43. 冠状病毒病加剧了中等收入国家已经面临的挑战，并带来了新的脆弱性，这突出表明，仅仅把人均国内生产总值作为脆弱性的指标是不够的。一些国家收到的侨汇大幅下降、全职工作岗位和非正规部门工作岗位的丧失以及大流行病造成的债务风险上升，都将对中等收入国家产生重大影响。2020 年流向低收入和中等收入国家的侨汇预计将比前一年减少 1 090 亿美元(19.7%)。预计这些国家将是受工作岗位丧失打击最严重的国家，2020 年第二季度的工时数比前一年减少16.1%。预计到 2020 年底，这些国家将有 2.7 亿人面临严峻的粮食不安全问题。他们还首当其冲地承受着对公共卫生系统缺乏投资和卫生保健人员短缺的影响。
43. COVID-19 had exacerbated the challenges already facing middle-income countries and had brought with it new vulnerabilities, underlining that per capita gross domestic product (GDP) alone was insufficient as an indicator of vulnerability. The substantial drop in remittances for some countries, job losses, in full-time work and in the informal sector, and rising debt risk caused by the pandemic would have a major impact on middle-income countries. Remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries were expected to decline by $109 billion (19.7 per cent) in 2020 over the previous year. Those countries were expected to be the hardest hit by job losses, with working-hour losses of 16.1 per cent in the second quarter of 2020, compared with the previous year. It was expected that 270 million people in such countries would face acute food insecurity by the end of 2020. They were also bearing the brunt of the lack of investment in public health systems and shortages of health-care workers.