The COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented global impact on societies and economies across the world. In the Maldives, while the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases remains relatively low compared to many other countries and the number of deaths is under 50 as of December 14, the socio-economic toll is significant. According to the Ministry of National Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, over 22,000 people have lost their jobs due to the pandemic.1 Certain GDP forecasts predict growth reductions reaching 29.7% in the worst-case scenario (figure 2).

To understand this situation, this project “Leveraging Big Data Sources to Estimate the demographic and Economic Impacts and Implications of COVID-19 in Maldives” conducted a report which had three main objectives:
(i) Developing machine-learning algorithms to estimate population density, movement, and poverty indicators to obtain greater levels of granularity,
(ii) Comparison of pre- and post- COVID-19 mobility patterns in Maldives, and
(iii) Developing the capacity of the NBS team to conduct such analyses in-house through trainings.