UN chief warns of historic levels of famine

The United Nations chief is warning world leaders that the COVID-19 pandemic will cause “unimaginable devastation and suffering around the world”, with historic levels of hunger and famine and up to 1.6 billion people unable to earn a living unless action is taken now. Secretary General Antonio Guterres told a high-level meeting that COVID-19 could also lead to “a loss of $8.5 trillion in global output, the sharpest contraction since the Great Depression of the 1930s”.