Abstract
From March 1, 2020, through May 1, 2022, the number of children affected by COVID-19-associated
orphanhood and caregiver deaths continued to grow. This new cumulative 26-month document is our third
report, and it updates the two previous ones. The first of these was a full report and covered the original
14-month period (March 1, 2020, through April 30, 2021) in ‘Children: The Hidden Pandemic, 2021’.1 The
second was an interim report, ‘Children: The Hidden Pandemic, February 2022 Updated Interim Estimates’,
and it covered the first 20 months of the pandemic, which included rapid escalation of orphanhood and
caregiver loss, linked to the emergence of the delta variant.
2 We now summarize cumulative trends in
orphanhood and caregiver deaths in this brief third report, ‘Children: The Hidden Pandemic – September
2022, Orphanhood and Caregiver Loss Based on Excess COVID-19 Death Estimates.’
The original full 2021 report provides an overview of lessons learned from the HIV/AIDS pandemic
(Preface); a description of the global orphanhood and vulnerability problem in the context of COVID-19
(Introduction); global, regional, and national data for the first 14 months of the pandemic (Toll of COVID19 on Children); risks of adverse consequences of orphanhood and caregiver death for children (Enduring
Impact on Children, Families, and Communities), and a framework for urgently needed solutions (A Strategy
for Caring Action). In this cumulative report for the first 26 months of the pandemic, we provide updates
and progress for those topics covered in the 2021 report. We also include new global, regional, and
national estimates for the numbers of children affected by COVID-19-associated orphanhood and caregiver
death in every nation, as described in JAMA Pediatrics, September 6 2022.3