As the novel #Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to spread across the globe, it has harshly affected some countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Noman Ahmed from the commonspace.eu research team has been looking at some figures
The toll has impacted economies while exposing the weakness of other healthcare systems. There is a high likelihood that the region could struggle to overcome the aftermath of the pandemic. Meanwhile, the GCC states witnessed declining oil prices but their healthcare systems were able to respond adequately.
Premise, an American based data analysis and collection is gathering insight about different COVID-19 responses since mid-March. The data shows similarities in sentiment toward the government response and messaging towards COVID-19, differences in economic impact and levels of concern about community spread in the region.
GCC countries show high levels of agreement with the government's response with nearly 50% of respondents strongly agreeing with the level of response from their government.
UAE
In the same region, there is little to no variance in views of how accurate information is that comes from either local or national authorities. However, in Egypt and the Levant, respondents showed higher trust in national authorities over local ones.
Respondents in GCC, show higher levels of anxiety over the community spread of the virus. 27% of respondents are 'concerned' about the spread while 37% are 'very concerned.' Levels of concern are even higher in the Levant and Egypt, where 35% of the respondents are 'concerned' and 34% are 'very concerned' about community spread of the virus.
Data on perceptions of economic impact shows the following
To view more data from Premise, see here:
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