ROME, Italy — The Vatican said Wednesday that children have been the “most vulnerable victims” of the coronavirus pandemic, despite their remarkable resistance to the disease itself.
Although children have accounted for a miniscule percentage of deaths from the coronavirus, the pandemic “has thrown countless children into severe poverty and left many without parents and caregivers,” reads the text from the COVID-19 Vatican Commission.
In Italy, for instance, coronavirus deaths of children under 20 years of age make up significantly less than one tenth of one percent (0.001) of all coronavirus casualties in the country, making them statistically irrelevant. But children have borne the brunt of the fallout from political and social measures established to curb the spread of the virus.
“Worldwide, there has been increased exploitation of and violence against children and reduced or suspended access to educational facilities,” it asserts. “Governments, civil society organizations, and the Church must come together to alleviate the escalating suffering of the most vulnerable children among us.”
“Sudden global increases in severe poverty, rising food insecurity, and public quarantine measures have put major stress on households,” the Vatican text states, noting that reports of “violence, abuse, and exploitation of children have sharply increased since the pandemic began.”
Children “are facing sharp increases in household poverty” and after “decades of poverty reduction, Covid-19 plunged 150 million children into poverty,” it continues. “For the first time in decades, the number of children in child labor rose, reaching 160 million.”
One of the prime causes of negative consequences for children have been school closings, the text proposes, which have resulted in stunted education as well as isolation.
“More than 168 million children missed an entire school year during the first twelve months of the pandemic, and many more experienced reduced or remote schooling,” it declares. “This will lead to an estimated loss of US$10 trillion in future earnings for this generation, compounded by additional economic losses from early childhood education closures.”
The text from the Vatican’s COVID-19 Commission was released in parallel with a separate document on the same topic by the Pontifical Academy for Life.
That separate text made an impassioned appeal for the reopening of schools around the world, insisting that measures such as school closings and lockdowns have created a devastating “parallel pandemic,” whose effects are being felt globally.
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