Beyond Masks: Societal impacts of COVID-19 and accelerated solutions for children and adolescents

UNICEF Innocenti’s new report – Beyond Masks: Societal impacts of COVID-19 and accelerated solutions for children and adolescents, launching 19 November – offers a comprehensive picture of the health, economic, and social impacts of the pandemic, and its implications for children and adolescents. The report examines evidence from the current crisis and past health crises such as HIV/AIDS, SARS and Ebola to provide insights into the current one, and proposes proven and promising solutions.

This panel discussion, timed with the launch of the Beyond Masks report, comes at a moment when policymakers are asking deep questions about how to deal with the raging pandemic in many parts of the world while ensuring children’s health, education and well-being. In it, we delve deep into Beyond Masks to better understand how its findings can shape national and subnational policy responses and individual, family and community behaviors. With the COVID-19 pandemic showing no signs of abating, there is an urgent need to find scalable and cost-effective solutions to the continued and deepening impact of the COVID crisis on the world’s youngest citizens.