Bloomberg estimates possible damage to the economy from coronavirus at $2.7 trillion

Experts described four scenarios for the development of the disease situation.

Due to the epidemic of the new coronavirus, the global economy could lose up to $2.7 trillion, Bloomberg experts warned. This is equivalent to UK GDP, the agency writes. In their study, they described four scenarios for the development of a disease situation, reports usnewslivetv.

According to the basic, most positive scenario, in which China will quickly take control of an outbreak and recover from its effects in the second quarter, the impact on the global economy may be restrained, experts predict.

In the second scenario, China will not be able to quickly deal with coronavirus. In addition, outbreaks that occurred outside the PRC (in South Korea, Italy), as well as the spread of the disease in Japan, France, and Germany, are likely to harm the economies of these countries, experts say. According to their estimates, in this scenario, economic growth will slow down to 2.3% in 2020 compared with the forecast even before the appearance of coronavirus 3.1%.

If large-scale outbreaks of the disease occur in all countries in which cases of infection have been reported, including in the USA, India, Great Britain, Canada, and Brazil, this will mean that the growth of all ten largest world economies will slow down, as they will throw strength on the fight against the spread of the virus. In this scenario, global economic growth in 2020 will fall to 1.2%, the Eurozone and Japan will fall into recession, and the growth of the US economy will drop to 0.5%.

In the fourth scenario, experts consider the most negative scenario. In a global pandemic, that is, when the virus affects all countries, the world economy, according to their forecast, could lose up to $2.7 trillion, and its growth over the year will be reduced to zero.

Other experts also warn of the negative impact of coronavirus on the global economy. Thus, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, under the scenario of a wider spread of coronavirus, the global economic growth in 2020 may be halved, falling by 1.5 percentage points, to 1.4–1.5%. If the outbreak is localized, global economic growth will slow down to 2.4%, experts predict.

Bank of America analysts, in turn, warned that the year 2020 will be the worst for the world economy since the end of the global economic crisis in 2009. According to their forecast, including due to the slowdown of the Chinese economy, the global economic growth rate for the year will fall to 2.8%.