The coronavirus is wreaking havoc on people’s health in ways that at first glance would seem to have little connection to the virus’s devastating primary effects.
The United Nations is warning of new risks to children and a subsequent plague of mental illness. And national governments are noting the unintended consequences of lockdowns and other restrictions, including a rise in domestic violence. In Mexico, a decision to ban alcohol sales was followed by scores of deaths after people drank tainted homemade alcohol.
Millions of children are at risk of dying, the United Nations said on Wednesday, not of Covid-19, but of preventable causes. Unable to get care at hospitals that are straining to fight the virus, more than a million children aged 5 or younger will die every six months, UNICEF said in a report.
Young children are also at risk of a serious and potentially deadly inflammatory condition, a new study of which provided the strongest evidence yet that the syndrome is linked to the coronavirus. The condition, called pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome, has been reported in about 100 children in New York, and scores more elsewhere in the United States and in Europe.
And the World Health Organization, the health body that has been working to coordinate global efforts to combat the disease, warned on Thursday of a looming mental illness crisis, the result of “the isolation, the fear, the uncertainty, the economic turmoil,” brought on by the pandemic.
Devora Kestel, the head of the W.H.O.’s mental health department, who presented the report, said the world could expect to see a surge in the severity of mental illness, notably in children and health care workers.
“The mental health and well-being of whole societies have been severely impacted by this crisis and are a priority to be addressed urgently,” she said.
