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Somalia

BRCiS COVID-19 Monitoring Report 4 (Report Issued 10/01/2022)

Attachments

The BRCiS system has been collecting data from Safety Net cash beneficiaries to assess the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on their health and livelihoods.

Six rounds of data collection have been conducted covering June 2020 to November 2021. This report shows details on how the forth wave of infections that occurred from July to December 2021 impacted Somalia.

Key Messages

• The BRCiS COVID-19 Monitoring system has been collecting data from Safety Net cash beneficiaries to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their health and livelihoods. Six rounds of data collection have been conducted covering June 2020 to November 2021.

• Due to the end of the BRCiS cash transfer programme in many areas, the results reported here come from a smaller sample of households (n=427) than in previous data collection rounds.

• A forth wave of infections impacted Somalia from July to December 2021. Results from round 6 show that the syndromic score case rate rose during this wave to 102 cases/1,000,000/day and exceed the estimate from the third wave but did not reach the peak seen during wave 1.

• The estimated COVID-19 death rate increased to 6.8 deaths/10,000/day but was only about half the peak level seen in wave 1. The crude and under-five death rates remained well below humanitarian thresholds.

• Behavioural indicators showed that adherence to preventative behaviours such as mask wearing and social distancing had decreased since the third wave.

• However, vaccine acceptance has increased with 76% reporting that they would accept vaccination if it was available.

• In contrast, the reported COVID-19 vaccine coverage was only 2.6%, indicating a large unmet demand.

• Following the completion of round 6 data collection a wave of infections, presumably due to the omicron variant, has started to impact Somalia. A steep rise in infections was reported by the WHO/MOH in late December. While there is evidence from other countries that the disease caused by this variant is less severe, its very high transmissibility means that the public health situation remains unpredictable.

• Continued behaviour change communication and monitoring of the situation is recommended during the ongoing wave of COVID-19 in Somalia.