Opinion: There’s no return to normal for millions of children orphaned during Covid
Forgotten in the calls for a “new normal” and the shuffle toward it are the millions of children around the world whose parent or guardian has died from Covid-19. Their post-pandemic lives will be anything but normal.
In a study published recently in the journal Lancet Child and Adolescent Health, we and several co-authors estimated that, in the first 20 months of the pandemic, more than 5 million children have lost a parent or other caregiver living in the home, such as a grandmother or grandfather. By the two-year anniversary of the pandemic in March 2022, the Covid-19 orphanhood calculator shows this number has grown to more than 7 million children.
