US GDP drops 4.8% as coronavirus impact hits hard

US GDP drops

US GDP drops: A plan to give the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine to thousands of people in Mumbai’s crowded slums to prevent coronavirus infections has temporarily been shelved.

Indian health officials in Mumbai said that a test to prove the efficacy of the much-touted but largely untested drug was still in the cards, but for now, they would follow government guidelines.

In the latest exchange between the US and China over the origin of the coronavirus, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington believed Beijing may lack adequate security to prevent future pandemics.

“There are multiple labs that are continuing to conduct work, we think, on contagious pathogens inside of China today,” Pompeo told a State Department news conference.

“And we don’t know if they are operating at a level of security to prevent this (coronavirus pandemic) from happening again. Remember this isn’t the first time that we’ve had a virus come out of China.”

The US economy contracted in the first quarter at its sharpest pace since the Great Recession as stringent measures to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus almost shut down the country, ending the longest expansion in the nation’s history.

The Commerce Department said gross domestic product fell at a 4.8 percent annualised rate in the January-to-March period after expanding at a 2.1 percent rate in the final three months of 2019.

The first-quarter decline was the steepest pace of contraction in GDP since the first quarter of 2009.The decline reflected a plunge in economic activity in the last two weeks of March, which saw millions of Americans seeking unemployment benefits.

The German economy is expected to shrink 6.3 percent in 2020 because of the coronavirus, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said, the biggest slump in Europe’s top economy since records began in 1970.

“The effects of the coronavirus pandemic will push our economy into a recession after 10 years of growth,” Altmaier said, adding that the government expected the economy to rebound in 2021.

The government expects the recession to bottom out in the second quarter and economic activity to pick up again after that.

Indian health officials in Mumbai said that a test to prove the efficacy of the much-touted but largely untested drug was still in the cards, but for now, they would follow government guidelines.

In the latest exchange between the US and China over the origin of the coronavirus, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington believed Beijing may lack the adequate security to prevent future pandemics.

“There are multiple labs that are continuing to conduct work, we think, on contagious pathogens inside of China today,” Pompeo told a State Department news conference.

“And we don’t know if they are operating at a level of security to prevent this (coronavirus pandemic) from happening again. Remember this isn’t the first time that we’ve had a virus come out of China.”

The US economy contracted in the first quarter at its sharpest pace since the Great Recession as stringent measures to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus almost shut down the country, ending the longest expansion in the nation’s history.

The Commerce Department said gross domestic product fell at a 4.8 percent annualised rate in the January-to-March period after expanding at a 2.1 percent rate in the final three months of 2019.

The first-quarter decline was the steepest pace of contraction in GDP since the first quarter of 2009.The decline reflected a plunge in economic activity in the last two weeks of March, which saw millions of Americans seeking unemployment benefits.

The German economy is expected to shrink 6.3 percent in 2020 because of the coronavirus, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said, the biggest slump in Europe’s top economy since records began in 1970.