“It shows I think in the starkest possible terms that the jobs employment crisis and all of its consequences is deepening by comparison with our estimates of 3 weeks ago,” ILO Director-General Guy Ryder told a briefing, foreseeing a “massive” poverty impact.Already, wages of the world’s 2 billion informal workers plunged by an estimated global average of 60% in the first month that the crisis unfolded in each region, the ILO said.

Favipiravir, manufactured under the brand name Avigan by a unit of Japan’s Fujifilm Holdings Corp (4901.T) and approved for use as an anti-flu drug in the Asian island country in 2014, has been effective, with no obvious side-effects, in helping coronavirus patients recover, a Chinese official told reporters at a news conference last month.

“After having successfully developed the API and the formulations … Glenmark is all geared to immediately begin clinical trials on favipiravir on COVID-19 patients in India,” Sushrut Kulkarni, executive vice-president for Global R&D, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, said in a statement.

A working group set up by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, which includes lawmakers, business lobbies, France’s insurance association and public reinsurer CCR, is examining further insurance options to cover events like pandemics – and aims to put forward proposals by the first half of June, Axa’s Renaud Guidee told Reuters.

About 40% of small businesses have business interruption coverage, according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group.
While these policies may cover revenue losses from hurricane damage, lightning strikes or cars crashing into buildings, they either exclude or do not specifically cover a global pandemic, however much it may interrupt business.

As further evidence that caution may still be in order, an influential University of Washington research model often cited by White House officials and public health officials revised its projected U.S. coronavirus death toll upwards on Tuesday to more than 74,000 by Aug. 4, against its previous forecast of 67,000.

The model showed that while most states appeared to have reached the crest of the pandemic, seven others including Mississippi, Texas, Utah and Hawaii, may be just peaking now or in the coming weeks.