![]() Migrant agricultural workers are particularly vulnerable, because they face risks in their transport, working and living conditions and struggle to access support measures put in place by governments. Further, when experiencing income losses, they may resort to negative coping strategies, such as distress sale of assets, predatory loans or child labour. With low and irregular incomes and a lack of social support, many of them are spurred to continue working, often in unsafe conditions, thus exposing themselves and their families to additional risks. Millions of agricultural workers – waged and self-employed – while feeding the world, regularly face high levels of working poverty, malnutrition and poor health, and suffer from a lack of safety and labour protection as well as other types of abuse. As breadwinners lose jobs, fall ill and die, the food security and nutrition of millions of women and men are under threat, with those in low-income countries, particularly the most marginalized populations, which include small-scale farmers and indigenous peoples, being hardest hit. The pandemic has decimated jobs and placed millions of livelihoods at risk. Border closures, trade restrictions and confinement measures have been preventing farmers from accessing markets, including for buying inputs and selling their produce, and agricultural workers from harvesting crops, thus disrupting domestic and international food supply chains and reducing access to healthy, safe and diverse diets. ![]() ![]() The pandemic has been affecting the entire food system and has laid bare its fragility. For most, no income means no food, or, at best, less food and less nutritious food. Without the means to earn an income during lockdowns, many are unable to feed themselves and their families. Informal economy workers are particularly vulnerable because the majority lack social protection and access to quality health care and have lost access to productive assets. Nearly half of the world’s 3.3 billion global workforce are at risk of losing their livelihoods. Millions of enterprises face an existential threat. The economic and social disruption caused by the pandemic is devastating: tens of millions of people are at risk of falling into extreme poverty, while the number of undernourished people, currently estimated at nearly 690 million, could increase by up to 132 million by the end of the year. A stroke could occur if a blood clot were to block or narrow arteries leading to the brain.The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic loss of human life worldwide and presents an unprecedented challenge to public health, food systems and the world of work. Clots can form in veins deep inside the body or in the lungs, where they can cut off blood flow. The blood-clotting system in patients with the illness is highly abnormal, with clots much more likely to occur in these patients than in others. ![]() The fourth way COVID-19 might affect the brain has to do with the tendency for these patients to suffer a stroke. The third theory is that all of the physiological changes induced in the body by COVID-19 - ranging from high fevers to low oxygen levels to multiple organ failures - contribute to, or account for, brain dysfunction, such as the delirium or coma seen in many of the severe COVID-19 patients. Immune System in OverdriveĪ second possibility is that the immune system goes into overdrive in an attempt to fight COVID-19, producing a “maladaptive” inflammatory response that may cause much of the tissue and organ damage seen in this disease - perhaps more than the virus itself. The loss of smell that occurs in some patients with COVID-19 could indicate that the virus entered through the olfactory bulb, which is located right above the nose and communicates information about smell to the brain. This might occur due to the virus entering the bloodstream or nerve endings. Cases reported in China and Japan found the virus’s genetic material in spinal fluid, and a case in Florida found viral particles in brain cells. The first possible way is that the virus may have the capacity to enter the brain and cause a severe and sudden infection. Q: How do researchers think COVID-19 impacts the brain?Ī: Based on the current research, we think there are four ways COVID-19 may harm the brain, but each needs to be studied rigorously before any conclusions can be made.
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