On the social front, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic remained dire throughout the quarter under review, with an average of over two thousand daily cases at the beginning of the quarter which was the peak. The rest of the quarter witnessed a downward trend, with the curve eventually flattening in September. The COVID pandemic limited the media’s ability to fulfil their functions especially in view of the elections. As such, the media had to adopt alternative methods of interacting with sources. One respondent, a journalist, remarked: It affected my work in the sense that most of the news sources did not trust us as they suspected us of being COVID-positive Another respondent also a practising journalist stated: It affected us in such a way that not everyone used to report for work on a daily basis. We were divided into small groups and that compromised our security during political assignments Above: COVID-19 trajectory in the quarter8 Overall, the socio-political environment in the third quarter was generally calm with only one reported incident of violence/harassment against a media practitioner, a positive continuation of the encouraging trend observed in the second quarter. The media encountered various challenges 8 According to the COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. See https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19 16