Hello to everyone from geneva, and that uh o headquarters. Welcome who headquarters. Welcome to this regular covid19 briefing. There were more than. Thank you. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. E are delighted to be joined thank you, tarik. Good morning. Good afternoon and good evening. As tarik said we are delighted krytalina, the managing director of the monetarily fund. Elcome, my sister. She will say more in a few minutes about the Economic Impact of the pandemic and what the imf is doing to support countries and the Global Economy more than one million confirmed cases of covid19 have been eported to who, including more than 50,000 deaths, but we know that this is much more than a Health Crisis. We are all aware of the profound social and economic consequences of the pandemic. The restrictions many countries have put into place to protect health are taking a heavy toll on the income individuals and families and economies of communities and nations. We are in a shared struggle to protect those lives and livelihoods. In the shortterm, countries can ease the burden on the populations through social welfare programs to ensure people have food and other life essentials. For some countries, the relief is essential to avoid economic ollapse. This is an area of cooperation between who, the imf, and the world bank, but the best way for countries to end restrictions and hes their Economy Economic effects is to attack the virus with the aggressive and comprehensive package of measures we have spoken about many times before. Find, test, isolate, and treat every case, and trace every contact. F countries rush to lift restrictions to quickly, the virus could research and the Economic Impact could be even more severe and prolonged. Financing the Health Portion is essential not just in saving lives, but in the longer term social and economic ecovery. There are three main areas for countries to focus on. First, we call on all countries to ensure Public Health measures are fully funded, including case finding, testing, contact tracing, collecting data, and ommunication and information campaigns. Second, we also call on countries and partners to strengthen the foundations of ealth systems. That means Health Workers must be paid their salaries, and Health Facilities need a reliable supply of funding to maintain essential medical upplies. Third, we call on all countries to remove financial barriers to care. F people delay or forgo care because they cant afford it, they not only hurt themselves, they make the pandemic harder to control and put society at isk. Several countries are suspending user fees and providing free testing and care for covid19 regardless of if a person sprks regardless of a persons status. These are unprecedented matters that require an unprecedented esponse. There should be measures to compensate providers for loss of evenues. Government should also consider to the most honorable households to overcome barriers to access. This may be most particularly important for refugees, displaced persons, migrants, and he homeless. The pandemic is also having an effect on the fight against other diseases like polio. As you know, in recent years, we have driven polio to the brink of eradication. This has been a massive global effort supported by many partners and led by thousands of Health Workers, benefiting children in dangerous and difficult areas. Many of those Health Workers are now supporting the covid19 response. They are tracing contacts, finding cases, and providing Public Information to communities. To reduce the risk of increasing transmission of covid19, the polio Oversight Board has met made the hard decision to suspend house to house vaccination campaigns, knowing his may lead to an increase in polio cases. Ho is there to protect the ealth of people. The imf is there to protect the health of the world economy. Only united can we do our uties. I want to stress the message that you and i have sent to the orld that saving lives and protecting livelihoods ought to go handinhand. We cannot do one without the other. In that spirit, we at the imf are concentrating on making sure that there is a strong response o the Health Crisis as well as protecting the strength of the economy. My second point is about emerging markets in developing economies. They are hardhit, and they have very often less resources to rotect themselves against this dual crisis, health and economic risis. E know that in many countries, Health Systems are weak. We know that in flight to safety, a lot of capital has left the emerging economies, the developing world. Nearly 90 billion have flown out. This is way more than during the Global Financial crisis. Some countries are highly dependent on commodity exports. With prices collapsing, they are hit again. It is paramount for us to place these countries, and especially the weakest among them, in the center of our attention. The same way the virus hits Vulnerable People with medical preconditions hardest, the economic crisis hits vulnerable economies the hardest, and that takes me to my third point. We at the imf are mobilizing strongly, working together with the world bank and other International Financial institutions, bringing the world together to provide protection against this crisis. We have 1 trillion war chest and we are determined to use as much as necessary in attacking the economy from this risis. We are mobilizing emergency financing assistance to countries, and i can tell you, we have never seen ever such a growing demand for emergency financing. Already over 90 countries have been placing requests to the imf or it. This emergency financing is to underpin the appeal that you and i are putting out, and it is please Prioritize Health xpenditures. Use money to pay doctors and nurses. Make sure hospitals function, that there are makeshift clinics where necessary, and protect your economy, the most Vulnerable People first so they can hold onto workers because the highest risk we see is a wave of bankruptcies and layoffs that would make the recovery from this crisis harder. Third, in this line of financial espect support, we have the big 1, 1 trillion. We have the emergency financing. We are also taking strong action for the poorest of our members by mobilizing ground funds to serve their duties to the imf so they dont have to use scarce resources today for that purpose, and together, with the resident of the world bank, we put out an appeal to bilateral creditors, for economies to have Service Obligations tandstill. A moratorium on that service for either countries. Let me finish by saying that this is, in my lifetime, humanities darkest hour. A big threat to the whole world and it requires from us to stand tall, be united and protect the ost vulnerable of our fellow citizens on this planet. Thank you. Thank you tedros for having me. Thank you very much for this ery remarkable speech. Thank you dr. Tedros. We will now open the floor to questions. I would ask journalists to ask only one question and if its possible to specify to whom this question goes. So we will start first with cnbc and dawn from cnbc. Dawn, can you hear us . Reporter hi yes, can you hear me . Yes, please go ahead. Reporter okay. Thank you for taking my question. I am calling from quarantine in new york city. My question is that the fatality ates in italy and the United States, especially italy, are significantly higher than in asia and it appears that that may be the case in the next few weeks in the u. S. Ive seen Research Reports on ace inhibitors and ibuprofen ffecting this disease. Is there anything in the diet, the lifestyle, the typical drug protocols that americans or european views that make this virus more severe . Dr. Michael j. Ryan i can begin and maria can follow up. Certainly the experience in italy and a large number of atients were questioned on their use, for example, of ace inhibitors and there was absolutely no association on the use of those ace inhibitors on having disease or not, or having severe disease more importantly. Obviously, we need to gather ore evidence, but the evidence thus far would indicate that these antihypertensive drugs that are used and many people are on, do not appear to have any impact on the severity of disease. With regard to the reasons why we have different mortality in different countries. A lot of it is mediated by two factors. One, the age profile in those communities. Populations that have older populations or a higher percentage of people in the lder population. It may not be that the overall case fatality is different, its just that case fatality is higher in that Older Age Group. Equally, the presence of underlying conditions in those individuals and the incidents of underlying conditions in those individuals, can also lead to orse outcomes. So you have a lot of issues that ave to be factored in when you ry to work out why one countrys mortality rate is higher or lower than others. Obviously as well, and this has to be taken into account, that systems that come under huge pressure, systems that are overloaded with the fatigued doctors and nurses with many, many sick patients at one time, clearly the outcomes for those patients can be worse. Thats what weve been saying and many countries are trying to do. We need to take the pressure off the Healthcare System. We need to reduce the tsunami of patients coming through the door o give doctors, nurses and other carers the opportunity to save more lives. We can only do that if we pressure the virus and put it under pressure, reduce the incidents and get back to a situation where we can deal with this virus within the Healthcare System in an effective way. Maria. Dr. Maria van kerkhove thanks, mike. The other reason why its challenging to compare mortality ates is because indeed it is a rate which you are calculating on any given day, which means you are looking at the numbers of people who have died divided by the number of people who have been reported in that country. And so there are significant differences in terms of the activities that areas are doing to identify cases based on the epidemiology, based on the transmission scenario that theyre in. And in many situations where systems are overwhelmed, theyre focusing on severe cases and those are the cases that are being detected and youre missing mild cases or unrecognized cases that may be in the community and so that could lead to a higher number of a mortality rate. At the same time, you have individuals who are still in hospitals that are developing. Either progressing to more severe disease and some people who are experiencing severe disease will have advanced reatments. They could be on ventilation, they could be on ecmo and it will take some time for them to ither recover or to die. And so it is very difficult and misleading to be comparing mortality rates. What we really need to be focusing on right now are what is the age profile of people who are in icu. Eve talked about this before. Were seeing more and more individuals who are of the Younger Age Group in their thirties, in their forties, in their fifties who are in icu and who are dying. Overwhelmingly, we do see a trend across countries that people who are older, people who have underlying conditions will ave more advanced disease. So if the population that is affected have those characteristics, then youll have a higher risk of death. But, we have some time to go before we can really understand what mortality looks like across different countries. So i would urge you to take those mortality rates with caution when comparing across countries. Thank you very much. We will now go to simon ateba from a today news africa. Simon, can you hear us . Reporter yes, i can hear you. Can you hear me . Yes, please. Please go ahead. Reporter thank you for taking my question. My name is simon ateba from today news africa in washington, d. C. And my question goes to the anaging director of the imf, miss kristalina georgieva. From legos in nigeria to join johannesburg in south africa and even to kinshasa in the democratic republic of congo, africans who have been forced to stay home are complaining about unger. Many of them said their hunger may first may kill them faster than even the coronavirus. The who director general recently said the imf and the world bank granted debt relief to developing countries including african countries to provide food to the citizens and curb the spread of the coronavirus. Can you guarantee here today hat you will pay special attention to african nation who contain this pandemic by granting debt relief to african nation before its too late . Thank you. Kristalina georgieva well, i want to thank very much for this question. It is the continent, we at the imf worry a lot about. There has been a momentum built in africa. Africa has been growing and many countries have done really well in recent years and we are risking to lose this momentum and even worse to reverse t. And therefore it is hugely important to provide substantial inancial support to africa and we do it in two ways. One, we are scaling up emergency financing and i can tell you that yesterday our board approved emergency financing for rwanda and today two more african countries are going to be in discussion for pproval. Our objective is to double what normally is being provided as emergency financing and we do that in a very highly concessional terms with a big omponent of this financing being defacto grant component. We do so because we recognize that many governments are faced with this dilemma. Do they provide support to people to simply survive . Do they fight the virus and we want this to be a false dilemma. We want them to have for the next months, substantial Financial Resources so they can step up their support for people against the pandemic and their support for the economy. In many cases, informal economy that requires social safety net to be strengthened to help people. Two, we do see the issue of debt as one that has to be addressed rgently. For us at the imf, what it means is that for our poorest members, we are raising grant financing to cover their use to the imf. T is called catastrophic Containment Relief trust and we have been getting support from the u. K. , japan and others so we can do what youre saying, provide that relief visavis our own obligations. Beyond that, we are also calling on official creditors to countries, either countries, many of those are our countries in africa, to provide much needed space for countries to address their immediate priorities by a standstill on that service to official creditors for a period of one ear. And i can tell you that i have been in touch with many of the leaders in africa. I know how important it is right now to stand up and support africa. Build a bridge over what is such a dramatic drop in their conomic performance. Thank you very much ms. Georgieva. And thanks to simon for this question. We will go now to randy from al jazeera. Randy, can you hear us . Reporter yeah, i can hear you now. Thank you. Please go ahead. Reporter my question goes to ms. Kristalina georgieva of the imf. Id like to ask you something more specific on the economic mpact in Southeast Asia, ecause im wondering, based on the imfs assessment, what has been the Economic Impact of the pandemic on indonesia, Southeast Asias largest economy in life economy is like and what does jakarta, the capital city need to do more in order to overcome the issue . Thank you. Kristalina georgieva well, thank you very much for this question. Indonesia, over the last years has done a lot to build very strong macroeconomic fundamentals, and buffers exactly in a case of a crisis. And what is happening today is indonesia is taking a set of measures that are significant, theyre large, and theyre well targeted to support the economy to go through this very difficult time. Like many other emerging market conomies, indonesia is experiencing a significant outflow of capital, and that makes it so much more difficult for the country because there is a drop in production, and that s to say drop in revenues, and at the same time the needs of supporting the population in this crisis are growing. What we see indonesia doing very well is to have a coordinated response between the ministry of finance, and the central bank. So measures that are taken are impactful, theyre strong and impactful. We are also fully aware that a issue of dollar liquidity is one that many countries including indonesia needs to wrestle ith. And this is where we are very strongly supporting Central Banks of advanced economies, and especially the Federal Reserve in the United States to do more of what they have started doing, and it is to offer swap lines to banks in emerging market economies. On our side at the imf, we have been very much encouraged by indonesia among many other countries to look into whether we can offer more, in terms of instruments that are fitting for emerging and market economies, and address the issue of liquidity and our board is going to review a proposal in the next days on creating a short term liquidity line that is exactly targeted to countries with strong fundamental, strong macroeconomic fundamentals that may be experiencing short term liquidity constraints. Thank you very much. Ristalina georgieva and i actually, if i may add, what is ery impressive is to see how much attention indonesia is paying exactly on this issue of protecting firms, especially smes in this period that would allow then, when the recovery comes, for the country to step up. Its a very well thought through targeted fiscal measure. Thank you very much, ms. Georgieva. Now we will go to italy to a journalist who tried, on a couple of occasions to ask a question. So, we will try this time please. Reporter yes. Can you hear me . Yes, go ahead. Reporter okay, so can i ask you, what is the who stance on antibodies testing . The w. H. O. s stance on ntibodies testing . Have you already approved some of them, and is that a Good Practice that we widely use tests for antibodies before the lockdown is actually over . And of course the immunity passport also. Is that a good idea . That comes from germany i think . Is that feasible for countries such as italy . Thank you. Dr. Maria van kerkhove so, thank you for the testing. Question. Theres a very large number of molecular tests, and serologic tests that are now available for use, some of which have gone through approvals in their countrys regulatory approvals. We are working with a number of countries right now that are looking at the use of serologic assays in the form of research, where they are looking to estimate the seroprevalence, or the antibody levels in populations in their countries. Theres a number of countries across europe, and across asia that are currently doing this, and theyre looking at different types of tests. Theyre looking at screening assays, which are elisas, but theyre also looking at micro neutralization assays which are more confirmatory testing. Here is a large amount of work right now, and were working with find, and were working with other groups that are trying to evaluate these against a wellcharacterized panel of sera from infected individuals and noninfected individuals or controls, and that work is still underway. What we would like to be able to do in the form of research is to be able to compare some of those erologic assays with individuals who are known to have been infected, so identified through molecular testing, and all of this work is underway, but there are a number of tests that are available, and this is very positive, in terms of being early four months into a pandemic where they were rapidly developed because full genome sequences were shared very quickly by china. Dr. Michael j. Ryan just to add, the tests that are currently being used are pcr type tests that the tests detect the virus, and usually in the nasal cavities of individuals. So, if someone is symptomatic and they get tested, you test for the virus. The serologic tests dont test for the virus. They test for the immune response to the virus, and they say youve had a recent infection, or maybe not so recent infection. And there are different parts of that test for igm, which tells you if youve had a very recent infection or some infectious, and igg, which says youve had an infection at some time in the ast. So, we have to be careful in using these tests that they may diagnose you as having had the infection, but theyre not necessarily used in the act of diagnosis of an active case. You can be sick, and infected with the virus and you may not have yet developed a serologic response to the virus. So how these tests are used has to be very carefully alibrated. We welcome all the innovation, and we need a comprehensive set of testing tools, but they need to be rolled out with the careful objectives of what theyre actually supposed to achieve, but we do welcome the innovation. We welcome the private sector innovation, and we welcome governments introducing these testing into their National Policies in the appropriate way. Thank you very much. We will go now to anyiss our colleague based here in geneva from afp, anyiss can you hear us . Reporter yes, hello, tarek, i can hear you. I wanted to had a question to something that Maria Kerkhove said before. She said if i understood well that more, and more it appears that more, and more young adults are in the intensive care. If she can give us some figures about that, and if she has any explanation. Thank you. Dr. Maria van kerkhove so, thank you for that question. Yes, indeed. We are seeing more, and more younger individuals who are experiencing severe disease. I should say overall, most of the people who are experiencing severe disease, and ending up in icu, and needing advanced care are people of older age, and are people who have underlying conditions. But what we are seeing in some countries is that there are individuals who are in their thirties who are in their forties who are in their fifties who are in icu, and who have ied. Weve seen some data from italy, weve seen some data from china, weve seen some data from a number of countries across europe where people of younger age have died. Some of those individuals have had underlying conditions, but some have not. And so what we need to better understand is why there are young people who are dying from his infection. There are still many unknowns, at the present time, so i cant give you a complete answer on that. But what is important is that people who are infected with this, even if they have a mild disease, what is classified as a mild disease, or a moderate disease, moderate disease still ncludes pneumonia. And if you hear anyone who has been infected who explains the kind of disease that theyve had, its still pretty significant even if you dont require hospitalization. But what we need to better understand, and these will come through these Natural History studies which are being conducted of why are some people progressing from moderate disease to severe disease to critical disease . Hy are some people progressing backwards from very severe disease to more moderate disease, and recover. So these are really fundamental questions that we need to better understand so that we can improve our standard of care for anyone who is infected with this. Theres also a large number of Clinical Trials that are nderway that youre aware of that are looking specifically at therapeutics for covid 19, and those are currently being conducted and were hoping for results of those in the coming onths. So, again, we can have more specific options for people for treatment for covid 19. Reporter but sorry if i understood well, you were saying that, at the beginning of the epidemic there was more older people, and that now there are more young people infected, and in intensive care is it a change . Dr. Maria van kerkhove so, its not a change, but with more countries affected, and more virus circulating, were going to see maybe some slight differences in epidemiology in different countries. Its too early to conclude one way, or another if this will be the same in all countries. As we mentioned before, it depends on the populations that are affected, that are infected. But what is important is that Everyone Needs to do what they can to prevent themselves from getting infected, and by preventing themselves from getting infected, and taking those measures will prevent the onward transmission to someone else who could perhaps be more vulnerable. Mike . R. Michael j. Ryan and if i may add, there was a tendency at the beginning, in the last number of months for almost a dismissive attitude to say, well, this disease is severe in older people, and its fine in ounger people, and maybe that was a way of people assuring themselves that younger people were not going to be so badly affected. But weve been saying again and again in this forum and with our ata. In korea, even in korea, who have managed to control the disease, one in six deaths have been in people under 60. In italy over the last five, six weeks at least 10 15 of people in intensive care have been under 50. Its not that anything has changed. Its that we collectively have been living in a world where weve tried to convince ourselves that this disease is mild, and the young people, and its more severe in older people, and thats where the problem is. And i think the evidence has been there all along that there is a spectrum of severity, and it is definitely more severe in Older Age Groups, but there is a spectrum of severity in younger people as well, and sometimes in younger people with underlying conditions, and sometimes not. So i dont think theres been a significant change. As the numbers grow, as the linical datas collected, we begin to see that this disease has an impact on the young as well as the old. But again, younger people tend to have a milder course of disease, but that is also ounger people. And that is not to scare younger people to say, oh, you need to be careful because you may become very sick, in the main, younger people still have a milder course of disease. What weve also been saying is milder people who get sick can transmit the disease to people who are even more vulnerable. So, there are two reasons here for younger people to avoid infection. One, it is not always a mild disease in your age group. And two, if you get sick and you start to transmit that virus, you may infect someone whos in an Older Age Group who is vulnerable and therefore you need to try and do whatever you can to protect yourself, and protect others. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus thank you. Maybe i would like to add, in order to remind young people i said several weeks ago that to young people in my message, in ne of our pressers, that you are not invincible. And because we had cases actually how the virus was affecting young people too. Still, older people are more vulnerable and people with underlying conditions are more vulnerable, but we have even now more evidence that it affects younger people too, and thats what were saying today, but if you compare that to still the Senior Citizens are the most affected, but we have now more, and more cases also from the ounger population. Thank you very much, and we will go now to latin finance network and jo. O, can you hear one second, we connect. Yes, please. Go ahead. Reporter yes. Oh, thank you. This question is for world bank. So for the imf, im sorry. Ins is the question is the situation theres probably a lot of work in trying to do Institutional Innovation and the active the imf in seeing but there is also been talk about extending quantitative easing from Central Banks and was wondering if the imf is considering a new kind of role there interning as a guarantor intermediary in financing global level of quantitative easing. This is a very interesting question. Let me first say we have seen unprecedented stepping up of action Central Banks and Industries Finance that has been done in a very short amount of time with a tremendous significance because we have seen as a result of this determined action, some stabilization in markets and most importantly financing going , protect jobs. Le done byld not of been Central Banks alone on their own. Require the monetary side and fiscal side to come together. I want to recognize what has been done is unprecedented, the , butem we face is gigantic all but the actions taken a very significant and very big. When it comes down to the role of the imf, our main preoccupation in this crisis is to very rapidly step up countriesfor especially emerging markets, developing countries that are significant and growing needs. Of what may be needed but is not there in the Defense System of the world. In that context, what we have to encouragee side Central Banks in advanced foromies to do more liquidity in the emerging markets. I think they have recognized seen bothe have stepping up of swap operations with emerging markets by the fed , we have seen operations that are directed towards the stabilization of the emerging market and then we look at our own instruments and what we have short ofd is we are one particular instrument and it is to provide shortterm liquidity to countries that are basically strong but may find themselves in a tight place. We have not been pursuing the mandate. Nd we have been asked by some wishrs of something if you quantitative easing for the notd and it is whether or what will stand in 2009 by the adr toion of additional usefuliquidity mostly for emerging markets and developing countries. Offers as addition as an addition during this crisis. Many of our members are saying we should look into this again, at this point however our membership of shareholders are ,aying use everything you can use right now fast and that is the focus to step up double emergency financing and then make sure we are ready to deploy the one trillion we have in as this crisisy continues to evolve. Do need to think beyond what context thein that question surrounds what more we can do, im always very welcome soy appreciate you bringing up that question. Thank you very much. We will go to bloomberg now to naomi can you hear us . I can, thanks for taking my question. First, we saw some countries in asia tightening restrictions on public life after virus infections popped up again. I was wondering if you could help us understand how this rolling raising and lowering of restrictions my work throughout the world and will this be the new normal for the next year . What should we anticipate . Do we have any assurances china unofficial bilateral Debt Repayment . On the issue of measures, i think many countries around the climbing a very tragic and dangerous mountain. We need to be also extremely careful of the dissent. Awared to be watchful, be , we want this disease to go away. We want the numbers to drop. But as they drop and as we try to come up with transition strategies to allow economies of social life to reemerge and nobody wants that more than us here at who. What we need to absolutely we wanthat as we if to transition back to a steady state of affairs and reach a point disease control, we need to put in place the Public Health architecture, we need a massive investment in our capacity to contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. Educated highly engaged and empowered Community Around the world that understands what to do if they are sick, what to do. If and at the same time we strengthen our Health Care System to deal with those who are sick. Developing new therapies and vaccines to solve this problem once and for all. If we want to reach that situation. Have our economies back on track we must make other investments. As we do that there will only be the chance as we lift as governments lift shutdowns and lockdowns, we have to have in place to protect almost a safety net the other things in the system that can trigger and may happen, we may have to modulate this and decide which measures we can put back in place if necessary to create more physical distance. We dont want to end up in a release lockdown, followed by real a lockdown, followed by release. That is not the way forward. The way to avoid that is we need a transition strategy that gets us back into more control of the virus. We need to get ahead of the virus and then if we are in control, we can protect our economies. Towe lurch from lockdown control and then lockdown, that is not what anybody needs right now. So the investment we need to make, lockdowns have given some time and taken the pressure out of the epidemic. Not onlyrecious time to strengthen the Health Care System but precious time to put in place the public held architecture Public Health architecture and build this response in the community up thats the challenge. If we do that we have a chance of transitioning back into a life and economic and social life that may in some senses not be the same again, maybe a more caring, engaged society with a better Health Care System, better universal access to health care, with more social justice and more care for each other and that wont be a that society to go back to britain my perspective, we need to work hard now to put in place the comprehensive architecture of Public Health and health care if safelygoing to unlock from the economic measures from the societal measures and population measures that are impacting people socials social and economic futures. Thank you very much print very much. Thank you for your question. China has constructively engaged standstillue of debt workountries so they can through tremendous difficulties they are faced with during this crisis. G20 minister of finance call earlier this week, this having apotentially debt relief for countries on the , china addressed that issue by framing a set of principles they would be interested to see being integrated in that process. It is also important to point out to china past decision to contribute to the catastrophic thatinment relief trust modulating toen make sure poor countries do not have to serve their debt obligations to the imf than this will be taken over the grant provisions and china is one of the countries that are making , toitments to that fund that trust. Be obviously working with everybody in the next phase of the g20, the imf, world bank. We look forward to advancing this discussion. Thank you very much. Can you hear us . Yes. Thank you very much. I would like to address the in your general bangladesh testing policy or , ising system on covid19 anything wrong . Thank you for your question. I regional director for the Southeast Asia region and myself , we spoke with the Minister Health in bangladesh as part of the ministerial meeting with all ministers of Southeast Asia. And we spoke about Laboratory Testing and support to beef up lab testing. What is interesting is bangladesh has already implement it a very wide network of testing based on the gene expert platform. This was put in place for a lot of diseases. Theres a real opportunity for us to use an existing platform that has been invested in this private help private Health Development and to leverage that platform in order to scale up testing in bangladesh and when we see that as a way forward of doing this. I think bangladesh is taking the issue of testing very seriously and the minister was extremely keen to broaden the testing availability in the country to improve and drive surveillance. I think there is a strong focus on good surveillance in bangladesh and we will do everything in our power to support bangladesh in their efforts to beef up surveillance and to ensure that theres adequate lab testing available. We will going out to south China Morning post. Connect. Stuart from south China Morning news. Morning post. I have a question. Throw the last 48 hours we seen a lot of media reports that say the who is considering revision on the advice of the use of masks on the public level. May i check with you guys whether there is any plan undergoing about potential changes to encouraging the public of police not dissuading the public from wearing surgical masks in Public Places and have you seen the reports from the Team Hong Kong scientists about the potential effectiveness of using masks and preventing coronavirus . Mariaan start and maybe will followup. On the issue of masks theres an important and healthy debate at the moment looking at how masks are used in this response. Surgical andemost, medical masks and masks like n95 are for the medical system and we must prioritize their use to protect Health Workers in the frontline. That is what we are working on with all of our problems around the world. With our colleagues in the system but to try and ensure we get the best possible protective care to our health care workers. Who already advises the use of medical masks for people who are in a or people who are caring for people who are sick at home. Masksbate regarding using in general public is built not on the paradigm of protecting yourself, the evidence is quite clear the wearing of a mask in public doesnt necessarily protect if a sick person but if a sick person wears a mask it is like like less likely they may impact others. At the moment and from a who perspective, people sick with covid19 should be in isolation. And we need to make sure the people are in isolation. But there are circumstances and we need to be open on this, this is a new epidemic, it is challenging everything we know, it is challenging systems. There are circumstances in which it may not be possible to do physical distancing in which people may not have access to all of the services that may be available in other countries. There may be situations where the wearing of masks may reduce the rate at which infected individuals may infect others. It is not the ideal solution in the sense but it is it should be considered in the context of the comprehensive strategy, it should be considered in the type of transmission happening and how it is that a Community Level. The circumstances and context of that transmission is and what the resources are to deal with it. Must preserve medical, surgical and respirator masks for frontline workers but the idea of using respiratory coverings to prevent coughing and sneezing projecting disease , into the environment or towards others, thats a mechanical process and that in itself is not a bad idea but , that doesnt negate the need for handwashing it doesnt , negate the need for physical distancing. It doesnt negate the need for people to stay at home if there is an order in place. It doesnt negate the need for everyone to protect themselves and try to protect others. So we can certainly see circumstances in which the use of masks, both homemade or cloth masks at Community Level may help in an overall comprehensive response to this disease. And we will support governments and making those decisions based on the situation they find themselves in terms of transmission based on the context in which theyre dealing and the resources that they have at their disposal. But above all, we must ensure that our frontline Health Workers are the ones who are most exposed, they are the ones that need the highperformance protection in order for them to stay healthy, do their jobs and save lives. There are many articles coming out at the moment on types of transmission and presymptomatic transmission. Ive seen one recently from i think singapore where there was an estimation that about 6 of presymptomatic people or 6 of cases may have been caused by people who are presymptomatic and im not here to question that. There are many different estimates. But the corollary of that, the opposite of that is clearly that 94 of infections are caused by people who are sick so we have to look at whats driving this epidemic. There are always and always the possibility of asymptomatic transmission. Theres always the possibility that we can have some element of airborne transmission. But we have to look at is what is the main driver of this pandemic. And in this case we still believe the main driver, this pandemic is symptomatic individuals coughing or sneezing or contaminating surfaces, or contaminating other individuals. Breaking that chain means ensuring that infected individuals are diagnosed and isolated. Their contacts are traced and tracked and quarantined and that people are cared for very quickly in the system. Having said all of that, as i said, we are having a very open, very healthy debate. We had a long meeting today with our strategic and Technical Advisory Group on infectious hazards from all over the world i know our expert group on Infection Prevention and control has been talking about this very, very intensely over the last days. We last days. We will look at all that evidence. We will engage with every single researcher. And we will see what place can be found for this intervention in this overall response. And we will support governments who wish to have a measured approach to the use of masks and who include that as part of a comprehensive strategy to control this disease. We will have to conclude here. Word did you have one last may be to thank our guest . First, if you would like to have kristalina, a few words as a closing. And thank you so much for. Thank you for inviting me. I do believe bringing together epidemiology and economics is absolute crucial. My closing message is that we will get through this, but how fast and how effectively will depend a lot on the actions we take. Sure with these actions we bring the world together. Tuitionitment of mayans of the imf is to play our part. Thank you again very much for all you do. Thank you. It is because as we have agreed in our oped, those lives and livelihoods matter. Today why we join forces and thank you so much for this cooperation. T and we have now our plan together that we need to agree on how to handle this pandemic. We agree that together we can defeat this virus. Virus, a new and the firstever coronavirus also to cause a pandemic. There are many unknowns and we and bylearn every day learning the united force is really key. Together as you said i fully agree we will overcome this. Thank you so much again for joining and working with you very closely. Thank you. Thank you very much. We will have a audio file sent very soon and a transcript as well will be posted tomorrow. We will also send you some of the news from our regional and Country Offices in their activities against covid19. Wish you a very nice weekend. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] cspan has roundtheclock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. And it is all available on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. Watch white house briefings, updates from governors and state officials, track the spread throughout the u. S. And the world with interactive maps, watch ondemand any time unfiltered at cspan. Org coronavirus. Next, Queen Elizabeth of england with a broadcast message on the impact of the coronavirus in the United Kingdom and the government response. The u. K. Has more than 4000 confirmed cases including Prince Charles and more than 4000 deaths. The queen recorded her messaged Windsor Castle near london. Im speaking to you at what i know is an increasingly challenging time. A time of disruption in the life of our country. A disruption that has brought Financial Difficulties to many and enormous changes to the daily lives of us all. I want to thank