PERCEIVED IMPACT OF COVID‑19 ON DAILY LIFE In addition to the social stressors on people’s well-being, stressors in the daily living situation may strongly impact the mental health of refugees and migrants. This section docu‑ ments findings from the survey on how the COVID‑19-related government-initiated preventive measures impacted the dai‑ ly lives of refugees and migrants in the different life domains respondents living in asylum centres and on the streets or in insecure accommodation felt that their conditions had considerably worsened more than did those living in hous‑ es or apartments (Fig. 17). This requires particular attention of governments, civil society, NGOs and international or‑ ganizations alike. At first, respondents were asked how much the COVIDrelated measures initiated by the government had had an impact on their lives on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 10 (ex‑ treme). Participants reported an average of 7.5 on this scale, indicating great impact on the lives of participating refugees and migrants. Fig. 15 shows this for various WHO regions. Irregular migrants (in the survey terminology “respondents with no documents” or “undocumented”), as Fig. 18 shows, clearly have experienced a stronger impact on their daily living conditions by the pandemic than other groups, espe‑ cially regarding their access to food, clothes, support from organizations and medical care. In many instances this was a deterioration of 50% or more within this category. The survey also explored how COVID‑19 impacted the refugees and migrants in their various matters of life and livelihoods. While in many of the cases, there had been lit‑ tle or no impact among the participants in the survey, it is remarkable to note that in terms of work, safety and finan‑ cial situation, at least 50% of the respondents considered that they had been impacted by the pandemic (Fig. 16). Acknowledging the inadvertent sampling bias of the sur‑ vey respondents (see Methodology), this should be alarm‑ ing as the likely situation among refugees and migrants, might be considerably worse. The survey did capture that The impacts described here are likely even more pro‑ nounced for those living on the street and in insecure accommodation, as would be expected. Refugees and migrants living in such insecure housing situations or in asylum centres reported a strong deterioration of their access to housing, food, access to work, clothing, medical care and support from NGOs (Fig. 17), which is alarming. The survey also attempted to seek insight as to the strat‑ egies that refugees and migrants have used to cope with FIG. 15. Overall impact of COVID‑19 among refugees and migrants across WHO regions Average degree of COVID‑19 impact on daily living (scale 1-10) 8 7,8 7.79 7,6 7,4 7,2 7.85 7.44 7.39 7.24 7 7.02 6,8 6,6 EURO EMRO AFRO WPRO PAHO SEARO Regions Notes: scale of 1 (not at all) to 10 (extreme); data from 19 587 respondents (938 AFRO, 5857 EMRO, 5782 EURO, 2291 PAHO, 1700 SEARO, 3019 WPRO); AFRO: WHO African Region; EMRO: WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region; EURO: WHO European Region; PAHO: Pan American Health Organization; SEARO: WHO South-East Asia Region; WPRO: WHO Western Pacific Region. Perceived impact of COVID‑19 on daily life | 21