in our current recession baseline and the capacity that would have existed in the absence of the pandemic (precrisis scenario). The difference between the two estimates is defined as the loss of capacity generated by the pandemic. The results also allow us to extract some policy implications in terms of mitigation measures and investment requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The virus does not see race, caste, class, gender, region, religion, language, and border." This is a ubiquitous saying, but pandemics hit the vulnerable sections of the society the hardest, which has been proved many times in history. Today, this fact is verified again. Covid-19 attacks the poor and the marginalized sections of the community severely; these groups have had more infected and lost more lives than others. Why do diseases impact the poor and marginal sections of the community more than other groups? The template answer says that this-- because of their ghettoized living conditions, lack of hygienic foods, and poor health conditions and medical facilities. This article tries to assess why the poor and working-class suffers more from such pandemics from a sociological lens. Various quantitative information and qualitative understandings have been apprised in the article to assess why the poor and working-class suffers more in such pandemics. Various newspaper articles and research work were reviewed to analyze facts and situations. This article reflected the situation of minorities amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the post-pandemic situation. The discussion and conclusion derived in the paper may not be generalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the world in an unprecedented way. Understanding the response of the Zimbabwean government to the COVID-19 pandemic and how it affected the informal sector economy is important. This study fills the research void on how various interventions by the government have impacted the informal sector. It demonstrates that the livelihoods supported by the informal sector have been negatively affected by the lockdown measures as well as curfews. Farm-produce vendors, entrepreneurs, secondhand clothes importers, taxi operators, barbers and hair salons were classified as non-essential services and had to observe lockdown restrictions. The study observes that these groups were significantly disrupted by the government's response to the outbreak of COVID-19. Using a qualitative approach, the article reflects on the livelihood experiences of those dependent on this sector during this era by assessing measures that have been introduced to contain the epidemic. Using primary evidence from print and electronic media, the article corroborates the narratives shared in public forums with unobtrusive observations to report on the complex nature of fighting the pandemic in Zimbabwe's informal sector. An in-depth document analysis as well as evidence from print and electronic media adds to the existing literature on the government's informal sector policy response to pandemics. It gives an evaluation of the strategies implemented and how the people in the informal sector respond to such policy initiatives. This study explores the experiences of people engaged in informal projects in their quest for socio-economic empowerment given the coronavirus challenge and restrictive measures implemented by the government to curtail the spread of the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]