Estimating the Distributional Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Remedial Tax and Benefit Policies in Indonesia

The Government of Indonesia acted quickly to protect people from the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdown measures in 2020. Using a static tax and microsimulation model for Indonesia with adjusted datasets to reflect the economic shock throughout 2020, we explore how the pandemic affected people’s earnings in Indonesia, the extent to which the automatic stabilisers that were already built into the tax and benefit system cushioned the economic shock, and how the augmented or new benefit policies served to further cushion the shock. We estimate that in 2020 the additional policies meant that poverty rose from 6.8 percent to a maximum of 8.3 percent rather than to 10.7 percent if they had not been introduced. We discuss reasons why the official poverty estimates for 2020 are higher than those generated in this study. © 2021, Wright et al.

Determination of alcohols in hand sanitisers: Are off-the-shelf hand sanitisers what they claim to be?

Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 - the causative agent of COVID-19 - can be prevented through non-pharmaceutical interventions such as observing proper hand hygiene using alcohol-based hand rubs/sanitisers (ABHRs) as recommended by the WHO and local health authorities. However, this recommendation has led to high demand for ABHRs and proliferation of sub-standard products, which do not contain the recommended amount of alcohol. Fifty products of different origins and formulations obtained off-the-shelf and in public places in and around Pretoria (South Africa) were analysed for their alcohol content using gas chromatography. Ethanol was the most common alcohol used in the products, followed by isopropanol. Only 21 (42%) of the products analysed contained at least 70% alcohol;of these only 14 (28%) met the WHO recommended 80±5% alcohol content to have a virucidal effect on SARS-CoV-2. Of the 41 commercial off-the-shelf products analysed, 27 (66%) contained less than 70% alcohol in comparison to 13% of homemade products. Only 18% of gel products contained 70% alcohol, compared with 47% for liquid-based products. Most of the products did not contain the appropriate or correct declaration as recommended by the South African National Standards (SANS 289 and 490). The proliferation of substandard ABHRs is of great public health concern and calls for stricter regulations and enforcement in order to protect consumers, their rights and well-being during and post the COVID-19 pandemic period. However, in the interim, formulation of ABHRs using the WHO guidelines should be mandatory, as such formulations, when made correctly, do have the required virucidal effect against SARS-CoV-2. © 2021 Academy of Science of South Africa. All rights reserved.