23/04/20 COVID-19 Global News Update

The world is experiencing a sharp deterioration in economic performance, due to the continuing coronavirus pandemic. Developing countries are certain to be hit hard by what the International Monetary Fund, and others, warn will be the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Japan’s services sector shrank at a record pace in April, while factories also fell quiet across the country due to the widening fallout from the coronavirus pandemic as an economic contraction deepens.

The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Executive Board has approved a disbursement of $363 million under its Rapid Credit Facility to help Democratic Republic of Congo confront the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fund said.

Local authorities have received and distributed funding to support small and medium businesses in England during coronavirus.

Capping the number of students who can attend each British university will not stave off the financial catastrophe that institutions face following the coronavirus outbreak, a report from the University and College Union (UCU) warns.

Britain’s government plans to test a sample of 20,000 English households for COVID-19 in the coming weeks to try to establish how far the disease has spread across the country.

Northern Ireland may emerge from coronavirus restrictions at a different pace than other parts of the UK, First Minister Arlene Foster has said. She said measures will be eased when scientific and public health criteria are met, not timetables or dates.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab warns against lifting the UK's coronavirus lockdown measures too early.

Reported cases of the coronavirus have crossed 2.62 million globally and 183,761 people have died, according to a Reuters tally as of 0200 GMT on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia’s finance minister said on Wednesday the government was looking at additional measures to reduce spending amidst the coronavirus outbreak. Cuts in expenses on items such as travel, events, tourism, entertainment, sports would lead to savings, Mohammed al-Jadaan said.

The Trump administration plans to reopen the country’s national parks and other public lands in line with coronavirus guidelines, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, but gave no other details.

It may take European Union countries until the summer or even longer to agree on how exactly to finance aid to help economies recover from the coronavirus pandemic as major disagreements persist, a bloc official said on Wednesday.

The Australian government is calling for the G20 countries to take action on wildlife wet markets, calling them a "biosecurity and human health risk". Australia is not yet calling for a ban - but says its own advisers believe they may need to be "phased out".

More than 232,000 people might have been infected in the first wave of Covid-19 in mainland China, four times the official figures, according to a study by Hong Kong researchers.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday the coronavirus could give some countries an excuse to adopt repressive measures for reasons unrelated to the pandemic as he warned that the outbreak risks becoming a human rights crisis.

All member nations of the World Health Organization (WHO) should support a proposed independent review into the coronavirus pandemic, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Thursday, further threatening strained ties with China.

Mexico will increase spending on social programs and infrastructure projects by $25.6 billion (20.71 billion pounds), President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday, in a delayed attempt to jump-start the coronavirus-hit economy.

Security experts at Alphabet Inc’s Google have identified more than a dozen government-backed hacking groups using the COVID-19 pandemic as cover for phishing and malware attempts.