“COVID-19 is potentially catastrophic for millions who are already hanging by a thread,” said Arif Husain, chief economist and director of research, assessment and monitoring at the World Food Programme (WFP).

“We all need to come together to deal with this because if we don’t the cost will be too high – the global cost will be too high: many lost lives and many, many more lost livelihoods,” he told reporters at a virtual briefing in Geneva.

According to RIMS’ letter, a pandemic risk insurance program would provide greater access to capital from lenders and establish a viable insurance market with sufficient, affordable capacity. Additionally, it would create certainty for businesses and organizations of all sizes across the United States and ensure that businesses can meet future pandemic events with greater resilience.

“If it was a mistake, a mistake is a mistake. But if they were knowingly responsible, yeah, I mean, then sure there should be consequences,”U.S. President Donald Trump

Australia’s foreign minister, Marise Payne, said her concern about China’s transparency was at a “a very high point”.

“The issues around the coronavirus are issues for independent review, and I think that it is important that we do that,” Payne told ABC television.

“The global coronavirus outbreak is a crisis that is like no other and poses daunting challenges for policymakers in many emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), especially where the pandemic encounters weak public health systems, capacity constraints, and limited policy space to mitigate the outbreak’s repercussions,” IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said.

The first death came in the central Chinese city of Wuhan on Jan. 9. It took 83 days for the first 50,000 deaths to be recorded and just eight more for the toll to climb to 100,000. It took another eight days to go from 100,000 to 150,000.The death toll is still far short of the so-called Spanish flu, which began in 1918 and is estimated to have killed more than 20 million people by the time it petered out in 1920.

At the direction of the Chinese government, domestic insurers started selling business interruption insurance to cover Chinese enterprises against disruptions from the coronavirus outbreak,
The policies are aimed at supporting the resumption of production and work within the Chinese economy after a lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus, said Fitch