Markets fall, COVID-19 situation in Europe “very serious”

Markets fell on Thursday.

The S&P 500 fell 0.8 percent, the STOXX Europe 600 fell 0.5 percent and the Shanghai Composite fell 0.4 percent.

Following Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell's remarks on Wednesday that the economic downturn in the US is “the most severe in our lifetime”, World Bank chief economist Carmen Reinhart said at a conference on Thursday that a full recovery of the global economy “will take as much as five years”.

Indeed, Europe is seeing a renewed surge in COVID-19 cases.

“We have a very serious situation unfolding before us,” WHO’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said Thursday in a press briefing on the epidemiological situation in the region. “Weekly cases have now exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March.”