Various sectors have taken serious hits amid locked-down cities, an economic storm exacerbated by the ballooning number of infected patients and related deaths. As of Thursday, more than 2.05 million people had fallen ill worldwide, and there had been over 134,000 deaths.

“We are fighting two battles, one with the pandemic and the other saving the economy. We can only win the first one before winning the second one,” Yau said. “If there is no synchronised recovery on global economies, one will jack another.”

Hong Kong’s daily new-infection counts have shrunk over the past week, leaving it with a total of 1,016 confirmed cases and four fatalities. But the virus has hammered the economy.

“We have never seen this. Hong Kong fell from the most favoured destination to almost zero,” Yau said. “We know how wide this pandemic hits, we are still yet to know how deep it will cut into the economy.”

Last week, the government hinted it would downgrade the gross domestic product forecast it made in February, of a contraction of 1.5 per cent for this year.

The IMF’s forecast, a 4.8 per cent contraction, was the worst since 1998, at the height of the Asian financial crisis.

Yau said the city’s performance would be better than those of other advanced countries, such as the United States, Britain, Germany and Japan, whose GDPs would shrink at least 5 per cent this year from last year, based on the IMF’s latest forecast.

Hong Kong’s top trading partner, mainland China, is still expected to grow 1.2 per cent this year. As for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the IMF said five of the 10-member bloc’s key economies would on average contract by 0.6 per cent.

The IMF said a partial recovery was likely in 2021, depending on several factors such as the path of the pandemic, the intensity and efficacy of containment efforts, the extent of supply disruption, relief policies such as fiscal and monetary measures, and the effects on financial markets.

In Hong Kong, Yau said recovery could not be rushed in some sectors, such as tourism, because of the global lockdown.

“Nobody knows when there will be a recovery,” he said. “No city is spared.”

On Friday, Hong Kong’s HK$137.5 billion (US$18 billion) anti-epidemic fund is expected to be vetted by lawmakers in the Legislative Council.

The fund is made up of a salary subsidy over six months to ensure some 1.5 million workers are paid and remain in the job market; a one-off subsidy for 16 sectors hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis; and an expanded lending scheme, which combined are the same size as 9.5 per cent of the city’s total GDP.

Even in addition to the first wave of anti-epidemic funding, at HK$30 billion, there are complaints that people operating in the gig economy have been left out.

Hong Kong rules out issuing bonds to pay for pandemic deficit

“There is always someone missed out of the safety net,” Yau said. “We have put in place the widest possible coverage for businesses and individuals.”

For example, he said, a freelance worker who did not have a Mandatory Provident Fund pension, a prerequisite for the salary subsidy, would still be entitled to a one-off HK$7,500 cash grant, and was eligible to apply for a social security allowance, the threshold of which has been lowered.

He added that if the worker was an adult permanent Hong Kong resident, they would also be entitled to the HK$10,000 cash handout announced during the government budget in February.

Yau called for businesses to take this time to change the way they operate, such as by going online, to get prepared for any future recovery.

The commerce minister also urged companies to make good use of lending schemes the government had put in place over the past several months to boost liquidity, with HK$123 billion in low-interest loans available, fully guaranteed by the government.