COVID-19 impacts hit most vulnerable hard

Charles Sturt University researchers anticipated the exacerbation of existing economic and social inequities because of COVID-19.

When the varied and long-term impacts of COVID-19 were still unknown, Charles Sturt academics Professors Dominic O’Sullivan and Manohar Pawar wrote an overview of the virus’s impact and government responses in Australia at the time. The publication, they admit, had limitations due to the pandemic’s status as a new and rapidly evolving policy crisis. However, their research describes and discusses the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in Australia, its impact on people and the economy, and policy responses to these impacts. It also discusses the implications of these responses for post-pandemic recovery.

Professors O’Sullivan and Pawar’s work “summarises Australia’s socio-economic responses to the pandemic and shows what this means, especially, for vulnerable groups, and thereby for social inequality, which the pandemic has aggravated, and which may become more apparent, still, as debates about paths to economic and social recovery are in some respects already polarising”. Although the fallout of the pandemic is still to be realised, these researchers anticipated the exacerbation of existing economic and social inequalities would result.