this is bbc news. the headlines: the number of people killed by the pandemic worldwide has passed 200,000. that's according tojohns hopkins university in the united states. the uk has recorded a total so far, of more than 20,000 deaths in hospitals alone. downing street has announced that the british prime minister, borisjohnson, will return to work on monday a little more than two weeks after being discharged from hospital, where he'd been treated in intensive care for coronavirus. he's been recuperating at his official country retreat. the governor of new york state, andrew cuomo, says independent pharmacies will be authorised to carry out tests for coronavirus. it's part of efforts to expand testing in the state, which is by far the worst hit by coronavirus in the us. now on bbc news, as the coronavirus takes hold around the world, global questions invites

its international audience to put their questions to a panel of experts on the impact on the global economy. with dire warnings of the worst recession since the 1930s, what will the fallout be? zeinab badawi and two leading international figures answer your questions from around the world. hello, i'm zeinab badawi. welcome to london for the latest in this special series of global questions. this week, it's the coronavirus crisis: 0ur economy. with dire warnings that the world faces the worst recession in nearly 100 years, governments everywhere are locked in argument about how far they should relax restrictions on economic activity. so how much of a threat does the coronavirus pandemic pose to our economies? and how worried should we be? well, we are now inside the bbc‘s headquarters here in london,

and we're having to bring you our two panellists and our audience members via video link, and they're going to be putting the burning questions they want answered. let me tell you who's in the hot seat. we have the veteran british politician, alistair darling. he was the chancellor of the exchequer in the labour government that had to steer britain during the economic meltdown brought about by the financial crisis more than ten years ago. he's now a member of the house of lords. and from across the atlantic, the nobel prize economics laureate, professor paul krugman, who navigates the choppy waters of our economies in his latest book, arguing with zombies: economics, politics and the fight for a better future. great title, professor krugman. a warm round of applause from me to welcome all of you and our questioners whojoin us from all around the world, and remember, you, too, can join the conversation.

before we go to our first question, however, i just want to ask you two gentlemen very quickly, is a global recession inevitable? professor krugman? yes. i mean, we're already in a global recession. it's... it's a fact. and it's going to get deeper. the only question is how much deeper. how deep does this rabbit hole go? but this is worse, clearly, already than the 2008 crisis. lord darling? yes, it's inevitable. the degree and the nature of it will vary from region to region, country to country but, you know, this is far worse than it was ten years ago and i'm afraid it is going to be long—lasting. all right. thank you. well, a rather gloomy start there to our programme. let's go to the indian capital, delhi, and shalu thalan. what's your question, please?

hello. so my question to the panel is that while deciding on their economic response, what factors should the countries consider? right, alistair darling, what kind of economic response should there be? i think there needs to be a two—pronged approach. the first and the most urgent is to make sure that people have got enough money so they can feed themselves and their families and look after everybody. so that means we really have to introduce extraordinary levels of income support that many countries have never seen, actually. i think the second thing is to make sure that you've got the economic infrastructure as intact as you can make it possible for when we reach the recovery phase. and, you know, in most parts of the world, we're not in that position yet. by that, i mean a transport system that operates to make sure that small and medium—sized enterprises, you know, can, as far as is possible, be preserved so they can get going again,

but make no mistake about this, there won't be a swift bounce back. this will take time. and governments must be prepared to amend their approaches, develop their approaches as the circumstances demand. professor krugman? i agree exactly with lord darling. the most important thing right now, think of this as disaster relief on a scale that has never before been seen. we have a comprehensive disaster, but we do have the resources to mitigate the amount of economic suffering that takes place now. and then, while we're doing that, we also want to take steps to ensure that there is not so much damage — you know, damage to businesses that have folded, local governments that have depleted their funds, households that have run out of money — so that we can, in fact, start to have an economic recovery once the pandemic subsides. but the first and most important thing is people are dying, people are suffering. they shouldn't be starving or suffering extreme financial distress as well.

that doesn't have to happen and we can stop that. 0k. shalu thalan, i mean, are you very worried in india? obviously, a large number of people in india, millions, really live on the poverty line. yes. we have been in lockdown for a while and i hope that the government can take appropriate steps to help the people. thank you very much. and we had a question from becca ragguzino, saying, "why are some people worried about the money when we are fighting for lives? " because, of course, that brings in this question about the trade off, about what's good for people's health and what's good for the health of the economy and that's something that governments everywhere are grappling with. 0k. let's go to singapore now and priyanka kandarpa. what do you want to ask our two panellists? hi. i'd like to ask the panellists, in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, will bigger government intervention in the economy be the norm? professor krugman, i mean, you see in europe that there's a lot

of spending on welfare compared to the united states. do you think america's going to be more interventionist with its governments after coronavirus? this is going to be an enormous fight. we should be. i mean, we've just learned the importance of a really strong safety net and we've seen lots of people who never thought they would need a strong safety net are suddenly in desperate need of it. but america is america. we're going to have a bitter, bitter political fight over this. i hope the side that stands for reason and some social justice wins, but i think there's no guarantees. we could actually even see people use the debt that's been run up during this crisis as an excuse to weaken our social safety net even further, so it's very much up in the air. alistair darling, bigger, more government as a result of coronavirus crisis? from my point of view, people need to realise that at a time of crisis, an acute crisis like this, that governments are not just the lender and the insurer of last resort, they're very often

the provider of last resort. one of the things that i think we do need to learn is that our health service, even in developed countries, was not prepared for the sheer scale of what's happened and, of course, in many parts of the world, the health service is very undeveloped in the first place so there needs to be a degree of resilience and that will mean that governments will have to spend more on making sure that health provision is adequate. all right. thank you. and before we go to our next question, just something that we had on social media from henry reiner — "do you think we will see a long—run structural shift towards higher equality as a result?" so now we go to europe and greece and konsta ntinos strykos. my question to the panellists is how will the crisis impact the 99% of the population of earth? and will the burden between them and the other 1%, regarding the gap broaden? all right, paul krugman, how will it affect the higher i%

of the population and how much the other 99%? is it going to be an equaliser or make things worse? it's very much... again, it all depends upon the politics and you can see that there is a fair bit of, um... ..the i% are struggling to make sure that it doesn't. one thing i will say is that this crisis has thrown inequality into extremely stark relief. the difference between a wealthy individual who can shelter on his country estate and a worker who, in the fast food industry or in just fundamental services who cannot, who has to take public transit and is exposed. so we're now seeing that inequality isn'tjust a matter of different levels of comfort. it can be a matter of life and death. but whether we will take that lesson, i don't know, and it's... i find it hard to make any confident predictions about how we'll come out of this.

we could come out actually even more unequal. i hope not. i think we'll be... certainly, i and others will be pushing to say this is... we've seen the case for greater equality made, but it's... things are very, very much in flux. do you think, very quickly, tax that super—rich i% even more to help everybody else? is that going to gain credence? oh, yes, there will definitely be more support. i mean, a number of people, certainly in my country, a number of people are saying, "look, this illustrates what we've been saying." and the case for taxing high levels of wealth, the case for stronger support for those who are less fortunate has never been stronger. but on the other hand, you have, you know, essentially, wealthy people are organising fake grassroots demonstrations against the policies that we need to undertake in this crisis so don't expect that there's going to be some kind of social consensus. what we're going to see is a fierce fight over how we...

what lessons we learn from this crisis. alistair darling, do you agree with professor krugman there in his answer? i think the top 1% have always looked after themselves. i'm more concerned about the rest, if you like. and there's no doubt the inequalities within countries as well as the inequalities in the world between the richer countries and the poorer countries are coming into very sharp focus. in most crises that, you know, i can recall people have said, "well, let's make sure this never happens again. " the trouble is that memories can be very selectively short and when things recover, you know, there will be people who say, "well, let's just carry on as we were." i think it's the aftermath that also worries me. you saw in the aftermath of the financial crisis ten years ago, the policy of austerity hit poorer people far more than other people and it would be a tragedy if that repeated itself again. all right. we're now going to go

to victorine lamer who, yes, is french, but actually, shejoins us from hong kong. what's your question? how will the pandemic affect university graduates and other young people in not just this year, but in the coming years in terms ofjob prospects? yes. now, i have to say... alistair darling, i'm going to come to you first on that. we have had so many questions along those lines — young people who are really, really worried about their futures, either as students or what theirjob prospects are. can you reassure them? well, look, this is a very complex position. i think the first group of people that i am extremely worried about are those children still at school who are not in school at the moment — some who have got the means and the other support will get, you know, home schooling, and, you know, children are resilient. you know, they'll get through this. but an awful lot of children not

at school or out of all education — they will suffer because it could take a long time to recover. now, if you look at students, for example, yes, it's going to be very disruptive for people who are presently at universities and colleges, but, you know, i hope in time that can be compensated for. i suppose the bigger question is, well, what are the prospects? well, you know, at some stage there will be a recovery and, of course, that begs the question, what are governments doing now to try and make that more likely than not? and that's both a health question as well as an economic question. but we are right to be concerned about it, and, you know... but it won't be an easy path, but it can be tackled. a lot of anxiety, as i said out there. paul krugman? i mean, ava grace, for instance on social media said, "will this affect the younger generations in the future?" what's your view? i mean, it has an impact in so many ways on them, doesn't it? we... look, we actually have evidence from past economic slumps that students who graduate into a bad job market not only are hurt immediately, but in fact, it casts a shadow over their whole lives.

it's a terrible thing, but it turns out that having the bad luck to be born, you know, to graduate school into a recession or a depressed job market, you're never going to make up that lack, and now, on top of that, we have the disruption of education itself. now, the best thing we can do is to... back to what lord darling and i were both saying at the beginning, you want to do everything you can to make sure that we have as fast and as solid a recovery after the pandemic subsides as possible. that's the best thing we can do for the future prospects of young people because, otherwise, they will be... basically, they'll have missed a rung on the ladder of the climb of their lives. victorine, a quick response from you... ..on what you've just heard? well, that is not reassuring, for sure. yeah.

ok, so, thank you. all right, victorine. that's fine. don't worry. that's fine. thank you. all right. well, we've had on social media questions, like from aliya, "how will pandemic‘s impact on gig workers further affect the economy?" thesidewalks asks, "does this economic recession affect critical skilled job vacancies?" so a lot of people there on social media who have been saying they're worried about the impact on their future employment prospects, which leads us to our next question from yorkshire in the north of england. adrian beadnell, what's your question? 0h, hiya. my question is globalisation has been good for some business sectors, but when a global catastrophe comes along, does it magnify alarming gaps in some countries' economic structures? alistair darling? yeah, it's a good question. the first thing i would say is a statement of,

i hope, the obvious — globalisation is a fact, and this virus shows that it didn't stop at, you know, when it got to national boundaries, and that, for many things, does require, you know, a global response. i think one of the things, though, that countries do need to look at and, you know, here we're talking in the united kingdom and that is the supply chains. you know, it's all very well to rely on stuff being made in china and being imported and assembled in the uk or in europe, for example. but if the supply chain breaks, you can't do it. and if you desperately need stuff like, you know, protection equipment, then if you're relying on someone else to provide it on the other side of the world, you are at risk. and i think also, you know, other manufacturers will look and ask and say, "where's the resilience if we can't get our materials from traditional sources?" having said that, i think it would be an utter disaster if we shut ourselves off from the rest of the world because one of the first casualties will be those people living in poorer countries, particularly people on low incomes who find that they've no longer got the employment opportunities. but again, coming back to the point

that i made earlier, we do need a coordinated response so that those countries who are best placed to do so can make sure that we can get a recovery that is far fairer and perhaps more resilient than the one we've got at the moment. paul krugman? so listening there to what alistair darling has said, is globalisation in retreat? people now looking for shorter supply chains? great, you know, industrialised nations in the past like britain say, "we can't even now make enough protective gear for our health workers" and so on. i think we'll see some of that, and one of the things to say is that it's notjust these physical supply chains, which have probably got too extended. a lot of globalisation depends upon personal stuff — the manager needs to be able to fly out to the plant in some developing country, and there's going to be less of that. people are going to be deterred. i doubt that we're going to see a wholesale reversion to the very low levels of trade we used

to have a half century ago, but this is certainly a blow. what looked like a very efficient, finely—tuned world economy where production of every thing took place across many borders is looking a lot less robust than it did. so, yeah, we're probably going to see some retreat, although that will also produce a lot of losers. i think you're going to be surprised at how many ordinary blue—collar jobs are going to be hurt by any contraction of globalisation. i mean, we've already heard textile workers in bangladesh, for instance, which has got a huge manufacturing base there, saying fashion companies in the west have stopped their orders and, you know, the mostly women who work in our factories are now destitute. imean, it's... bangladesh is literally a country that would be on the edge of starvation if it were not for globalisation. as the kind ofjoke is it's

not a banana republic, it's a pyjama republic, and bangladesh survives on apparel exports and cutting that off would be an absolute disaster. adrian, come back to you quickly on anything you've heard? yeah, just a couple of things. i'm hoping — i'm obviously an optimist — and i'm hoping when this is all over that things will improve. i'm a teesside lad and we've suffered for the last 20 years with the economic downturn — the steel, the ships, everything's gone and nothing seems to have replaced that. so, you know, maybe it's the start of a new dawn. all right. thank you. 0k. well, we're not going to go to south korea, the capital seoul, and, of course, south korea one of those countries that has benefited very much from manufacturing boom in the past, and we're going to gouranga das, please. from your very impressive shelves behind you, full of books as i know that you, yourself, are an economics professor, but keep it simple. gouranga das, your question?

hi, my question is this pandemic has caused a closing down of borders, throttling the flow of people, flow of goods, etc, so my question is, despite digitalisation and its widespread boons and benefits, can we see the retreat of globalisation? and if so, do we need a new model of globalisation or are any new forms of multilateralism necessary? all right. we've already touched on that a little bit, but we can expand on it. professor paul krugman, a new model of globalisation? well, i mean, this doesn't change the process of shipping stuff, and i don't think freight containers are a vector for the pandemic. we're getting a kind of crash course in the ability to do what we're doing right now, which is to conduct meetings virtually, and i think we're discovering some of the limits, but we're also getting a lot better. i think one thing we'll discover is there'll be a lot more discussion.

"do you really need to fly out to hong kong to do this thing or is it... can it be done over some kind of online platform — zoom or something else like that?" my guess is that, in the end, we'll probably have significantly less personal travel, but most of the... ..most of the globalisation will persist. alistair darling? let's look at the things that need to change, but recognise that we all live on the one planet and, you know, the things that we ought to be looking at, for example, because there will be another, you know, virus will come from somewhere. next time, perhaps we'll be better prepared for it. next time, perhaps there will be more cooperation, more people being more straightforward as to what the problem is. there are practical things that you can do as well as practical responses when we eventually get to the recovery stage, and i think that is more helpful than, you know, having a more generalised discussion, which, undoubtedly, will continue, but i'm not sure it's going to put food on people's table. all right. gouranga das, i have a suspicion that you probably posed that

question, but also have a pretty good idea of what you think the answer is. just give us, in a nutshell, what you think. i think because this crisis is global in nature, we need a kind of global cooperation and global solidarity to fight these kind of crises, because it is a pandemic—induced crisis, which has a kind of... we can say it is twin crises, kind of health as well as economic crisis, so i think that globalisation will take a kind of new paradigm, as paul mentioned just now. all right. so, i think we need to think a bit about the kind of new way of thinking about globalisation. all right. good. well, two economists there who clearly agree with each other. all right. let's go to our final question from cambodia, staying in asia there. chao che choeung, what do you want to ask our two panellists in the hot seat? hello. my question is, how long will it take for the world economy and individual country economies to recover? thank you.

well, paul krugman, how long? 0k... yeah. there's a "what could happen" and "what i'm afraid will happen." what could happen is that once we have the pandemic largely under control — some combination, maybe a vaccine, but reduced infection rates, testing, monitoring — that we could spring back quite rapidly. that a year from now, all of this could seem like a bad memory. what i'm afraid is going to happen is that because we are not providing sufficient support for the various people, businesses, institutions that are being damaged, that this is going to be a long, slow slog, that we're going to be still feeling this crisis into 2022. it doesn't have to happen, but there's very much a question of policy choices, and i'm mostly following the debate in my own country where i am not encouraged. we are not handling

this at all well. so this is... this could be a v—shaped recovery, as they say, but i think it's more likely to look like a nike swoosh with a sharp drop and then a slow return at the end. and how slow is that slow? well, it took us something like seven years to fully recover from the last financial crisis and it's not inconceivable that it will take us something comparable this time. a lot of damage is being done as we speak and damage that will be very hard to reverse. a real major preoccupation, of course, for people, is how long will this last? your answer, please? paul krugman's quite right. it took about seven years after the financial crisis ten years ago, and that was with all countries working together. now, if we can get control of this, if we can do sensible things that get us all back to work

and keep our economies intact, then the outlook will be better, but as i said at the start, i'm afraid we're in for a long haul. this is bad. seven years, like paul krugman says, do you think? would you put that kind of figure on it? i wouldn't put a precise figure on it, but the going rate when you have a crisis caused by a complete breakdown of the banking financial system is about seven or eight years. this is worse than we had ten years ago, but so much depends on how quickly we get this virus under control and, critically, how quickly governments can put in place measures to get people back to work and get the economies moving again, and that means you've got to do what you can in your own country, but it does — and i come back to this point — it needs international cooperation. thank you very much indeed. all questioners there, i just want to ask you all very quickly, you've heard what our two panellists have said, do you think we're going to bounce back quite quickly or do you share their view?

put your thumbs up if you think that we're going to be in it for the long haul. do you agree with that assessment? so... and who thinks that, perhaps... oh, you all think that. so we started on a fairly gloomy note and, sadly, we end on a fairly gloomy one also. that's all from this edition of global questions on the coronavirus crisis and our economy. thank you to my two panellists, lord darling and professor paul krugman, and our questioners from all over the world and, of course, to you wherever you are watching or listening. and if you want to take part in the programme or submit a question, do e—mail us... or you can find us on social media... until the next time, from me, zeinab badawi, and the rest of the global questions team, goodbye.

hello. april is a month often known for its showers. that's unlikely to be the case for this april, however. it's turned out to be particularly dry across some parts of the uk. the north west of england has only seen 4% of its april rainfall so far. challenging conditions, certainly, for growers. latter days of april could just redress that balance somewhat, as things become increasingly unsettled, also a little cooler as well. here we are with sunday's chart, there is an area of low pressure to the north of the uk, don't they normally bring rain? well, yes, and this one will bring some showers to northern scotland, but the weather front pushing its way south is a pretty weak affair. mostly a band of cloud, may some patchy rain later in the afternoon for northern england and north wales. to the south though, we've still got some heat around through the afternoon, we could trigger some thunderstorms

across south wales, the midlands, into yorkshire and lincolnshire through the latter part of the day. so, perhaps some heavier rain locally here, and some sharper showers across northern scotland. showers though across england and wales tend to fizzle out as we head overnight and into monday. a much milder story across the southern half of the uk. overnight, to the north, a risk of a frost across scotland. and here's what that weather front really marks, the boundary between warmer air across the southern half of the uk, and colder air trying to feed into the north or northwesterly breeze as we look at monday. showers across northern scotland, but, actually, quite a lot of sunny spells across the northern half of the uk through the day, whereas the cloud will tend to build further south. still pretty warm in the far southeast. elsewhere, probably mid teens at best, and then showers starting to break out in the southwest later on in the day on monday, as this area of low pressure winds itself up, and into tuesday, we are talking about heavier and more widespread rain spreading across england and wales. still taking a time to work its way north for scotland, northern ireland, parts of northern england, i think a dry day with some

bright or sunny spells. for the south, though, a good chance of rain for many areas, and the temperatures sitting in the mid—teens at best. then from mid week onwards, that area of low pressure will throw the influence of its showers further north. a pretty unsettled story across the board, as we look at the forecast through the latter part of the week.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i'm aaron safir. coronavirus has now taken the lives of 200,000 people around the globe. the number of deaths in uk hospitals has passed 20,000. the governor of new york, the us state worst hit by the outbreak, is authorising independent pharmacies to carry out tests. sporting bodies including premier league clubs prepare for talks next week to focus on how they can eventually restart the season. lockdown at the zoo — we find out how keepers in edinburgh are looking after their animals in this time of crisis.