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"Everything hinges on the speed of the economic recovery. We're still in the midst of the pandemic and we're going to learn to live with it for several months."
Thierry Breton, the European Union's industry commissioner, was speaking to a French radio station, warning of an economic slide of up to 10 percent across the bloc. "As of today, in the European Union, we're on course for a five percent to 10 percent [contraction], meaning it's about 7.5 percent. But that is today, and if things don't improve and if we have a second peak [of COVID-19], things could get worse," Breton said.
His comments reflect a tepid reaction to the EU's stimulus package. European stock markets fell as investors displayed their disappointment at the lack of detail on the trillion-euro emergency fund agreed by the bloc's leaders.
Beyond the EU's troubles, we have another excerpt from our interview with Roche's CEO and more details on how companies will be endeavoring to develop a coronavirus vaccine.
Happy reading,
Daniel Harries
Digital correspondent
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Employees observe social distancing at the entrance to the Amazon building in Douai, France. /AP Photo/Michel Spingler
Good news for furniture brand IKEA, which says **shoppers are returning quickly to its stores **after it reopened three in China last week and one in Germany this week.
After prolonged negotiations between Democrats and Republicans, U.S. President Donald Trump is to announce a bill on Friday providing a financial injection of **$500 billion **to provide relief to employers and hospitals struggling during the pandemic .
China has promised more subsidies to shore up plunging electric car sales, but has set limits that exclude Tesla's made-in-China model. Subsidies and tax breaks that were due to end this year will be extended by two years in response to "an accumulation of unfavorable factors" including the coronavirus, the country's Finance Ministry said.
Big public companies in the U.S. that received loans under a government program intended to help small businesses devastated by the coronavirus outbreak could be forced to return the money . The scheme – which ran out of its initial $349 billion fund – intended to help small businesses with fewer than 500 employees stay afloat.
Despite winning plaudits for its coronavirus response, Greece has had its credit rating downgraded by Fitch ratings agency , sliding from positive to stable amid the financial impact of coronavirus measures on the country's economy.
Germany's economy should expect to see signs of recovery from mid-year at the earliest, said an economist at the Ifo institute. But added that it would be slow and U-shaped, rather than V-shaped .
**A French court is set to decide whether to back Amazon's appeal **against an order to restrict the goods it can deliver over worker safety concerns, which led the e-commerce giant to close its warehouses in the country and left many small firms struggling to ship products.
German business morale has crashed in April, in its most dramatic fall on record. It hit the **lowest reading since reunification **as the pandemic sends Europe's largest economy into a deep recession.
Luxury brand Burberry will pay all its staff , both domestic and international, even if they are unable to work due to store or site closures, adding it will not tap a government support scheme in Britain.
Staying in Britain, the world's biggest cold-storage supplier says its UK warehouses could soon run out of space as suppliers to restaurants and mass caterers closed due to the coronavirus lockdown are forced to freeze food for longer to ride out the crisis. Fifteen facilities in the UK are more than 90 percent full, according to Mike McLendon, president of international operations for Lineage Logistics.
The race to discover a COVID-19 vaccine has been much talked about, but the science behind it remains relatively unknown. Following developments from British and German vaccinologists, CGTN Europe's Hannah Hoexter takes us through the processes that lead to a vaccine getting to human trials.
01:02
In another extract from our interview with the CEO of Swiss healthcare company, Roche, Severin Schwan told CGTN Europe his company has developed an antibody test, which could be "available from next month." The test, which is expected to have a 95 percent reliability, is hoped to help millions around the world.
When will antibody tests and vaccines be ready?
We are very excited to offer a very reliable antibody test as of next month, and we are convinced that this will be a big contribution to help fight this pandemic. As far as vaccines are concerned, the experts would say that it takes at least 12 to 18 months until a vaccine can be developed, tested and then also ramped up as far as the production is concerned. So, personally, I believe it's the most likely scenario that we will see a vaccine towards the end of next year.
Will the test be available to everybody?
Yes, we're ramping up and we are fully on track to scale up to really high quantities. What is also very important, Roche has over 40,000 systems in the labs around the world. So you do not only need to test, you also need the system. And as a consequence, we are very confident that we can make this test available to literally millions of patients around the world.
Why is this test different from others?
This is a very, very important point, because a number of companies have launched antibody tests, but the quality of those tests is very poor. So we and some other companies have invested a lot in improving the quality and invalidating and testing the new antibody tests that inhibit enough patients. And we expect a very high specificity, a very high reliability of this test, which should even be beyond the estimate of 95 percent. We will finally communicate our exact specificity at the time of the launch.
British retail sales fell by the most on record in March as a surge in food buying for the coronavirus lockdown was dwarfed by a plunge in sales of clothing and most other goods, and the slump is likely to be even worse in April.
Source(s): Reuters ,AP
