Coronavirus pushes leading world economies into record slumps
PARIS, France — Brazil and India reported historic second-quarter drops in national economic output this week, a situation seen in almost all leading global economies owing to the coronavirus pandemic.
Only China, where the outbreak was first reported, has escaped a recession.
Here are second-quarter changes in gross domestic product (GDP) compared with the previous quarter for many of the world's top economies. Unless stated otherwise, the figures are from the national statistics institutes.
Brazil
Latin America's leading economy said Tuesday that national output had fallen by 9.7 percent.
Brazil has reported the second highest number of coronavirus deaths to date, with more than 121,000 according to an AFP tally.
It is now in recession -- two consecutive quarters of contraction -- following a drop in GDP of 2.5 percent in the first three months of the year.
Economic activity has fallen to a level last seen in late 2009 during the global economic crisis, the IBGE statistics institute said.
India
On Monday, India said its economy had collapsed by 23.9 percent. The country is also among those that have reported the most coronavirus deaths, with more than 65,000.
It is not in recession however because business activity expanded by 3.1 percent in the first quarter of the year.
China
China, the world's second-largest economy, might have been where the novel coronavirus originated, but thanks to strict lockdown measures it was able to largely halt the spread of the virus and reopen factories, thus avoiding a recession.
In the second quarter its economy rebounded by 11.5 percent, having fallen by 10 percent in the first quarter. Growth this year will nonetheless be well below the breakneck rates China has seen in recent years.
Japan
Japan announced in mid-May that it was already in recession when first-quarter GDP slid by 0.6 percent after a 1.9-percent drop in the final three months of 2019.
The world's third biggest economy then recorded a further slump of 7.8 percent in the April-June quarter, its worst on record, as the coronavirus exacerbated chronic economic woes.
Britain
The UK suffered the worst recession in Europe in the first two quarters of the year, also recording the continent's highest number of coronavirus deaths. GDP fell by 20.4 percent in the second quarter after a 2.2 percent drop in the first.
Britain has reported more than 41,000 coronavirus deaths.
Germany
Europe's top economy was hit less hard by the coronavirus than its neighbours, but still saw GDP fall by 9.7 percent in the second quarter after a decline of 2 percent in the first.
Germany's previous record for a quarterly GDP drop was 4.7 percent in the first quarter of 2009, after the financial crisis of 2008.
France
The eurozone's number two economy was in a longer and stricter lockdown than its eastern neighbour, and second-quarter GDP fell more steeply, by 13.8 percent, following a drop of 5.9 percent in the three months from January through March.
France's previous all-time worst quarterly blow to output was dealt by a general strike in May 1968.
Italy
Italian growth was impacted very early on by the coronavirus which hit its richest region, Lombardy, particularly hard. Italian GDP fell by 5.4 percent in the first quarter and by 12.8 percent in the second.
Spain
After a 5.2 percent drop in the first quarter, Spain's economy contracted a further 18.5 percent in the second, notably because of a 60-percent drop in tourism income and a fall in exports by one-third.
Eurozone
The eurozone's overall GDP plunged 12.1 percent in the three months to June, after a 3.6-percent drop in the first quarter, making the second quarter downturn "by far" the worst since statistics agency Eurostat began compiling growth data for the area in 1995.
United States
The United States, the world's top economy, suffered a 9.5-percent slump in the second quarter following a 1.3 percent drop in the first, according to figures published by the OECD.
The US has reported the highest Covid-19 death toll, with more than 180,000.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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