ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the various impacts of COVID-19 on Pacific Island Countries (PICs). Its focus is not on all PICs but on the Pacific small island states group, which consists of Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, The Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. The chapter develops an impacts analytical framework for COVID-19. This framework is important given its predictive orientation, given that the pandemic’s impacts are yet to be fully observed, with the overall COVID-19 situation still highly fluid. This framework is relevant to all countries, but in particular the Pacific small island states group. It distinguishes between direct health impacts and those arising from endogenous behavioural responses owing to public and private aversion behaviour due to the fear of infection. The second category of impacts includes those on income poverty and other development achievement indicators. Subsequently, the chapter briefly examines overseas development aid response of Australia to COVID-19 in the Pacific small island states group, arguing that this approach needs not just to build health systems capability but also to address the broader vulnerabilities through which exogenous shocks such as COVID-19 are endogenously transmitted.
