There are a number of questions waiting for our guest. Guest, thepecial managing director of the International Monetary fund. She will join this briefing to talk about the pandemic and the response of the International Monetary fund. Questions,ist to ask please raise your hand. Tetra whoart with dr. Joined by others. Afternoon, andg, good evening. By theined today managing director of the National Monetary fund. Welcome. She will say more in 18 minutes ofut the economy making part this and what the imf is doing to support countries and the global economy. More than one million cases have includingeported, 50,000 deaths. But we know this is much more than a Health Crisis and we are all aware of the profound social and economic consequences of the pandemic. It is taking a heavy toll on the income of individuals and families and the economies of nations. In the shortterm countries, we can ease the burden on their populations to ensure people have food and other life essentials. For some countries, it is essential to enable them to take care of their people and avoid economy collapse. This is cooperation between who, the imf, and the world bank. The best way is to trace every contact. Restrictions too quickly, it could research and the Economic Impact could be more severe and prolonged. In saving lives but in the long term social and economic recovery. There are three main areas for countries to focus on. First, what we call on all countries to ensure Public Health measures are fully funded , contactng testing tracing, collecting data, and communication and information campaigns. Second, we also call on countries and partners to strengthen the foundations and that means Health Workers must be paid their salaries and Health Facilities need a reliable supply of funding for essential medical supplies. Third, call on all countries to. Emove financial barriers if people delay or forego care because they cant afford it, they not only harm themselves, they make the pandemic harder to. Ontrol and put society at risk several countries are suspending user fees and providing testing and care for covid19 regardless of a persons insurance or status. We encourage these measures. This is an unprecedented crisis which demands an unprecedented response. Bepending this should compensating providers for the loss of revenues. Governments should also consider using cash transfers to the most vulnerable households to overcome their ears to access. This may be particularly important for refugees and displaced persons, mike, and the homeless. The pandemic is also having an effect on the fight against other diseases like polio good as you know, in recent years we have driven polio to the brink of eradication. This has been a massive global effort started and supported by many others and lead by thousands of Health Workers, in someing children dangerous areas. Many of the workers are now supporting the covid19 response. They are tracing contacts and finding cases and providing information to communities. To reduce the risk of transmission, the Oversight Board has met and have a decision to suspend vaccination campaigns, knowing that this may lead to an increase in polio cases. There to protect the health of people up. The imf is there to protect the health of the world economy. Hey are both under siege only united we can do our duties. I want to stress the message that you and i have sent to the saving lives and protecting livelihoods ought to go hand in hand. We cannot do one without the other. , we at the imf are concentrating on making sure that there is a strong response to the Health Crisis as well as protecting the strength of the economy. My second point is about emerging markets and developing countries. And they havehit very often less resources to thisct themselves against health and economic crisis. Countriesat in Many Health Systems are weak, we know that that we know in flight to hasty, a lot of capital left the emerging economy is. Way more0 billion, than during the Global Financial crisis. Some countries are highly dependent on commodity exports with prices collapsing, they are hit yet again. 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 , it hitsions vulnerable economies the hardest. That takes me to my third point. We at the imf are mobilizing together withking the banks and Financial Institutions and bringing the world together to provide protection against this crisis. Trillion and we are determined to use as much as necessary in protecting the economy from this crisis. Emergencyilizing assistance to countries. A have never seen such growing demand for emergency financing. Been90 countries have placing requests to the imf. The appealncy is and it isnd i are out for health expenditures, use money to pay doctors and nurses. Ine sure hospitals function makeshift clinics and protect your economy, the most honorable people so they can help the workers because the highest risk we see is a way of bankruptcies and layoffs that would make the recovery harder. Third, in this line of the 1als art, we had trillion we have the emergency financing and we are also taking strong action for the poorest of servembers by mobilizing their duties to the imf they dont have resources for that purpose. Together with the president of the world bank, we put out an appeal to bilateral credit to haveor economies spendingbligation also still, a moratorium on the service for either countries. Let me finish by saying that this is, in my lifetime, a bigtys darkest hour, threat to the whole world and it requires from us to stand tall, be united and protect the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens on this planet. Thank you. Thank you tedros for having me. Thank you very much for this very 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 rates 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 affecting 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 patients 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 more 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 older 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 worse outcomes. So you have a lot of issues that have to be factored in when you try 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 to 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 rates 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 treatments. They could be on ventilation, they could be on ecmo and it will take some time for them to either 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. Weve 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 have 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 managing 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 hunger. 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 that 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 it. And therefore it is hugely important to provide substantial Financial 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 approval. 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 component 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 urgently. 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. It 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 year. 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 economic 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 Impact in Southeast Asia, because 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 economies, 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 is 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 with. 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. Kristalina georgieva and i actually, if i may add, what is very 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 . W. H. O. s stance on antibodies 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