President Donald Trump partially blocked immigration to the United States “to protect American workers” from the economic shock of the coronavirus, as the United Nations warned the world was facing “a humanitarian catastrophe”. The UN alarm bell came as nations scrambled to fight the virus — which has killed 177,000 people and infected more than 2.5 million — as well as desperately seek ways to limit the vast damage inflicted on the global economy. 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.
