UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday the world “is at war with a virus” and warned that “a global recession — perhaps of record dimensions — is a near certainty.”The U.N. chief said “people are suffering, sick and scared” and stressed that current responses by individual countries will not address “the global scale and complexity of the crisis.”“This is a moment that demands coordinated, decisive, and innovative policy action from the world’s leading economies,” Guterres told reporters from U.N. headquarters in New York. “We must recognize that the poorest countries and most vulnerable — especially women — will be the hardest hit.”The secretary-general welcomed next week’s emergency summit of leaders of the Group of 20 major economic powers to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. He said he will participate with the message that this is an unprecedented situation which requires creativity — “and the magnitude of the response must match its scale.”

Source: International New York Times March 19, 2020 19:06 UTC