This joint IMF-World Bank note provides a set of high-level recommendations that can guide national regulatory and supervisory responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and offers an overview of measures taken across jurisdictions to date.

Hand washing and maintaining social distance are the main measures recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) to avoid contracting COVID-19. Unfortunately, these measured do not prevent infection by inhalation of small droplets exhaled by an infected person that can travel distance of meters or tens of meters in the air and carry their viral content. Science explains the mechanisms of such transport and there is evidence that this is a significant route of infection in indoor environments. Despite this, no countries or authorities consider airborne spread of COVID-19 in their regulations to prevent infections transmission indoors. It is therefore extremely important, that the national authorities acknowledge the reality that the virus spreads through air, and recommend that adequate control measures be implemented to prevent further spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, in particularly removal of the virus-laden droplets from indoor air by ventilation.

Estimates point to a decline in global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 that will be the largest in decades (by 2%) and to significant contractions in the volume of global trade (by between 13% and 32%).The drop in economic activity, particularly in China, the United States and Europe, is hurting trade volumes and prices in Latin America and the Caribbean, especially for commodities. Some key production sectors in countries of the region form part of global value chains in which the United States and China are fundamental. In addition, many countries will be severely affected by reduced remittances from migrants and the decline in tourism. The deterioration in global financial conditions has increased volatility in the region to record levels, and there have been massive capital outflows from emerging markets, most currencies have depreciated against the dollar and sovereign risk has risen sharply (ECLAC, 2020c).

The COVID-19 crisis has affected societies and economies around the globe and will permanently reshape our world as it continues to unfold. While the fallout from the crisis is both amplifying familiar risks and creating new ones, change at this scale also creates new openings for managing systemic challenges, and ways to build back better.

Of the 740 million women working in the informal economy,11 42 per cent are found in the abovementioned high-risk sectors, compared to 32 per cent of men.12 Lockdowns and curfews, compounded by limited, if any, access to social protection provisions – including health care, income and food support, and maternity protection – worsen their social and economic situation. For instance, women homeworkers who produce for global supply chains are particularly affected by COVID-19, as their incomes depend heavily on now suspended orders from high-income countries.13 In this context, when gender intersects with other personal characteristics, such as ethnicity, nationality, age, disability or HIV status, there is a risk that both gender disparities and intra-women inequalities will widen further.

FDI flows are expected to fall by more than 30% in 2020 even under the most optimistic scenario for the success of the public health and economic support policy measures taken by governments to address the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting recession. FDI flows to developing countries are expected to drop even more because sectors that have been severely impacted by the pandemic, including the primary and manufacturing sectors, account for a larger share of their FDI than in developed economies.

The COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to contain the virus are exacting a staggering economic toll in countries around the world. China’s economy shrank 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020 on a year-on-year basis, and Eurozone economies shrank at a14.8 percent annualized rate. In the United States, nearly 28 million persons filed new claims for unemployment benefits over the six-week period ending April 25. 1 The U.S. economy shrank at an annualized rate of 4.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020, and many analysts project it will shrink at a rate of 25% or more in the second quarter.2 Yet, even as much of the economy is shuttered, some firms are expanding in response to pandemic-induced demand shifts. As noted in a recent Wall Street Journal article, “The coronavirus pandemic is forcing the fastest reallocation of labor since World War II, with companies and governments mobilizing an army of idled workers into new activities that are urgently needed.”3 In other words, Covid-19 is also a major reallocation shock.

This report presents a set of policies to mitigate the impacts and groups them in three overlapping phases: Coping, Managing Continuity, and Improving and Accelerating. The guiding principle are to use every opportunity, in each phase, to do things better. This includes the provision of incentives, such as school feeding and school health programmes, to maximize reenrolment and attendance as schools reopen. By learning from innovations and emergency processes, systems can adapt and scale up the more effective solutions. In doing so, they could become more effective, more agile, and more resilient. A vision and proactive action will help not only mitigate the damage from the current crisis, but could turn recovery into real growth.

Durante 2019 la escasa dinámica de la economía regional se puso de manifiesto en la debilidad de la generación de empleo asalariado —específicamente, de empleo registrado— y en el leve aumento interanual de la tasa de desocupación como promedio ponderado a nivel nacional. Los primeros meses de 2020 están marcados por la irrupción de la pandemia de la enfermedad por coronavirus (COVID-19), que hizo necesaria la aplicación de políticas de confinamiento. Esta situación redundó en la interrupción de las actividades económicas a una escala nunca antes vista a nivel mundial. Los países de América Latina y el Caribe deberán enfrentar grandes caídas de su producto interno bruto con importantes consecuencias en sus mercados laborales, en un contexto de debilidad y vulnerabilidad macroeconómica.

Data from various states suggest that COVID-19 lockdowns have done little to reduce the use of violence by criminal groups in Brazil. What has changed is governance, with criminal actors adapting to coronavirus by imposing curfews, restricting movement, promoting public-health messages, and discouraging price gouging – alongside their usual practices of extortion and drug trafficking. Such changes in violence and governance indicate that Brazil’s non-state armed groups continue to augment their power, and these gains may well persist once the pandemic has receded, write Ryan Berg (American Enterprise Institute) and Andrea Varsori (Urban Violence Research Network).

41.000 personas en 9 países respondieron a una encuesta remota sobre cómo la COVID-19 ha afectado sus medios de vida, seguridad alimentaria y acceso a mercados. Las principales preocupaciones de las personas que aceptaron completar la encuesta realizada en línea fueron: incapacidad para cubrir sus necesidades alimentarias, pérdida parcial o total de ingresos debido a la crisis generada por la pandemia, y miedo a la propagación del virus.

The global COVID-19 quarantine has meant less air pollution in cities and clearer skies. Animals are strolling through public spaces, and sound pollution has diminished, allowing us to hear the birds sing.

But these relatively small and temporary changes should not be mistaken for the COVID-19 pandemic actually helping to fix climate change. Quite the contrary: the pandemic that made the world stop offers a glimpse of the deep changes in lifestyles and economic structures that we need to implement if we are to effectively mitigate the worst of climate change.

In essence, the banking union is an exercise in risk diversification, achieved by pooling banking risks and regulatory controls among euro area countries. The strategy involved three interrelated lines of action: strengthening the solvency of banks; enhancing their efficiency; and fostering area-wide diversification and integration of the banking industry.

“La crisis es el accidente más la desestabilización. Combina el desencadenamiento de dificultades, el desorden en el funcionamiento de las organizaciones y divergencias en cuanto a las opciones fundamentales. Con la crisis, la cuestión de la información del público se vuelve central. No se trata solamente de aplicar soluciones listas para ser empleada en problemas definidos. Será preciso legitimar la propia acción, mantener la credibilidad, hacer gala de eficacia en la ayuda a la población.”

The COVID-19 lockdown in the U.S. began at a time of relatively mild weather and very few natural disasters, so for the past few months, the country has been able to focus mainly on the pandemic. But this week, two dams in Michigan failed after heavy rains and flooding, forcing 11,000 people to evacuate while trying to social distance. The floodwaters also threatened the Dow Chemical plant and two hazardous Superfund waste sites, which could have precipitated an environmental disaster. In India and Bangladesh, the most powerful cyclone in more than a decade forced over three million people to evacuate as relief teams tried to protect them against infection from COVID-19.

Investment in transforming the transport sector could create millions of new jobs and help countries move to greener, healthier economies, says report from the International Labour Organization and the UN Economic Commission for Europe.

The study finds that 10 million additional jobs could be created worldwide - 2.9 million in the UNECE region - if 50 per cent of all vehicles manufactured were electric. In addition, almost 5 million new jobs could be created worldwide - 2.5 million in the UNECE region - if UNECE countries doubled investment in public transport.

While the pandemic arrived after it had already devastated Europe (and now the United States), everybody in the human rights field knew that health and social services in Latin America had been dismantled progressively, mostly via privatisation and the shrinking of public programmes and spending. Hence the pandemic will affect principally the vulnerable people who can’t access basic public services.

While a global pandemic has been a looming risk for decades, COVID-19 has come as a shock to society, health systems, economies and governments worldwide. In the midst of extraordinary challenges and uncertainty, and countless personal tragedies, leaders are under pressure to make decisions on managing the immediate impact of the pandemic and its consequences, decisions that will shape the state of the world for years to come. What might be the silver linings in the crisis and how might leaders use this moment to build a more prosperous, equitable and sustainable world?

The United Nations and other partner organizations of the CCSA make a wealth of impartial data and statistics available free of charge with the spirit of promoting facts-based planning. This report presents a snapshot of some of the latest information available on how COVID-19 is affecting the world today. Although a wide range of topics are covered in this report, a consistency of message is clear – this is an unprecedented crisis, and no aspect of our lives is immune. The quantitative knowledge presented in this report covers different aspects of public and private life from economic and environmental fluctuations to changes that affect individuals in terms of income, education, employment and violence and changes affecting public services such as civil aviation and postal services. The report also puts a spotlight on the affects for some sub-population groups like women and children as well as geographical regions.

As economies now look for paths to recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, new evidence reaffirms that policies for more open and trade-integrated economies could significantly benefit domestic competition and ultimately may help lower costs for consumers in emerging and developing economies.