The Lives versus Livelihoods Debate: A View from Below

Ghazal Mir Zulfiqar and Muhammad Zain bin Asad

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic has disrupted life, affected global wellbeing in profound
ways, and hurt the economy at a massive scale, causing widespread mortality, suffering,
unemployment and poverty. It is difficult to quantify the health and economic costs of this
crisis, but even if such calculations were to be employed, as some economists already have,
they are highly controversial because of the trade-offs involved between preventing the
transmission of the disease and disrupting livelihoods. This has been referred to globally as
the lives versus livelihoods debate (Dodd, May 2020). Policy responses to the highly
contagious coronavirus have included lockdowns, social distancing and other attempts at
containment. These policies invariably involve taking decisions that give one goal priority
over another. For instance, while stricter lockdowns save lives they also cause businesses to
shut down, and unemployment and poverty to rise (Decerf, et al., 2020).

As the numbers began climbing in Pakistan, healthcare workers pressed the government to
continue with a strict lockdown. Not only had the virus overwhelmed the country’s fragile
healthcare facilities, many healthcare workers were succumbing to the disease while putting
in long hours taking care of virus-struck patients. Factory owners, transporters, retailers, and
workers on the other hand, wanted an end to the lockdown and pushed the government the
other way.

So how do we as policy analysts assess the situation, and in particular, Pakistan’s lockdown
policies in the face of the coronavirus pandemic? In this report, we present the views of
informal economy workers that for the most part remain invisible and voiceless, but whose
lives have been severely affected by the lockdown. We interviewed homebased women
workers, who are among the most marginalized of informal workers. This report is based on
primary research conducted during the period between July to October, 2020, and one last
interview conducted in mid-November 2020. During this period there was a peak in the first
wave, a lull, and finally the beginning of the second wave.

Homebased Workers: Baseline Vulnerabilities

The International Labour Organization (ILO, 2018) estimates that outside of agriculture, 80
percent of the population is informally employed in South Asia. This is the highest
percentage of informal employment in the world. In Pakistan, an estimated 82.4 percent of
the workforce is informally employed, which is not just limited to the informal sector, but
also includes informal jobs in the formal sector. In the non-farm sector, it is estimated that 92
percent of employed women work either in their own homes, who are then referred to as
homebased workers, or they work in the homes of their employers, while only 40 percent of
employed men work from their homes or the homes of their employers. Informally employed
women on average make just half of what men earn in the informal sector, one of the lowest
rates in the region (ILO, 2018).

Pakistan has an estimated 4.37 million homebased workers (Akhtar, 2020), and most are part
of the manufacturing supply chain, producing garments, leather products, shoes, carpets,
bangles, sports equipment and other goods (Sayeed & Vanek, 2013). A 2015 survey found

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that homebased workers in the garment sector, where most homebased work is concentrated
in Pakistan, work 12.3 hours every day, six days a week to make an average monthly income
of only Rs. 4,342. Even this amount is overstated, because it subsumes the unpaid labor of
other family members assisting the primary homebased worker (Zhou, 2017; Akhtar, 2020).

Home-based workers around the world live below the poverty line, which means their homes
are small, one or two rooms at the most, making it difficult to work especially since the space
is shared by other family members. These homes are often of poor quality, are poorly
ventilated, and with minimal furniture and facilities. Many of them are migrants into the
cities and rent their homes, which makes home-improvement a low priority. These homes are
often part of informal settlements, with little basic infrastructures such as a good road
network, transport, and sewerage system. There are two types of homebased workers: the
self-employed worker who produces goods and services for sale to local customers, while the
second category includes those that are part of global or domestic value chains. The latter are
given work on piece-rates by middlemen or middle-women, while bearing the risks and cost
of the workspace, utilities, and economic uncertainty (Chen, 2014).

The women homebased workers in Pakistan typically belong to the lowest income groups and
have access to nearly no formal education or social protection. According to a survey, nearly
38 percent of urban homebased women workers have had no education, while 68 percent of
rural homebased women workers have never been to school (Akhtar, 2020). Poverty and
illiteracy are two of the major reasons for homebased workers to be involved in the informal
economy in the first place (GOP, 2017).

Insufficient payment or late receipt of payments are cited as two of the biggest concerns of
homebased workers, their lives marked by extreme difficulties, isolation and ‘on-the-margin’
survival conditions. Despite the adoption of Convention No. 177 for Home Based Workers
by the ILO, not much has been done in Pakistan for the homebased workforce which remains
largely invisible (GOP, 2017). While a homebased worker policy has been approved in
Punjab and passed as an Act in Sindh, home-based worker registration in Sindh began only in
November 2020, and for Punjab this is still a distant dream.

Coronavirus and the Economic Downturn

The global economic outlook for 2020 and beyond has become significantly bleak and
uncertain because of the coronavirus pandemic. It is estimated that 81 percent of the world’s
population, or 3.3 billion workers, have been adversely affected by the lockdown (WIEGO,
2020). In Pakistan, initial reports were that 50 lakh people lost their livelihoods but the Asian
Development Bank (ADB) estimates that this number could rise up to 2.3 million if the
economic downturn continues (Arab News, Aug-2020). Figure 1 below shows the
progression of the pandemic in Pakistan while Figure 2 shows the timeline of the lockdown
during the first wave.

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Figure 1: Infection rates during the first wave in Pakistan

Figure 2: Timeline of the lockdown during the first wave in Pakistan

Due to the cessation of cross-border trade and disruption to supply chains, there has been
significant economic weakening in Pakistan. It is estimated that around one fifth of the
employed labor force was been laid off (Haider, 2020). As with most shocks, those working
at the bottom of the economic pyramid have suffered the most with economic uncertainty,
loss of livelihoods, and increased risk of poverty.

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It is predicted that as many as 15-20 million people in Pakistan could slip into poverty as a
result of the pandemic (HomeNet South Asia, 2020; Sareen, 2020). This would make the total
number of people below the poverty line more than a 100 million, that is, nearly half of the
country’s population (Sareen, 2020). As a result, there is a heightening sense of job
insecurity, particularly among the informal workers and daily wage workers who bear the
brunt of the recession (HomeNet South Asia, 2020). Daily wage workers are expected to be
the worst-off. With little to no access to food, income, supplies, healthcare, water and
sanitation, and financial safety nets, homebased workers are also being severely impacted
(WIEGO, 2020).

Data and methods

Between July, 2020 to October, 2020 we reached 52 homebased women workers, through
phone interviews and focus groups. We got access to these women through the Home Based
Women Workers Federation (HBWWF), HomeNet Pakistan, and FACES Pakistan. HBWWF
is a federation of homebased women workers, headquartered in Karachi. HomeNet Pakistan
and FACES Pakistan are both Lahore-based NGOs.

The 19 phone interviews were conducted in July and August with women in Karachi, other
cities in Sindh, and Lahore when travel was particularly difficult. In Lahore, we conducted
three in-person focus groups with various communities of homebased workers between
August and October.

In addition to this, we did three key informant interviews with Zehra Khan, the General
Secretary of the HBWWF, Ume Laila, the Executive Director of HomeNet Pakistan, and
Saeeda Khatoon, an HBWWF representative and ex-homebased worker from Orangi Town,
Karachi.

The homebased workers we interviewed were involved variously in bangle making, tailoring,
embroidery, cap making, wholesale trouser or shirt stitching, clipping threads from machine
embroidered cloth, bottle recycling, sewing army badges, jewelry making and doll making.
While some women were self-employed, such as those involved in tailoring, jewelry or doll
making, most were piece-rate workers, who worked with material brought to them by
middlemen or middle-women from nearby factories or wholesale markets.

The women’s husbands were employed in factories, or worked as rickshaw drivers,

mechanics, car washers, contractors, plumbers, painters, or fruit/vegetable vendors. Some of
them had adult children also working. For instance, Salma was a widow whose son worked at
a barber shop before the lockdown. Several women had daughters that worked as unpaid
helpers with their mothers on their piece-rate work, though a few had been teaching in local
schools before the lockdown.

In what follows we detail the main findings of our research, beginning with the lockdown’s
impact on the women and their families, moving on to the survival strategies their households
employed to get through this period, an exploration of whether domestic violence increased
during the lockdown, and finally how homebased workers viewed the government imposed
lockdown.

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The Lockdown’s Impact

The average size of a family in our sample was between 5-7 people. Most homebased
workers had spouses or children that were earning low wages themselves, while working as
day laborers, mechanics, and welders, though some had stable factory jobs. Overall, it was
clear that for the most part, even before the lockdown, incomes were barely enough to meet
monthly expenditures especially since many households were living in rented homes in urban
slums. Rents in the mega cities of Karachi and Lahore run very high, rent for a one-room
home with a small courtyard can easily go up to Rupees 10,000. In our sample, women
home-based workers in Karachi earned between Rupees 2,000 to Rupees 5,000 per month.
Whereas, for those in Lahore, monthly incomes varied between Rs. 4,000 to Rs. 6,000, before
the lockdown.

Once the lockdown was imposed, incomes dried up abruptly. In the words of Saeeda
Khatoon, from Orangi Town, Karachi, “The lockdown began on March 20, the income
accrued to homebased workers and factory workers between March 1 and March 19 was
never paid. And then all work finished: those doing zardozi (embroidery), putting zips for
local and international brands, making chappal (slippers)…everything just stopped.”

Many impoverished households have multiple income streams, homebased work being one of
them. This is so not just because each income stream is inadequate to support the family but
also because multiple income streams serve as an insurance, for if one of them dries up or
becomes more erratic another one can provide at least some support. However, in the case of
the present lockdown, the economic shock was extremely severe because all income streams
seem to have dried up at the same time as men and women alike lost their jobs, piece rate
work disappeared, and their microenterprises also shut down.

Zehra Khan, general secretary of the Home Based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF),
explained the situation for factory workers:

Factory workers usually find job in other factories if they are laid off in one, but
in this case all options dried up. Workers were not paid their dues and they
wanted money badly, they didn't mind being laid off as long as they were paid
their dues. We tried to explain to them that this will come back to haunt them but
they didn't listen. At one garment factory they were made to sign a paper saying
they were entitled to only one month’s wages and nothing else. They were
desperate, they signed the papers but now they are asking us to help them out,
because they don't have jobs or wages.

Women whose husbands were rickshaw drivers complained that during the lockdown while
their rickshaws were parked outside their homes, the batteries got stolen and had to be
replaced for Rs. 5,000. A few young women in Lahore explained that their mothers had put
them through school and college using their income from their homebased work, and that
they were working as teachers in local low fee private schools (LFPS). As soon as the
lockdown began though the schools closed down, and these teachers were dismissed without
pay.

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Razia, a widow, together with her married daughters removed bottle caps and labels from
used soda bottles for a coke factory near their home. They were paid Rs.200 per mann
(approximately 40 kilos), but explained that it took a group of 4-6 people to get through 2-3
mann a day. Razia and all her family members lost their work when the factory stopped
sending them material during the lockdown. Samina, whose homebased work involved
clipping threads off of machine embroidered cloth for Rs. 2 per thann (100 meters), shared
that her husband worked as a labor contractor for the same coke factory. He lost his contract
for failing to bring enough workers to the factory during the lockdown. She said the factory
did not appreciate that the highways were closed off during the lockdown and it was not
possible to bring people from nearby rural areas to work during this time.

Food security was the biggest issue most homebased workers identified during the lockdown,
which shows the very low capacity such households have for bracing a severe shock such as
this one. Most women we interviewed insisted they never received anything from the
government’s Covid emergency Ehsaas Ration Program nor did they receive the Rs. 12,000
eligible households were expected to receive under the program, and when they tried they
were told they were not eligible. Only one woman, who was hired on contract for the dengue
campaign by the local government, was able to use her connections to get the emergency
public support. Overall, hunger became a daily reality for most. As Shaheena from Lahore
put it:

Hunger has definitely increased. There has also been a lot of inflation. Atta
(flour) is at Rs 75-80 per kilo. When the husband is sitting at home, what can we
do? Our incomes have stopped. Vegetables have become expensive, we can only
eat if we have money.

Zehra Khan explained the background behind these circumstances: “The economic situation
was already precarious because of IMF-imposed policies. The rupee had significantly
devalued and real incomes were very low. The pandemic just made these conditions more
extreme and increased vulnerabilities.” In these circumstances women reported having to cut
back on their own food. Rehana from Chungi Amar Sidhu, Lahore said “Look at me, I have
become so thin. I am now eating one roti instead of one. What can I do?” In another focus
group in Lahore, Rasheeda stated: “If we were eating thrice a day before the lockdown, now
we eat only once.”

The families also faced pressure from landlords who insisted on timely payments and when
that wasn’t possible, evictions became real:

The landlords threw people’s things out from their homes. Right in this very
street, it happened here! They fought with the tenants and hurled abuses at them.
People had to leave their homes and some returned to their villages. The
landlords said it doesn’t matter if you eat or don’t eat, you have to pay your
rent.

The women also described how hard it was to pay for their utilities. At the beginning of the
lockdown the government announced a three-month moratorium on the payment of gas and
electricity bills, but after three months our participants reported that the bills they received
seemed so high that it became almost impossible to pay them. Given that they became
payable during the extreme heat of the summer months, the families reported having to take

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loans or having to sell off their belongings in order to make the payments, to prevent their
power from being cut off.

Sofia, from Chungi Amar Siddhu, pointed to Shazia, her neighbor sitting next to her and
explained her situation:

She lives on the first floor, and I live on the ground floor. She pays Rs.15,000 in
rent and I pay Rs. 10,000. There are eight people in her home and her son makes
Rs. 18,000 a month. They have to pay Rs. 15,000 for rent, Rs. 10,000-12,000 for
their electricity, Rs. 2,000 for gas and Rs. 2,500 for water. Now tell us, how are
they going to get groceries? The boy has four sisters, they used to get some money
for teaching but the schools are no longer open. Their father has a heart condition,
the mother has diabetes. How do they pay for medicines? Do they pay their rent
and bills or get ration? What are they to do?

Shazia, continued with the story:

I was able to find piece-rate work that involved stitching shirts but then they said
we have to iron the shirts we stitched and we would only get Rs. 3 per shirt. But
then our electricity bill came out to Rs. 4000. All the hard work went to waste
because of the increased bill.

We conducted two focus groups in Lahore after the lockdown was lifted and the schools had
opened. The women complained about the school fees that were being charged from them,
which they were having a hard time paying.

Focus groups and interviews conducted after the first lockdown was over showed that the
work had begun to trickle back in. The men were able to return to the factories and their
work, and the women began to receive some materials and orders from middle-persons.
However, in both Karachi and Lahore there were widespread complaints of work becoming
much more erratic than before. Homebased workers explained that work had been irregular
even before the lockdown but now they only received orders for 15 days out of 30.

Once the complete lockdown shifted to a partial lockdown, some factories and shops were
allowed to open, but the women reported struggling to get work or remuneration for the work
they had already done, “They (the middlemen) say “how do we pay you? We don’t have
money. Our goods aren’t selling. How can we pay you for them?””

Sadia, from Lahore described a similar situation:

When we call them, they say that we aren’t receiving any orders. There are already
so many products waiting to be sold. The money and orders are both still blocked
for us, while we quietly suffer. We have tried looking for other work. I found this
shop where they make chewing tobacco. They ask you to put a sticker on the packet.
I was told I would get Rs. 100 rupees for going through a huge bundle of those
stickers. It would probably have taken me 6 days to do it. So what is the point of
doing such work?

Survival strategies under the lockdown

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When the lockdown happened and incomes dried up, the first option was to draw down
personal savings. Given their meagre salaries, homebased workers had few savings to fall
back upon, but some had been saving for a while. Salma, the widow mentioned above
described her situation:

I had saved up about one lakh rupees to set up a barber shop for my son. But
during the lockdown we used up all of it. Yes, all of it. I even had to borrow
money, because my daughter is sick. Her medicine costs about Rs. 20,000 per
month. She has psychological issues. The neurosurgeon prescribed her medicine
that costs about Rs. 3,000 to Rs. 5,000 per week. When the lockdown happened
the shops closed, all work stopped for us, but of course the medicines had to be
continued. And then we have to buy milk for her children, because she is not
living with her and I am taking care of her and her children now.

Similarly, Maliha described how her daughter had saved Rs. 50,000 from her teacher’s salary
to buy gold for her dowry, but all of this was used up to pay for food and rent. Many women
mentioned taking loans from family members to tide them over during the lockdown.
The loans the women reported varied between Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 20,000.

On the other hand, some women said it was hard to get a loan from even their closest relative,
“No one is ready to give even ten rupees so how are they going to give us a loan?” Another
said, “Even relatives are not willing to give a loan.” Most were able to buy groceries on
credit, for this seems to be the norm in local income communities across the country, but
rents and utilities had to be paid for.

Repaying the loans becomes a problem though when incomes remain low or non-existent, as
Rubina put it: “Even if you take loans, it gets difficult to pay it back since we don't earn
much.” Saira from Akram Park described a similar situation, “Everyone has taken a loan
because they are home. My husband is sitting at home for the past five months. He keeps
borrowing from people here and there, sometimes two thousand, sometimes less, so that the
children can get to eat. It is clear that we are going deep into debt.”

Fareeda, also from Akram Park, Lahore said she sold her home appliances to pay for
groceries and rent. Women in Chungi Amar Siddhu, Lahore admitted to selling their
household items as well. Shazia stated:

How did we survive? By selling things from the house, our possessions. We had to
eat something. Whatever we had in the house that could be sold is gone.
Obviously we had to feed our children. We sold our charpoys (beds) for Rs. 200.
My son even sold his bicycle for Rs. 200.

Other women listed the items they ended up selling. Rehana said “I sold my sofa, my dresser,
now I only have a bed. My room used to be full of furniture before the lockdown.” When
asked if they thought they got their money’s worth they felt they did not because these were
distress sales, but said they were desperate to eat and it could not have been helped.

The majority of homebased workers from Akram Park, Lahore described themselves as rural
migrants from South Punjab. They said that many of them moved when the lockdown began
back to their villages to live with their parents or in-laws. Wasifa said she, her husband and

8

children moved back to live with her mother, who was a widow and had no income source
herself. Most families returned once the lockdown eased in the hope of returning to their
livelihoods.

Homebased workers in Chungi Amar Siddhu explained that they did not move back because
moving was an expense in itself, “We couldn’t just leave. We would still have to pay rent and
the bills. And then we would have to hire a truck to take our stuff and the family back to the
village. It was better to stay here.” Some women mentioned that their parents in the villages
sold their livestock to send money to the city so they could buy food for the family, “Our
parents could not stand to watch us in distress so they sold their animals for us.”

While most homebased workers stated that they were unable to get any government aid
during the lockdown, those that were members of HBWWF were provided ration three times
during the lockdown by the Federation. HomeNet Pakistan also arranged ration once during
the lockdown. The ration bags lasted between a week to 15 days, and were not sufficient to
cover the duration of the lockdown. Some women mentioned that their families and
neighbors shared food with them. Saeeda Khatoon, who lives alone, said she bought ration
out of the pension she receives to share with members of her community.

Homebased workers also tried new avenues to try and earn some money. For instance, Fauzia
from Karachi made dahi baray and asked her son to sell them on the street. There were times
when he would not want to go because often the baray would go unsold but she would urge
him to keep trying. When asked if they had tried something like this, some homebased
workers in Lahore said no, because they did not have enough money to buy the material
required to cook the food and sell it. Seema, a self-employed homebased worker in Lahore
who used to make jewelry, shifted to making trousers when the demand for jewelry dried up.

HomeNet Pakistan provided its members with cloth to make face masks. Selling face masks
provided a new avenue for earning money and many women said they sold face masks during
this time. Not everyone was able to sell what they made but they said this provided a good
opportunity to make some money. Razina was perhaps the luckiest of all the women we
interviewed because she was able to get a 3-month contract from the Government of Punjab
for its dengue campaign. She said she had some contacts in the government and was able to
secure this work but only after bribing some officials was she able to secure the contract.

For the self-employed tailors among the research participants, the two Eids provided a short
respite but they felt this Eid wasn’t as busy for them as in previous years, “There was very
little work this Eid because of corona.”

Domestic Violence and the Lockdown

Domestic violence is endemic to most contemporary patriarchal societies, according to some

estimates between 70 to 90 percent of women in Pakistan face some level of domestic abuse,
ranging from physical and verbal to psychological (Pakistan Ministry of Human Rights,
2020). During the pandemic, increased exposure to the perpetrators of domestic violence
made women and children more prone to violence. This is alarming since even in normal
circumstances, more than half of abused women in Pakistan never report or share the
incidence of violence with others (Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2017-18).

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The lockdown forced all members of the family to stay home, increasing time spent in
proximity to each other, in dire economic circumstances. We asked women whether they felt
domestic violence had increased during this period. Most agreed that it had. Saulat, from
Hyderabad explained, “When there is no income coming in and people are sitting at home,
they will get angry and fight.” She mentioned that she had been beaten all her life by her
husband but now that her children have grown up the violence had stopped. Another woman
described her sister’s case, who was used to being beaten before the pandemic but was
suffering more than ever now.

Women in Lahore and Karachi corroborated this account, “The children ask their mother for
food, the wife asks her husband to provide money for groceries, and when there is no money
they will argue and fight, and there will be violence”. Sameen from Chungi Amar Siddhu
stated, “Men have been home and are not going to work, so they are beating their wives.
Some are threatening to leave and others have considered suicide.”

Fauzia, also from Lahore, shared that “Money is the main issue here. Many people have gone
into depression. Two women attempted suicide and two others have been divorced during the
lockdown. Violence during the lockdown has increased because everyone is stuck at home.”
Another view was that “Some of our men don't work at all and it is the women that earn, but
now since the women are unable to earn anything, they are being beaten more.”

Views About the Lockdown

There is no corona. This is Imran Khan’s concoction. He claimed he will put

an end to poverty, he is killing us with hunger to end poverty.

It seemed to be a common belief among the research participants in Lahore that the
coronavirus was a hoax. Some mentioned that they had heard people were being given poison
to kill them and that the coffins that claimed to have corona victims actually had bricks in
them. Others accepted that the virus was a reality but felt the lockdown had done more harm
than good. From a public health perspective, women felt the lockdown did not contain the
virus because there was more mingling than before. Some felt that due to panic buying and
during the hours that the bazaars would open, they saw crowds they had never seen before.
Farheen, from Lahore, argued:

I feel it got worse. When the lockdown began, our boys would get together in
groups of 10-12 and play together in the streets. If there hadn’t been a
lockdown, everyone would have been busy and not had time to loiter. Instead
of going to school, the kids were roaming idle in the streets. This lockdown
has caused a lot of harm. For the kids especially, who lost out on their
education.

Fareeda from Akram Park explained that the real issue was that homebased workers and their
family members survived on daily wages and lockdown caused a sudden end to their
incomes. Sadia put it this way:

Yes, the virus is present. I am not saying that there is no virus though none of us
here got it. I watch news, and I know that the virus is spreading. But everybody
is crying because their shops are closed and their work is gone. People have to

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 eat, so what can they do? The one who was earning Rs. 400 daily, he is now
sitting inside a rented house, what will he do?

Most participants felt that the fear of contracting the virus was much less worrisome than the
hunger they had to contend with. Zareena from Karachi said “We will not die from corona
but from hunger. We are ready to go out even if there is a threat of contracting the virus.”
Abida Parveen from Lahore expressed a similar sentiment, “Had there been no strict
lockdown, the poor would have been able to earn and eat.” In the words of Suraya, a
homebased worker from Karachi, “People like us have to earn daily in order to eat”, and, “It
does not even matter whether the virus is real or not, because pait ki dozakh bujhani hoti
hay.”

Shazia Yaqub from Karachi said, “The time of death is already determined so what was the
fear? If there was no lockdown, we would have been able to go out. If people do not get
killed by the virus, they will be killed by poverty.” Some women described what it was like
when their husbands and sons tried to bypass the lockdown out of desperation: “They fined
us for opening our shops, for trying to sell produce on our carts. We didn't have anything and
we still had to pay the fines the police exhorted from us.”

Serena described the long term ramifications of the lockdown on their homebased work, “It
takes so long to establish something, to get settled but it can all get ruined so quickly and then
there is all the loss to bear.”

There was widespread fear among the participants about a second lockdown that would be
worse than the first. They feared that they had already emptied their reserves and would not
be able to survive a second lockdown.

There is talk about a second lockdown, and that it is going to be very dangerous.
Some people helped us this time, nobody will help us again. The second wave is
coming and then a third…

Conclusion

While the coronavirus pandemic is a threat to everyone, the lockdown affected people
differently based on their capacity to withstand its economic impact. This report shows
that the lives versus livelihood debate expresses a false dichotomy, for food insecurity,
extreme distress, and rising domestic violence were a direct outcome of the lockdown
imposed in Pakistan that attempted to contain the spread of the coronavirus during the
first wave experienced here from March to August, 2020.

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