Partnership for Evidence-Based Response to COVID-19 (PERC) Finding the Balance Series
Published on May 19, 2021
Last week, the Partnership for Evidence-Based Response to COVID-19 (PERC) announces the release of the third installment of its “Finding the Balance” series — a report that details findings from a 24,000 person phone survey across 19 African Union Member States about perceptions of COVID-19 prevention measures, vaccines, access to health care, food and income during the pandemic.
The report concludes that Member States have suffered calamitous health outcomes from COVID-19, in addition to severe economic, social, and nutritional distress.
Some other notable findings include:
- Self-reported mask use remained high, but varied by Member State, and trended downward in some of the most populous and hardest hit countries (e.g. South Africa and Ethiopia).
- More than four in 10 (43%) respondents reported that COVID-19 had made it more difficult for them or someone in their household to obtain required medication in the previous three months (between November 2020 and February 2021). Among respondents that reported they or someone in their household required a health care visit, almost one in four (23%) reported missing or skipping services since November 2020 and more than four in 10 (42%) since the start of the pandemic.
- Income loss has increased, exacerbating issues accessing food and health care services—a crisis that is worsening as the pandemic continues. More than three quarters of all respondents (77%) reported losing some or all of their income since the start of the pandemic. And more than 80% of respondents reported challenges accessing food in the previous week, an increase of 8 percentage points since August 2020.
- Two-thirds of respondents (67%) reported interest in taking a vaccine when it becomes available, with substantial variation among Member States (ranging from 91% in Morocco to 35% in Tunisia and Cameroon). COVID-19 risk perception and satisfaction with the government’s COVID-19 response were important factors influencing a respondent’s intent to get vaccinated.
Translations:
French:
- Cameroon (brief / presentation)
- Côte d’Ivoire (brief / presentation)
- DRC (brief / presentation)
- Guinea (brief / presentation)
- Morocco (brief / presentation)
- Senegal (brief / presentation)
- Tunisia (brief / presentation)
Portuguese:
- Mozambique (brief / presentation)