Western governments were “staggeringly slow to act” on COVID-19

Markets mostly rose on Thursday, the S&P 500 rising 0.4 percent and the STOXX Europe 600 rising 0.6 percent.

While investors were encouraged by talks of reopening economies, Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group, told CNBC on Thursday that he is “still worried about greater risk to the downside”.

“It’s been such a dramatic experience that it’s going to alter household and business behavior,” he said. “The end result is going to be a much slower pace of growth which means lower earnings.”

James Griffiths at CNN said that Western governments have themselves to blame for failing to take the necessary actions to stem the COVID-19 outbreak.

For all the blame laid at China's door for its failure to act early in the pandemic, officials there did not know what they were dealing with.

By comparison, officials in Europe and the US knew exactly what they were facing once the outbreak reached their borders, but were often slow to react, wasting time as the virus spread through Asia and ignoring lessons learned by other countries.

Much of what we know about the coronavirus -- that it is highly contagious and spreads from person to person, that it has a relatively high mortality rate, particularly for certain populations, and that one of the best ways to contain it is via enforced social distancing -- was established by early February.

Despite this, Western governments, particularly the US and UK, were staggeringly slow to act.

In the US, nationwide social distancing guidelines were not put in place until March 16 -- the country's first case was recorded on January 15, and the first signs of "community spread" detected in late February. The UK too dragged its feet on taking concerted action, only instituting lockdowns and stay-at-home orders in late March, two months after its first case was recorded.