The first wave of the National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDSCRAM) provided strong evidence that there had been a drastic increase in both adult and child hunger in the survey months, May and June 2020, and that almost half of all households had on occasion run out of money for food during April 2020.
This paper considers how access to public sector healthcare in South Africa have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic using three sources of evidence: the NIDS-CRAM (Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey) and MatCH (Maternal and Child Health) SMS survey together with routine health care utilisation data from the District Health Information System (DHIS).