And as bad as the numbers are, some are already outdated because of the lag in gathering data, and the true economic picture is almost certainly much worse.

In the US, the Government reported that 3.8 million laid-off workers applied for jobless benefits last week, raising the total to 30.3 million in the six weeks since the outbreak took hold.

Some economists say that when the US unemployment rate for April comes out next week, it could be as high as 20 per cent – a figure not seen since the Depression of the 1930s, when joblessness peaked at 25 per cent.

There was grim new data across Europe, too, where more than 130,000 people with the virus have died. The economy in the 19 countries using the euro shrank 3.8 per cent in the first quarter of the year, the biggest contraction since the eurozone countries began keeping joint statistics 25 years ago.

France’s economy shrank an eye-popping 5.8 per cent, the biggest quarterly drop since 1949. In Spain, the contraction was 5.2 per cent. Germany is projecting that its economy, the eurozone’s biggest, will shrink 6.3 per cent this year.

Unemployment in Europe has reached 7.4 per cent, the statistics agency Eurostat reported. However, big job-protection programs run by governments are temporarily keeping millions of Europeans on payrolls, sparing them from the monumental lay-offs the US is reporting.

“This is the saddest day for the global economy we have ever seen” in the 50 years that economists at High Frequency Economics have been following the data, they wrote in a report.

Even then, the statistics do not capture the enormity of the economic crisis. The quarterly figures cover January through March, and many of the lockdowns in Europe and the US were not imposed until March – the second half of March, in a multitude of places in the United States.

The virus has killed more than 230,000 people worldwide, including more than 61,000 in the US, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Confirmed infections globally topped 3.2 million, with 1 million of them in the US but the true numbers are believed to be much higher because of limited testing, differences in counting the dead and concealment by some governments.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the US Government’s top infectious-diseases expert, said he expects federal approval for the first drug to prove effective against the coronavirus to happen “really quickly”. Remdesivir, made by Gilead Sciences, hastened the recovery of COVID-19 patients in a major government study, and it might also have reduced deaths, according to Fauci.

Also in the US, a 1000-bed navy hospital ship that arrived in New York City to great fanfare a month ago left town after treating just 182 patients. The surge of cases there has fallen well short of the doomsday predictions. The 24-hour number of deaths statewide was down to 306, the lowest in a month.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Britain is “past the peak” and “on a downward slope” in its coronavirus outbreak. At his first news conference in more than a month following a bout with COVID-19, Johnson said he will present a timetable next week for easing the country’s lockdown.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, 54, said he has tested positive for the virus and will go into isolation.