SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS

• Food insecurity continues to deteriorate in Round 7, as observed by a decrease in the proportion of households classified as having acceptable food consumption compared to the previous six rounds.

• The proportion of households who are employing the most severe consumption-based coping strategies and emergency livelihood coping strategies continues to increase in the current round of data collection as compared to all previous data (Rounds 1-6), indicating that households are applying adverse coping strategies in order to maintain good food consumption during the ongoing lean season period.

• Reported access to markets has slightly increased in Round 7 but remains within the same trends for all previous rounds (1-6) owing to economic problems faced by households to access money to procure items from the markets. Urbanbased households reported having greater physical access to markets as compared to rural-based households, likely due to their high market dependency and better income opportunities.

• The reported cases of fever and cough have increased in the current round compared to previous rounds. However, this is in-line with seasonal trends with the onset of the rainy season and may not be directly linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: World Food Programme