INFORMATION MANAGEMENT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON PUBLIC HEALTH IN AKWA IBOM STATE

The Covid-19 pandemic has generated shocks that has caused economic fluctuations globally, calling for an understanding of the behaviour of macroeconomic and health variables. This study presents an early review of the information management and health impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the residents of Akwa Ibom state. The aggregate supply and aggregate demand (AS-AD) model provides the theoretical motivation for the study. From the findings, while the number of infected cases reflects significant correlations with economic activity from the perspective of a trend analysis, the estimates from dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) shows that the nexus between the number of confirmed cases and attendant macroeconomic outcomes are largely insignificant with the expected signs. The study has therefore shown that the Covid-19 pandemic has insignificant negative impacts on basic macroeconomic variables in Akwa Ibom state and Nigeria in general such as inflation, employment, exchange rate, GDP growth, among others. In other words, time is required before the established correlations withstand empirical scrutiny in terms of causality. As the government has engaged the Economic Sustainable Plan (ESP, 2020), which is a post-Covid-19 recovery plan, it is hoped that the attendant policies would be properly implemented so as to provide the critical mass to repositioning the country's economy on the path towards inclusive and sustained economic development.