UNITED NATIONS - With more than half of humanity under some form of lockdown, businesses shuttered and millions of jobs lost, the world is facing its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) said it would hit the least privileged the hardest.
"I want to stress that we are not only facing a global health pandemic, but also a global humanitarian catastrophe," WFP executive director David Beasley told the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations... face being pushed to the brink of starvation."
The WFP warned the number of people suffering from acute hunger was projected to nearly double to 265 million this year.
In the United States, where some 22 million people have lost their jobs, Trump said he would stop the issuing of green cards for 60 days, but exempt temporary workers such as seasonal farm laborers.
"In order to protect American workers, I will be issuing a temporary suspension of immigration into the United States," he said.
"It will help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs as America reopens.
"It would be wrong and unjust for Americans to be replaced with immigrant labor flown in from abroad."
The US -- with nearly 45,000 deaths and more than 800,000 coronavirus infections -- is the hardest-hit country, and healthcare infrastructure in major hotspots such as New York City has struggled to cope.
The huge patient numbers are also taking a toll on the mental health of doctors and nurses.(FA)