Abstract:
This paper investigates the perception of urban households towards COVID-19 and its impact on
livelihoods. The study was conducted in two urban communities of Burayu town administration, Sheger
City of Oromia Regional State. Exploratory type of research design with mixed quantitative and
qualitative methods was applied. The qualitative data were collected from 155 respondents through a
household survey. The qualitative data collected from six focus group discussions and eight key
informants comprising head of households and experts from government offices. Descriptive and
inferential analyses were executed on the quantitative data and themes from qualitative data were used to
substantiate the descriptive data. Findings of the study show that urban households demonstrated low
and shallow perception in the areas like key symptoms, mode of transmission and prevention strategies of
COVID-19. Except for educational level, the selected demographic characteristics of the respondents had
no statistical significance for perception. COVID-19 had a mild impact on the aggregate health
conditions of the respondents. However, the pandemic predominantly imposed high levels of
psychological distress. COVID-19, during its critical seasons, extremely impacted the socio-economic
conditions of households in the study area. Among others, temporary work and individualized incomegenerating
businesses were severely affected. Secondly, the pandemic affected paid work in private and
government sectors. Remittances and pensions were the least affected source of households’ livelihoods.
Inaccessibility to livelihood inputs, loss of jobs, reduction of workers and working hours, leaving
businesses, reduction in salary, lack of market places, and reduced demands for goods are the major
sources of income exacerbated by the pandemic. Reducing consumption of goods followed by using
emergency savings was the most common coping strategy used by households during the
peak. Additional emergency support received from the government, selling assets, reducing demands for
goods and limiting working hours were also regarded as other forms of copying strategies. Lack of loan
or financial services, inadequate emergency assistance and lack of social services during the shock were
identified. It is concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic has left devastating effects on health, livelihoods
and the world of work. The economic and social disruption caused by the pandemic has exacerbated
steady poverty. It is recommended that policy makers, implementers and mandated government bodies
should have responsive policy, strategies and systems in place that would help provide responsive
support, safeguarding and recovery of vulnerable households during the outbreak of any potential
pandemic.
