Coronavirus pandemic otherwise known as COVID-19 has in one way or the other impacted global economy, social and health system among others. Because of the fragile nature of African economy, the impact of COVID-19 is more felt in the countries within the continent just like other developing countries. The severe social effect of the coronavirus crisis was felt through the imposition of movement restrictions in many African countries. Some restrictive measures that were imposed to control the spread of coronavirus include: restricting non-essential activities, closing schools and universities, encouraging people to stay home, the lockdown of entire cities, requiring essential businesses to run skeletal operations and employees should work from home. Studies have shown that the restrictive measures affected peoples’ income and standard of living in one way or the other. For instance, researchers such as UNDP, (2014), Qiu, et al., (2018), Mercy, (2019) and Michael et al., (2017) reported the impacts of earlier pandemic on peoples’ income. They submitted that the disease negatively affected income of people. The Ebola epidemic, which mostly occurred in Africa, was reported to cause massive income deficits in numerous countries of this continent. Within just 6 months, this disease had resulted in a significant amount of household income loss in of 35.13% and 29.6% in Liberia and Sierra Leone respectively (UNDP, 2014). It was further noted that the rates of reporting a decline in family income was between 66% and 55.5% (Michael et al., 2017; Mercy Corps, 2019).
Previous literature has documented the negative effects of different pandemics on the family income of residents. Goodell (2020) suggest that there is need to examine COVID-19 in the context of other past events that in some ways are similar to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ramelli and Wagner (2020) showed that the health crisis transformed into an economic crisis which was amplified through financial channels. Barro et al (2020) examine whether the 1918–1920 Great In fluenza Pandemic led to economic contraction and mortality. They find that higher flu death rates decreased the realized real returns on stocks and short-term government bills. Qui et al., (2018) conducted a case comparison study in China and concluded that the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic caused the average annual revenue of households to fall to US$ 175.44, 22.36% below what was anticipated, whereas the H7N9 pandemic had a less severe impact on the economy in comparison with SARS.
A recent body of literature explores the impact of coronavirus on society. For example, Chinazzi et al., (2020) show that, at the start of the travel ban from Wuhan on 23 January 2020, most Chinese cities had already received many infected travelers. The travel quarantine of Wuhan delayed the overall epidemic progression by only 3 to 5 days in mainland China but had a more severe effect on the international scale. Haleem et al., (2020) show that COVID-19 has affected day to day life and is slowing down the global economy. They argue that the economic effects of coronavirus include: the slowing of the manufacturing of essential goods, disruption of the supply chain of products, losses in national and international business, poor cash flow in the market, significant slowing down in the revenue growth while the social consequences include the cancellation or postponement of large-scale sports and tournaments, disruption of celebration of cultural, religious and festive events, undue stress among the population, social distancing with peers and family members, closure of hotels, restaurants and religious places, closure of places for entertainment like movie and play theatres, sports clubs, gymnasiums, swimming pools etc. Chen et al., (2020) show find that cities that suffered from SARS and have greater migration ties to Wuhan in China had early, stronger and more durable public awareness of the outbreak. Fornaro and Wolf (2020), using a simple model, show that the coronavirus trigged a negative supply shock. They suggest that drastic policy interventions – both monetary and fiscal - might be needed to prevent this negative supply shock from severely affecting employment and productivity.
Ozili and Arun (20120) find that the increasing number of lockdown days, monetary policy decisions and international travel restrictions severely affected the level of global economic activities and the closing, opening, lowest and highest stock price of major stock market indices in the World. Also, they observe that the imposed restriction on the internal movement of people and higher fiscal spending had a positive impact on the level of economic activities. Kuckertz et al (2020) reported that the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and the spread of COVID-19 led many governments to take drastic measures, at cushion the effects of the disease on the people. They argue that the lockdown of large parts of society and economic life came as an exogenous shock to many economic actors and innovative startups. Oruonye and Ahmed (2020) find that the outbreak and spread of COVID-19 disease in Nigeria led to rapid shutdowns in cities and states across the country which severely affected the tourism industry. Zhang et al (2020) state that the coronavirus (COVID-19) affected financial markets all over the world. It created an unprecedented level of risk, causing investors to suffer significant loses in a very short period of time. Ozili (2020) analyse the Covid-19 spillovers to Nigeria and find that the existing structural weaknesses in Nigeria contributed to making the crisis more severe in the country.