Spread and Severity of COVID-19: A Data-Driven Exploratory Analysis of Vulnerability in the Caribbean

The confluence of multiple internal and external factors has created a number of possibilities and contradictions for the predominantly small island developing states (SIDS) in the Caribbean. It is within this context that the intersecting challenges of pre-existing socio-economic precarity, the existential threat of the climate crisis, and the various shocks emanating from the global political economy, that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic must be considered. Indeed, these broader socio-economic realities were compounded as COVID-19 unmasked democratic deficits; disrupted access to education; exposed and deepened social inequalities; and brought to the fore psycho-social and mental health challenges for diverse demographic groups. Less documented were stories of resilience among Caribbean people and the role of communities, religion, and traditional coping mechanisms in helping the region’s citizens navigate through the pandemic. Volume II of Interdisciplinary Perspectives on COVID-19 and the Caribbean is divided into four parts, which weave together four broad thematic strands: Caribbean Society, Religion and Rights; the Psycho-social Impacts of COVID-19; and Education, Innovation, and Technology. Collectively, the chapters which constitute this volume embody the ethos of working in an inter- and multidisciplinary context to delineate the precise ways in which the pandemic has transformed lives and livelihoods in the region. Authors working within and across the human, social, physical and life sciences consider the myriad effects of the health crisis in the region, interrogating these experiences from the granular to macro level.