The COVID-19 lockdown in South Africa was one of the earliest and strictest in global comparison. Despite stringent early confinement policies implemented to reduce contagion, COVID-19 infections rapidly surged across the country. Cape Town, with its poor, densely populated townships, and the surrounding Western Cape province quickly emerged as hotspots in the early phases of the pandemic. Newly collected panel data from South Africa’s National Income Dynamics Study-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) show that the profiles of those who came under economic distress since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic differ in key respects from those who had experienced poverty previously. This chapter seeks to speak to processes which remain out of reach of large, quantitative, rapid assessment surveys - such as the interlinkages between livelihood strategies and informal support networks, the psychological experience of the pandemic, and the exacerbation of underlying vulnerabilities. The chapter shows that pre-existing markers of vulnerability map onto poverty and deprivation outcomes in the post COVID context and may help explain heterogeneity in the experience of the shock.