COVID-19 Impact Gabon Monitoring at the household level April 2023 Table 1. Cases and mortality of COVID-19 in Central Africa KEY MESSAGES Case- Vaccina- Con- Deat • Due to a high degree of skepticism in the population about Covid-19 vaccines, Countries firmed Active hs fatality tion rate (%) (%) vaccination coverage in Gabon is among the lowest in the Central Africa region. 124,834 224 1,970 1.58 16.3 • After a high rate of initial job losses, with the service sector leading the way Cameroon following the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, job losses have trended Central African Republic 15,363 55 113 0.74 48.2 downward since August 2021 despite the advent of the 3rd and 4th waves, indi- 7,560 2,493 193 2.55 48.21 cating an economic recovery. Chad • While there has been a steady decline in households reporting income loss Congo, Republic of 25,375 983 386 1.52 13.96 since the lifting of the second lockdown in 2021, a high share of agricultural DRC 92,944 10,085 1,464 1.58 15.73 households continues to suffer income losses. • The Ukrainian crisis has affected households through the increase in the prices Equatorial Guinea 17,229 139 183 1.06 29.18 of basic food items, especially the affordability of bread which is a staple food 48,981 1 306 0.62 23.97 Gabon in Gabon, and a decline in international transfers. Source: Johns Hopkins University, Worldometers and Our World Data (as of April 6, 2023) COVID-19 AND VACCINATION • Background Two and a half years after its first confirmed COVID-19 case, Gabon has registered four waves of the Covid-19 pandemic (Figure 1). The third wave was the most important in terms of the number of active cases (6730 active cases at the peak) with more than double the number of highest active case in the first and second waves. However, the first two waves had the most severe consequences for the health system, economic activities, household income, and food security. Gabon has the lowest active cases as of September 2022 in Central Africa despite being among the three countries with the highest total number of confirmed cases in the region (Table 1). To monitor the impacts of COVID- 19 in Gabon on households and inform policy responses, the World Bank in collaboration with the government of Gabon has conducted a series of High Frequency Phone Surveys (HFPS). This brief explores the effect of the pandemic on a few key dimensions of household well- being (employment, access to staple food, food security and income), using data from the latest two rounds of HFPS conducted in February 2022 and July 2022. • Covid-19 Vaccination The Gabonese Republic launched the vaccination campaign against COVID -19 on March 23, 2021, intending to vaccinate 50% of the eligible population by the end of year 2021, using at first Sinopharm and then all available vaccines including Gamaleya, Janssen (Johnson & John- son), and Pfizer/BioNTech. Despite all the Gabonese government’s efforts, only 24 percent of the population are fully vaccinated (Table 1.2), which is one of the lowest vaccination rates among countries in the central Africa region. Figure 2 shows that since the vaccination campaign has started in Gabon, less than half of the population are willing to get vaccinated. In April 2021, a month after the vaccination started in Gabon, only 39.4 percent reported being open to receiving the vaccine. This share increased to 52.7 percent in September 2021 and then dropped to 43.0 percent in July 2022. According to HPFS, safety of the Covid vaccine (side effects) seems to be the main reason the population is not accepting the vaccine. Indeed, in September 2021, 48.5 percent of people who doesn ’t want to get vaccinated reported the fear of getting sick after the vaccine (Figure 3). This share increased in November 2021 to 54.7 percent. With the global shift of attention around the Ukraine war, more people Figure 1: Covid-19 active case Gabon Figure 2: Vaccine acceptancy Figure 3: Vaccine reluctance reason 1 GABON • COVID-19 IMPACT MONITORING COVID-19 AND EMPLOYMENT • Employment Figure 4: Job losses after pandemic Figure 4 below present the share of households that reported having at least one member who had stopped working due to the pandemic according to the ten waves of the High Frequency Phone Surveys (HFPS). The shape of the curve can be divided in three different periods. Since the onset of the pandemic, the Gabonese employment market went through different stages. The first period, over 2020, was characterized by the gradual lifting of the restrictive measures imposed by the government after the first wave of the pandemic (Figure 4). During that period, the share of households with mem- bers working before the pandemic reported having at least one member who had stopped working due to the pandemic decreased from 26 percent in May 2020 to 8 percent in November 2020 (Figure 4). In February 2021, Gabon suffered the second wave of the pandemic followed by the country’s second lockdown, which led to an increase in the share of house- holds with job loss between February and July 2021. Nevertheless, the second economic shock was less severe than the one associated with the first lockdown, probably because the second lockdown was less stringent than the first one. The Figure 5: Share of job losses by sector service sector was the most affected by these two waves in part because of the nature of the lockdown (shutdown of non-essential activities such as hotels and restaurants). As shown by Figure 5, more than 60 percent of households with members working before the pandemic reported having at least one member who had stopped working due to the pandemic was in service sector (commerce, per- sonal services, restaurant), and around 25 percent were in industry Finally, the period of August 2021 to July 2022 was marked by a gradual econo- mic recovery. Despite the third and fourth waves of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country, the share of households with job loss has been decreasing. This is due to the fact that no stringent measure restricting mobility or economic activities was imposed by the government as a response to the 3 rd and 4th waves. Between November 2020 and July 2021, the share of workers who changed their jobs increased because of the effects of the second wave of the pandemic cou- pled with the second lockdown (Figure 6). The rate of job switching subsequently declined from July to November 2021, which suggests that job -switching was a coping mechanism adopted by workers to stay active when the pandemic and the lockdown affected the labor market. have already put household budgets under stress. COVID-19 AND INCOME • Income The first and second wave of the pandemic went hand in hand with job losses that led to loss of household income. Following the lifting of the second lockdown, households began to slowly recover their incomes, as shown in Figure 7. From April 2021, there has been a steady decrease of the proportion of household reporting income loss in the 30 days prior to the survey (from 61 percent to 40 percent in 2022). While jobs in the agriculture sector were not much affected by the pandemic (Figure 5), it is a different story for agricultural household in- come . Indeed, after the two first waves of the pandemic, more than 50 percent of agricultural households had reported suffering income losses in the 30 days prior to the survey (Table 2 ). After the lifting of the second lockdown, when income losses were declining among non - agricultural households (67.8 percent with income loss in July 2021 to 38.6 percent in July 2022), the share of agricultural households with income loss increased from 54.2 percent in July 2021 to 66.6 percent in July 2022. This is probably in part due to the effects of the Ukraine war. In fact, the Ukraine conflict caused a spike in agricultural commodity prices (MPO April 2022, World Bank), which could have reduced productivity and incomes in the agriculture sector. Moreover, from July 2021 to February 2022, the share of households experiencing a decline in their international transfers fell from 59.3 percent to 11.6 percent with the gradual recovery of the economic activity following the lifting of the second lockdown. However, in July 2022, this share jumped to 61.0 percent, and could be explained by the uncertainty in developed countries with general inflation, especially in the prices of fuel, gas and transportation resulting in high food price, economic migrants living abroad having less disposable income to support relatives in home countries. Table 2. Evolution of main sources of incomes Figure 7: Share of household reporting income loss Agriculture, livestock, fish- Non-agricultural International ing family enterprise transfers Increased 0.7 2.6 1.2 Jul 21 Stagnated 45.2 29.7 39.5 Decreased 54.2 67.8 59.3 Increased 2.4 6.0 0.0 Sept 21 Stagnated 45.0 41.3 46.8 Decreased 52.6 52.8 53.2 Increased 1.9 24.4 0.0 Nov 21 Stagnated 38.3 34.8 71.4 Decreased 59.9 40.8 28.7 Increased 0.8 15.4 0.0 Feb 22 Stagnated 36.9 35.2 88.4 Decreased 62.3 49.4 11.6 2 Increased 6.2 13.6 0.0 Jul 22 Stagnated 27.2 47.8 39.0 Decreased 66.6 38.6 61.0 GABON • COVID-19 IMPACT MONITORING COVID-19, SHOCKS AND ACCESS TO BASIC FOOD • Shocks and access to basic food Between February 2022 and July 2022, the share of households who report being affected by an increase in the prices of basic food jumped by about 10 percentage points – from 26.6 percent in February 2022 to 36.9 percent in July 2022 (Figure 8). The steep rise in basic food prices is at least partly attributable to the rising in agricultural commodities, fuel and transportation costs created by the Ukrainian crisis. Among households who experienced this shock, 83.3 percent classified it as the most severe shock experienced in July 2022 (Figure 9). Figure 8: Share of household affected by an increase in Figure 9: How severe was this event (shock) the price of basic foods Note : The time period of this questions was the last month before the survey Households’ access to most staple food items and medicines, and particularly for bread, appears to have fallen from February 2022 July 2022. The Ukraine crisis and the embargo on Russia created a shortage of products cultivated by Russia and Ukraine, especially wheat, which affected affordability of bread that is a staple food in Gabon. The share of households who could access bread fell from 99.2 percent in September 2021 to 94.4 percent in February 2022 and 88.1 percent in July 2022 (Figure 10). When asked for the reason why they could not access bread, 40 percent of households mentioned a shortage of bread at bakeries. Even when the price tag has not changed, smaller types of bread have appeared on the markets to compensate for flour price increase, resulting in some households spending more money to meet their bread requirements (Figure 11). While food and ener- gy subsidies are still in place, price increases are increasingly impacting vulnerable households as well as the middle class. Figure 10: Access to staple food and medicines in the last 7 Figure 11: Reason for not been able to buy bread This brief is prepared by Mervy Ever Viboudoulou Vilpoux and Akakpo Demafo Konou under the supervision of Aissatou Diallo, Clelia Rontoyanni, Johan A. Mistiaen and Ambar Naraya. Data : High Frequency Survey on the COVID-19 Impacts on Households is a collaboration between the World Bank and the government of Gabon. A sub-sample of the Household Living Conditions Survey (EGEP II) were interviews by phone (1,630 households). The results are representative at the national level and living areas (rural, urban and capital city) level. 3 For further details on the data, visit http://surveys.worldbank.org/covid -19.