United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday said the world was lagging in its coordinated fight against the coronavirus, as he launched a plan to address the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic.
“This is the most challenging crisis we have faced since the Second World War,” the UN chief told a virtual press conference, Deutsche press agency (DPA) reported.
This is because the disease represents a threat to everybody in the world and will bring on a recession that probably has no parallel in the recent past, according to Guterres.
“We are still very far from where we need to be to effectively fight COVID-19 worldwide and to be able to tackle the negative impacts on the global economy and the global societies,” he said.
He announced the UN was establishing “a new multi-partner trust fund for COVID-19 response and recovery to support low and middle-income countries to respond to the emergency and recover from the socio-economic shock.”
Last week, the UN chief launched a 2-billion-dollar humanitarian appeal and called for a “wartime” stimulus bill “in the trillions of dollars” by the G20 group of leading economic powers to help developing countries.
