The government’s proposed new economic deal is inspired by the “Pacts of Moncloa”, signed in 1977 after the death of dictator Francisco Franco to transform the state-run economy into a market economy for newly-democratic Spain.

It seeks to unite the splintered political landscape, and also encompass unions, companies and regions, behind a common economic reconstruction policy.

“I propose a great pact for the economic and social reconstruction of Spain, for all the political forces who want to lend their shoulder to take part,” said Sanchez, a Socialist who leads a leftist coalition government after a series of inconclusive elections.

Spain’s measures to curb the disease - some of the toughest in Europe - have helped save many lives and slashed the proportional daily increase in new infections to 4 per cent from 22 per cent, Sanchez also told parliament.

Latest health ministry data showed on Thursday total deaths from the epidemic rising by 683 to 15,238 - the world’s third-highest after Italy and the United States. Overall, Spain’s cases rose to 152,446 from 146,690 on Wednesday.

Despite the extension of the lockdown, the government plans to ease restrictions for companies after shutting down all non-essential businesses nearly two weeks ago.

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Here are the developments:

Indonesia sees biggest jump in deaths

Indonesia confirmed 40 more deaths and its death toll accounts for nearly half of the more than 590 across Southeast Asia. More than 16,500 cases have been reported across the region.

Indonesian health ministry official Achmad Yurianto said the country had registered 337 new infections, also a new daily high, taking the total to 3,293.

There are also growing fears that the outbreak could spread across the archipelago during the annual exodus to home villages for the Muslim Ramadan holiday.

Widodo has said the government would give aid to poorer families, particularly in Jakarta, to persuade them to stay put but has rejected calls for an outright ban on the “mudik”, as the holiday is known.

The data comes a day ahead of possible ministerial discussions on whether to extend the curbs on travel and non-essential businesses beyond April 14.

The country has so far recorded 4,228 infections and 67 people have died after contracting the disease, two of them today, including a 23-year-old woman.

Coronavirus reaches Yanomami people in Amazon

Brazil said on Wednesday a first case of the new coronavirus had been detected among the Yanomami people, an Amazon indigenous group known for its remoteness and its vulnerability to foreign diseases.

“Today we confirmed a case (of the virus) among the Yanomami, which is very worrying,” Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta told a news conference.

“We have to be triply cautious with (indigenous) communities, especially the ones that have very little contact with the outside world.”

The Yanomami patient, a 15-year-old boy, is being treated in the intensive care unit at a hospital in Boa Vista, the capital of the northern state of Roraima, officials said.

Brazil has now confirmed at least seven coronavirus cases among the indigenous population, according to the newspaper Globo.

The first was a 20-year-old woman from the Kokama ethnic group who was confirmed positive a week ago. Brazil is home to an estimated 800,000 indigenous people from more than 300 ethnic groups.

The Yanomami, who are known for their face paint and intricate piercings, number around 27,000.

Largely isolated from the outside world until the mid-20th century, they were devastated by diseases such as measles and malaria in the 1970s.

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China sees slight rise in new infections

China reported a slight increase in new coronavirus cases for the second straight day, as the number of infections involving incoming overseas travellers hit a two-week high.

China reported 63 new cases on Wednesday, up from 62 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said.

Of those, 61 involved travellers arriving from overseas, the health authority said on Thursday, the most since March 25. That brings the total number of confirmed cases in mainland China to 81,865.

While infections have fallen from their peak in February after China locked down several cities and imposed strict travel restrictions, authorities have called for continued vigilance amid fears of a second wave of infections.

The total number of imported cases have reached 1,103 as of Wednesday, comprising mostly returning Chinese students.

New asymptomatic cases slipped to 56 from a record 137 a day earlier, with overseas arrivals accounting for half of the new cases. As of Wednesday, 3,335 people in China have died from the virus that causes a flu-like disease. Wuhan accounts for more than 75 per cent of the fatalities.

Boris Johnson’s condition ‘improving’ as UK deaths hit 7,000

“The latest from the hospital is that the prime minister remains in intensive care where his condition is improving,” Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak said in a televised press conference on Wednesday. “He’s been sitting up and engaging positively with the clinical team.”

Johnson was taken into St Thomas’ Hospital in London on Sunday and moved to the critical care unit on Monday after struggling to shake off virus symptoms, including a cough and a fever. He has been receiving standard treatment with oxygen and has not needed a ventilator, the premier’s spokesman James Slack said.

The national picture, however, is bleaker, with a record 938 people dying of the virus in the 24 hours to 5pm on Tuesday, bringing Britain’s toll to 7,097, the Department for Health said. Johnson put the country into lock down on March 23 and an extension is now likely when the restrictions are due for review on Monday, people familiar with the matter said.

While Johnson is “in good spirits,” he is not working, and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is now in charge of the government in all areas.

“He has the ability to contact those that he needs to,” Slack said. “He is following the advice of his doctors at all times.”

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IMF: world faces ‘worst economic fallout since Great Depression’

The global coronavirus pandemic is causing an economic crisis unlike any in the past century and will require a massive response to help in the recovery, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said on Thursday.

She warned that “global growth will turn sharply negative in 2020,” with 170 of the International Monetary Fund’s 180 members experiencing a decline in per capita income.

“In fact, we anticipate the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression.”

Even in the best case the IMF expects only a “partial recovery” next year, and she urged governments to provide “lifelines” for businesses and households to “avoid a scarring of the economy that would make the recovery so much more difficult.”

Singapore partial lockdown to cost economy US$7 billion

That equates to about 2 per cent of gross domestic product, according to Chua Hak Bin, a senior economist at Maybank in Singapore.

Singapore has banned social gatherings and shut workplaces, except for essential services and key economic sectors, as part of “circuit-breaker” measures to contain virus infections. The restrictions took effect this week and will last through May 4.

Non-essential services make up about a third of total employment, slightly more than their 30 per cent share of GDP, Chua said, with sectors such as retail, food and beverage and construction being more labor-intensive than “essential” businesses such as financial services or electronics manufacturing.

Singapore’s government is forecasting a contraction in the economy of 1 per cent-4 per cent and has committed fiscal support of almost S$60 billion to help cushion the blow for businesses and households. President Halimah Yacob said on Thursday the government has been given approval to draw S$21 billion from past reserves to help fund part of the stimulus.

US sailor from virus-stricken ship taken to ICU

In a statement, the Navy said the sailor was in a 14-day isolation period when admitted to the US Naval Hospital in Guam on Thursday.

Sub-Saharan Africa faces first recession in 25 years

Sub-Saharan Africa will suffer its first recession in 25 years as the coronavirus pandemic brings economies to a halt and disrupts world trade, the World Bank said.

Gross domestic product in the region will probably contract 2.1 per cent-5.1 per cent in 2020, compared with 2.4 per cent growth a year earlier, the Washington-based lender said in an emailed copy of its Africa Pulse report on Thursday.

“The Covid-19 pandemic is testing the limits of societies and economies across the world, and African countries are likely to be hit particularly hard,” Hafez Ghanem, World Bank Vice-President for Africa, said in a statement accompanying the report.

The growth downgrade is based on a sharp decline in output in key trading partners, such as China and the euro area, falling commodity prices, reduced tourism, and measures taken to contain the virus, the World Bank said. It estimates the virus outbreak will cost Sub-Saharan Africa US$37 billion to US$79 billion as a result of disruptions to trade and value chains.

African countries have 10,692 confirmed cases of the virus to date, with 535 deaths and 1,096 recoveries, according to data compiled by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

The pandemic will have a substantial impact on food production and could lead to a food security crisis in the region.

‘Virus-free’ spacefarers blast-off for ISS

A trio of US and Russian spacefarers have blast-off for the International Space Station from the Russian-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

US astronaut Christopher Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner will travel aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and are scheduled to dock with the ISS’s Poisk module after about six hours of space flight.

The three men spent a month in quarantine ahead of the launch amid concerns over the highly infectious coronavirus, which has caused a global pandemic in recent months.

“We feel fantastic,” Cassidy told a televised press conference a day before the launch. Journalists were not allowed to enter Baikonur as a precaution.

The spacefarers, who are scheduled to spend 196 days aboard the space station, were as an additional precaution not allowed to say goodbye to their families in person.

South Korea see slowest case increase in seven weeks

South Korean health authorities reported the lowest number of daily new coronavirus infections in seven weeks on Thursday.

There were 39 new cases detected on Wednesday, according to the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Seoul.

For the first time since February 20, the number had dropped below 40.

So far 10,423 people in the country have tested positive for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. There have been 204 deaths linked to the disease.

For the past four days in a row, the number of infections recorded was around 50 a day.

A clear downward trend has been apparent over the past month, after a peak was recorded at the end of February, with more than 900 new infections within 24 hours.

Many countries are now looking to South Korea as a model for containing the virus, which it has done through rigorous testing. Almost 7,000 people in the country who were infected are considered to have recovered.

‘Italy’s youngest patient’ recovers from virus

A two-month-old baby, who was believed to have been Italy’s youngest Covid-19 patient, has been released from hospital after overcoming the disease, media reports said on Thursday.

The baby was no longer running a temperature or fever and was released with her mother, who has recovered from a bout of pneumonia, the reports said.

The two were hospitalised in the southern city of Bari on March 18.

Italy has officially attributed 17,669 deaths to Covid-19, more than any other country.

New York deaths rise, but curve ‘flattening’

New York recorded a new single-day high for coronavirus deaths on Wednesday but Governor Andrew Cuomo said the epidemic appeared to be stabilising.

Cuomo said 779 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the total death toll in New York state from Covid-19 to 6,268. The previous high of 731 was set on Monday.

New York is bearing the brunt of America’s deadly coronavirus pandemic, accounting for around half the number of deaths across the country.

The governor said that despite the rise, the hospitalisation rate was continuing to decrease because of social confinement orders.

“We are flattening the curve,” the governor told reporters.

He added that if the rate continues to go down the hospital system will stabilise over the next two weeks, which will “minimise” the need for temporary hospitals. Field hospitals have been set up in Central Park, at the home of the US tennis centre, in a convention centre and on a US navy ship to deal with the influx of patients.

US cases rose 9.6 per cent from the day before to 419,975 as of Wednesday afternoon, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Cases nationally had been climbing an average of 11 per cent a day over the past week. Deaths rose 19 per cent to 14,262.

Iran may stop mass Ramadan events

Iran’s supreme leader suggested on Thursday that mass gatherings in the Islamic Republic may be barred through the holy Muslim fasting month Ramadan amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the comment in a televised address as Iran tries to restart its economic activity while suffering one of the world’s worst outbreaks.

“In the absence of public gatherings in the Ramadan month including praying, speeches and so on, that we are this year are deprived of them, we should create the same senses in our lonesomeness,” Khamenei said.

Ramadan is set to begin in late April and last through most of May.

Iran’s health ministry on Thursday said 117 new deaths from the novel coronavirus took the total to 4,110 in the country. Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said another 1,634 people tested positive for the disease in the past 24 hours, bringing the overall number to 66,220.

Agence France-Presse, Reuters, Associated Press, DPA and Bloomberg