COVID-19 News from Around the Web

Millions of Americans are relying on unemployment benefits for their livelihoods after losing their jobs to the coronavirus crisis. Another 3 million people filed initial unemployment claims last week on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Department of Labor That brings the total number of first-time claimants to 36.5 million since mid-March It was the eighth week in a row that the number for initial claims decreased after peaking at 6.9 million in the final week of March. Economists say this is relatively good news because it means things aren't getting worse. Initial jobless claims are one of the most "real-time" measures of the economy available. Most economic data lags behind by weeks if not months. That's why the weekly claims data are so important during this crisis. But now that initial claims have been falling for two months straight, economists are beginning to shift their focus to continuing jobless claims, which count people who are filing multiple weeks in a row. That number stood at 22.8, up slightly from the prior week.

Additional government spending may be necessary to avoid long-lasting fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday. Powell said the economy should recover once the virus is under control. But he cautioned that without more help, many small businesses may not survive that long. And he warned that a wave of business and household bankruptcies could do lasting damage to the nation's economic output. "We ought to do what we can to avoid these outcomes," Powell said, in a speech to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He noted that Congress has already provided $2.9 trillion to prop up the economy — "the fastest and largest response for any postwar downturn" — but said more federal spending is needed. "Additional fiscal support could be costly, but worth it if it helps avoid long-term damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery," Powell said. House Democrats unveiled an additional $3 trillion spending proposal this week. Powell said the central bank would continue to use its own tools to support the economy, but he dismissed the idea of negative interest rates.

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.”

The World Health Organization cautioned that the virus might linger for a long time. “It is important to put this on the table: This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities, and this virus may never go away,” said Mike Ryan, the head of the W.H.O. emergency response team. “This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities, and this virus may never go away,” Mike Ryan, head of the organization’s health emergencies program, said at a news briefing. “H.I.V. has not gone away but we’ve come to terms with the virus and we have found the therapies and we have found the prevention methods, and people don’t feel as scared as they did before.” “There are no promises in this and there are no dates,” he said, tamping down expectations that the invention of a vaccine for the coronavirus will provide a quick and complete end to what has become a global health and economic calamity. A good vaccine might be developed, but there is no telling when, he added, calling it “a moon shot.” If infected people become immune or resistant, then when enough people have had the virus, there will be fewer left who can catch it or spread it, making outbreaks more manageable. But no one knows how long that will take.

A mental illness crisis is looming as millions of people worldwide are surrounded by death and disease and forced into isolation, poverty and anxiety by the pandemic of COVID-19, United Nations health experts said on Thursday. “The isolation, the fear, the uncertainty, the economic turmoil - they all cause or could cause psychological distress,” said Devora Kestel, director of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) mental health department. Presenting a U.N. report and policy guidance on COVID-19 and mental health, Kestel said an upsurge in the number and severity of mental illnesses is likely, and governments should put the issue “front and centre” of their responses. “The mental health and wellbeing of whole societies have been severely impacted by this crisis and are a priority to be addressed urgently,” she told reporters at a briefing. The report highlighted several regions and sections of societies as vulnerable to mental distress - including children and young people isolated from friends and school, healthcare workers who are seeing thousands of patients infected with and dying from the new coronavirus.

The U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert issued a blunt warning Tuesday that cities and states could “turn back the clock” and see more COVID-19 deaths and economic damage alike if they lift coronavirus stay-at-home orders too fast -- a sharp contrast as President Donald Trump pushes to right a free-falling economy. “There is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control,” Dr. Anthony Fauci warned a Senate committee and the nation as more than two dozen states have begun to lift their lockdowns as a first step toward economic recovery. The advice from Fauci and other key government officials — delivered by dramatic, sometimes awkward teleconference — was at odds with a president who urges on protests of state-ordered restraints and insists that “day after day, we’re making tremendous strides.”

California’s state university system, the largest in the United States, canceled classes on Tuesday for the fall semester because of the coronavirus, while Los Angeles County said its stay-at-home order was likely to be extended by three months. The announcements on the West Coast came after the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told Congress that lifting the sweeping lockdowns could touch off new outbreaks of the illness, which has killed nearly 81,000 Americans and devastated the economy. In one of the first indications the pandemic will continue to have a significant impact into autumn, the chancellor of California State University said classes at its 23 campuses would be canceled for the semester that begins in September, with instruction moved online.