Global scenarios for the future of the COVID-19 pandemic

This analysis presents three different global scenarios for the future of the COVID-19 pandemic over a six-month period from April 2020. For each of those scenarios, potential secondary impacts for children were identified, as well as implications for NGO actors. Further analysis then extended those six-month scenarios in two ways: 

• extending the time horizon of the global scenarios to 24 months since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak (end of 2021), and 
• considering the implications of the updated 24-month global scenarios across the Asia region.

These scenarios are not presented as forecasts; instead, they are imagined futures constructed to assist overall organisational thinking and discussions about how to plan future operations in light of COVID-19.

The longer the time horizon, the more difficult it is to predict outcomes with any certainty, and the context is rapidly evolving. However, it is intended that these scenarios will be used to challenge thinking and prompt discussion about what the landscape might look like for humanitarian actors globally, and regionally in Asia, by the end of 2021.