The text aims to highlight the emerging demands placed on the State's response by the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing some strategies used by Social Workers (Social Assistants) in Costa Rican social development, immersed in the context of the population's precarious living conditions since the structural crisis of capital and exacerbated by the pandemic. The article was written based on bibliographic and documentary research, using primary sources of
information such as newspaper articles, information from the Professional College of Social Workers of Costa Rica, and public documents with data on the topic. Based on the information collected and the analysis performed, it is evident how the increase in poverty and inequality experienced not only in Costa Rica, but also in the Latin American and Caribbean region, due to their status as peripheral countries organically linked to a global capitalist production system, has detrimental to the living conditions of the working class, especially in terms of poverty, unemployment, and access to health care and education. Such conditions are exacerbated in the current context, where Social Work (Social Service), as a profession intrinsically linked to the reproduction of capitalism through social policy and as a profession that directly intervenes in the manifestations of the social issue, has had to devise care strategies in this context of pandemic.
