Covid-19 may cause hunger, famine, $8.5 trn loss in global output: UN chief

Guterres told the high-level meeting that the UN is asking for immediate, collective action in six critically important areas to deal with the crisis

UN chief Antonio Guterres has warned that the Covid-19 pandemic will cause unimaginable devastation, usher in hunger and famine of historic proportions and lead to a loss of $8.5 trillion in global output -- the sharpest contraction since the Great Depression -- if nations did not respond with unity and solidarity.

"We must avoid it. The pandemic has demonstrated our fragility. Despite all the technological and scientific advances of recent decades, we are in an unprecedented human crisis, because of a microscopic virus," the UN Secretary General said on Thursday to the high-level event on Financing For Development.

He underlined