Over 5 Million Kids Have Been Orphaned From COVID-19, Estimates Show

Over 5.2 million children have been orphaned or have lost a caregiver due to COVID-19 as of October 2021, according to updated estimates.

Globally, approximately 3.5 million children have lost a primary caregiver, while an additional 1.65 million have lost a secondary caregiver such as a grandparent, reported Susan Hillis, PhD, of the CDC COVID-19 International Task Force, and colleagues.

These figures illustrate a “heartbreaking hidden pandemic” for children, they noted in Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.

This trend holds true especially in countries with higher fertility rates, including those in the African, Eastern Mediterranean, and Southeast Asian regions, they added.

They estimated that, from March 2020 through October 2021, 491,300 children ages 0 to 4 years, 736,800 children ages 5 to 9 years, and 2,146,700 children ages 10 to 17 years experienced COVID-19-associated orphanhood.

As of mid-January 2022, the estimated number of children facing orphanhood or a lost caregiver due to COVID-19 has jumped to more than 6.7 million, according to a real-time COVID-19 orphanhood tracker.

In the U.S., real-time estimates show that just over 200,000 children have lost a primary caregiver (either one or both of their parents or custodial grandparents).

Overall, the countries with the highest rates of orphanhood per 1,000 children were Peru (8.28 per 1,000) and South Africa (7.22 per 1,000).

“Our findings suggest an urgent need for pandemic responses to prioritize children affected by deaths of parents and caregivers,” Hillis and colleagues wrote.

They pointed out that younger children and adolescents face different challenges. “Younger bereaved children need immediate full-time nurturing and ongoing support for early childhood development,” they noted, while adolescents may deal with higher risks of sexual violence, pregnancy, and household poverty, among others.

Factors that contribute to orphanhood also “vary substantially by country and region,” wrote Michael Goodman, DrPH, MPH, of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and colleagues in an accompanying editorial. While vaccine hesitancy and individualistic cultures may pose challenges in high-income countries, vaccine scarcity and financial strain may contribute to orphanhood in lower-income countries.

“COVID-19 orphanhood confronts us at a time nearing resource exhaustion across multiple systems. The consequences of orphanhood linger throughout the course of a lifetime, affecting futures of families, communities, and societies,” Goodman and colleagues continued. “We determine how long our communities will suffer the effects of COVID-19 by urgently determining the quality and force of our concern for orphaned young people.”

This study followed up on a prior study on global COVID-19-associated orphanhood, which found that from March 2020 to the end of April 2021, 1.13 million children lost a caregiver.

Using newly available data on mortality, Hillis and colleagues estimated that number to be substantially higher, at 2.73 million children. In the subsequent 6 months also analyzed in this study (May to October 2021), an additional estimated 2.46 million children experienced COVID-19-associated orphanhood or caregiver death.

Similar to the first study, there were major differences in rates of paternal and maternal orphanhood. Maternal orphanhood accounted for one-quarter of cases, while paternal orphanhood made up three-quarters of cases. “Increased risks for children of paternal death appear to be linked to trends of later fertility and greater risk of death from COVID-19,” the researchers explained.

Hillis and team acknowledged a major caveat to their study: “The most important limitation is that our estimates are generated by modeling and thus cannot measure actual numbers of children affected by parent or caregiver death. Future pandemic responses should include surveillance of numbers of children affected for every parental and caregiver death, to track needs for services and provide referral platforms.”