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Knowledge4Policy
Knowledge for policy

Supporting policy with scientific evidence

We mobilise people and resources to create, curate, make sense of and use knowledge to inform policymaking across Europe.

  • Publication | 2020

Impact of COVID-19 on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN)

Global Food and Nutrition Security

The first cases of COVID-19 were reported in November 2019 in the Chinese province of Hubei. Since 23 January 2020, the city of Wuhan has been locked down. Quite soon afterwards, other areas of China adopted very strict measures to contain the spreading of COVID-19. Now, China claims effective control over the spread of COVID-19. However, the impacts, both on China (about two months of disruption/strong negative influence on production) and on the world (China’s current proportion of World GDP stands at 16.3%, compared to only 4.2% at the time of the SARS outbreak in 2003) are quite big and not yet fully estimated. In the past weeks, COVID-19 has spread to 164 countries. On 11 March 2020, WHO declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a “pandemic”. European Union countries, and especially Italy, Spain and France have taken very strict measures in the effort to contain the spread of the virus, mirroring the ones adopted earlier in China. Other countries are also now beginning to adopt containment measures.