CoronaCrime #26

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has taken a terrible toll in lives, illness, and economic devastation and it is having diverse effects on violence and crime. Therefore, the Daily Prevention News publishes weekly a Corona Crime Issue dedicated to collect related relevant news and information.

1. Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19): What is the global situation now?
   Only if we end the pandemic everywhere, we can end the pandemic anywhere. The entire world has the same goal: cases of COVID-19 need to go to zero. The Data Explorer below shows which countries are making progress to this goal and which are not. The data on confirmed cases only becomes meaningful when it can be interpreted in light of how much a country is testing. This is why we built the global database on COVID-19 testing. You can switch to the testing data right in this chart. Particularly informative is the metric ‘share of positive tests’ – which shows you the share of tests that are confirming a test. This rate should ideally be very low. If it is high a country is likely not identifying a large share of cases. If it is low then a country tests in proportion with the size of its outbreak and the number of confirmed cases is closer to the number of total cases. Source: Our World In Data
2. Online Event: COVID-19, the Infodemic, & Fake News (November 12, 3 pm CET)
   The infodemic that has spread at the same rate as the COVID pandemic has brought this into sharp relief. Why now, why has this exploded in 2020 with data being exploited at an unprecedented level? How can children and young people develop the ability to decipher disinformation and misinformation? Source: UNICEF Innocenti
3. Learning Inequality During the Covid-19 Pandemic
   Suspension of face-to-face instruction in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to concerns about consequences for student learning. So far, data to study this question have been limited. Here we evaluate the effect of school closures on primary school performance using exceptionally rich data from the Netherlands (n≈350,000). The Netherlands represents a best-case scenario with a relatively short lockdown (8 weeks) and a high degree of technological preparedness. Source: Nuffield College University of Oxford
4. Hidden scars: the impact of violence and the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s mental health
   Despite commitments made by the international community to end violence against children and support their mental health, there has been a serious lack of investment and capacity to provide quality, rights-based, culturally appropriate mental health care globally. The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified these challenges. This article outlines how the risk of children experiencing violence has increased and how the pandemic has weakened the capacity of child protection and mental health services to respond. Source: Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health
5. UCLG Decalogue
   In a context of unprecedented and universal challenges we, the local and regional governments around the world, are at the forefront of the efforts to overcome these proving times as allies of other spheres of government, of the scientific community, and as global actors with important transformational and convening power. The Decalogue for the COVID-19 era is our political charter for the aftermath. Source: United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG)

Please find more information and news about the interlinkages between the Coronavirus, Crime and Violence in German published every Tuesday on our German News Service Tägliche Präventions News.