1.1 Issues with COVID-19–related data

C ovid - 19 A nd m igr A tion in t H e m editerr A ne A n r egion 31

area and the GCC states, with real GDP dropping by as much as 31 percent in Libya, by 20 percent in Lebanon, and by 9 percent in Tunisia (World Bank 2021b). That the COVID-19 crisis has more severely affected the most vulnerable groups, such as women and youth—causing an increasing number of people to fall into poverty—has been a reason of particular concern.

Recovery prospects . Recovery trajectories were also unequal across the extended Mediterranean region. Although the deployment of effective vaccines triggered a strong recovery in many European countries in 2021, growth trajectories were still below their pre-COVID expected paths (OECD 2021b). The euro area was expected to grow by 5.2 percent in 2021 and by 4.3 percent in 2022, while the Middle East and North Africa was expected to have a more modest recovery in 2021 (2.4 percent), especially in the GCC countries (2.2 percent), and with Lebanon’s negative GDP growth expected to persist in 2021 (OECD 2021a; World Bank 2021a).

Apart from Spain, where GDP was projected to grow by only 4.5 percent between 2020 and 2021, GDP was projected to grow more quickly in 2021 in other Mediterranean countries such as France (6.8 percent), Greece (6.7 percent), and Italy (6.3 percent) as the tourism industry and domestic demand recover (OECD 2021a). However, because most of the populations in low-income countries have not been vaccinated and progress with vaccination campaigns has been slow in these countries, the emergence of new variants may pose additional future health and economic challenges for all countries (OECD 2021b).23

The Johns Hopkins data on COVID-19 cases and deaths presented in this report have some limitations. First, different countries have administered different numbers of tests, which have also varied over time. Overall, northern Mediterranean countries have administered more tests per million people than have the southern Mediterranean and GCC countries and economies, especially during the second wave of the pandemic (figure B1.1.1).

Even within a region, testing capacity varies widely. For example, in Africa, by the end of December 2020, 10 countries accounted for over 70 percent of the COVID-19 tests administered in the whole continent (Petesch 2020).a Initial evidence suggests a positive correlation between the number of tests administered and the number of cases confirmed (figure B1.1.2).

Second, the capacity to report COVID-19 deaths and the ways of reporting them differ across countries, making it difficult to report the official death toll. For example, many countries do not count people who did not test positive for the virus before dying, which undercounts COVID-19 deaths

BOX 1.1 Issues with COVID-19–related data

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32 b U ilding resilient migr A tion s Y stems in t H e mediterr A ne A n region

BOX 1.1 continued

Figure B1.1.1 COVID-19 tests per million people per day, by extended Mediterranean subregion, February 2020 to October 2021

Daily tests per million 20,000

18,000

16,000

14,000

12,000

10,000

8,000

6,000

4,000

2,000

0 Jan 2020 Apr 2020 Jul 2020 Oct 2020 Jan 2021 Apr 2021 Jul 2021 Oct 2021 Northern Mediterranean Southern Mediterranean GCC

Sources: Coronavirus Pandemic (Covid-19) database of our world in data (https://ourworldindata.org /coronavirus); Coronavirus resource Center, Center for systems science and engineering, Johns Hopkins University (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/). Note: “northern mediterranean” includes Albania, bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, France, greece, italy, malta, montenegro, slovenia, spain, and turkey. “southern mediterranean” includes Algeria, the Arab republic of egypt, israel, Jordan, lebanon, libya, morocco, the syrian Arab republic, tunisia, and west bank and gaza. gCC = gulf Cooperation Council (bahrain, kuwait, oman, Qatar, saudi Arabia, and the United Arab emirates).

especially in places with low testing capacity. In some areas, limited hospital resources have also created backlogs in the death counts, since they often lack the capacity to register death certificates for several days or weeks (Economist 2021a).

Counting “excess deaths” relative to prior years has been used as an alternate method of measuring deaths during the pandemic. An estimated 7–13 million excess deaths had occurred worldwide as of May 2021 (Economist 2021b). However, many people may have also died indirectly from the pandemic, as people were in many cases less likely to seek care for other illnesses, which also blurs the number of excess deaths reported. (continued on next page)