The first and second waves of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Nagaland: across sectional analysis

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a massive socio-economic crisis across the state due to business interruptions and abandonment from stay-at-home, containment zone, restrictions on human mobility and social-distancing measures. This study aims to investigate the dynamics of the disease spread in different parts of the state. The COVID-19 waves (25 May-25 June, first wave 2020 and 28 March-28 May, second wave 2021) were compared using information collected from Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Nagaland and field survey report. Multivariate regression model was developed to evaluate the direct impact of COVID-19 positive case on labour income, poverty, job loss, population density, crude rate spread, health care expenditure and COVID-19 death. This paper also examines the relationship between consumer sentiment and economic progress. It assesses the predictive ability of consumer confidence indices and selected macroeconomic indicators using a simple consumer confidence index which addresses the issue of how confidence indicators bring additional information beyond economic fundamentals. The findings show that the confidence indicator could influence economic performance and be a good predictor of employment, income and expenditure. These results highlight the importance of managing confidence and expectations in COVID-19 crises. Finally the paper investigates the CPI inflation during the first and second wave of COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID CPI inflation rate was 11.83% in the first wave (2020), compared to 7.76% in second wave (2021). As an important driver of the inflation process, inflation expectations must be monitored closely by policymakers to ensure they remain consistent with long-term monetary policy objectives.