The COVID-19 pandemic represents a major public health challenge and will have serious economic and social impacts. Governments are facing a double challenge: they have to contain the health pandemic while responding to its economic and social effects.

Social protection is an indispensable part of any coordinated policy response to the unfolding crisis, ensuring that people can effectively access health care while supporting job and income security for those most affected. Social protection increases resilience, contributes to preventing poverty, unemployment and informality, acts as a powerful economic and social stabilizer while stimulating aggregate demand in times of crises and beyond.

The ILO is doubling its efforts to inform and support its constituents and development partners in their efforts to design and put in place adapted and flexible social protection measures to address the social and economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis.

Publications

• Spotlight brief: Social protection responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in developing countries: Strengthening resilience by building universal social protection
• Spotlight brief: Sickness benefits during sick leave and quarantine: Country responses and policy considerations in the context of COVID-19
• Spotlight brief: Social protection responses to the COVID-19 crisis: Country responses and policy considerations
• Social protection responses to the COVID-19 crisis around the world - Updated on 20 May 2020
• Social protection responses to the COVID-19 crisis: Country responses in Asia and the Pacific
• ILO Sectoral brief: COVID and the health sector
• Spotlight brief: Towards universal health coverage. Social health protection principles
• Disability inclusive social protection response to COVID-19 Crisis

ILO News

• Plug social protection gaps in developing countries to prevent future crisis, ILO says
• The COVID-19 crisis: A wake-up call to strengthen social protection systems
• COVID-19: Social protection systems failing vulnerable groups

Tools

• Data dashboard: Social Protection Monitor: Social protection responses to the COVID-19 crisis around the world - Updated weekly
• Rapid Social Protection Calculator for COVID-19 
• ILO policy resource package « Extending social security to workers in the informal economy: Lessons from international experience
• Fiscal space for social protection. A handbook for assessing financing options

Statements

• Social Protection Interagency Cooperation Board (SPIAC-B). Joint Statement on the Role of Social Protection in Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Videos

• Adequate sickness benefits to all
• Disability inclusive social protection response to COVID-19 crisis
• Social protection responses to the COVID-19 crisis

Links

• ILO portal on COVID-19 and the world of work

E-Events

• Webinar: Respostas no campo da Proteção Social à COVID-19, 12 Maio de 2020
• Pensions, social protection and COVID-19 in developing countries, HelpAge, 15 May 2020
• Health financing in times of COVID 19: Adaptative measures by countries, implications for future financing and lessons for other, P4H, 29 April 2020
• Impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on formal sector workers: (potential) social protection and employment responses, socialprotection.org, 28 April 2020
• Implications of COVID-19 for Public Health and the SDGs, UN SDSN, 27 April 2020
• Impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on employment: (potential) solutions for informal/ self-employed workers, socialprotection.org, 21 April 2020
• COVID-19 and the Informal Economy: Responses, Relief, and Research, socialprotection.org, 17 April 2020

See more: Social Protection Response to COVID-19 Crisis Portal in Portuguese