The United Nations forecast Wednesday that the COVID-19 pandemic will shrink the world economy by 3.2% this year, the sharpest contraction since the Great Depression in the 1930s. The U.N.’s mid-year report said the impact of the coronavirus crisis is expected to slash global economic output by nearly $8.5 trillion over the next two years, wiping out nearly all gains of the last four years. In January, before COVID-19 became a pandemic, the U.N. had forecast a modest acceleration in growth of 2.5% in 2020. But U.N. chief economist Elliott Harris told a news conference launching the report that the global economic outlook “has changed drastically” since then, with the pandemic’s death toll climbing toward 300,000. “With the large-scale restrictions of economic activities and heightened uncertainties, the global economy has come to a virtual standstill in the second quarter of 2020,” he said. “We are now facing the grim reality of a severe recession of a magnitude not seen since the Great Depression.”