G-20 Announces USD 5 Trillion To Deal With COVID-19 Crisis

The G20 group of nations on Thursday pledged a "united front" in the fight against the pandemic and said they were injecting $5 trillion into the global economy to counter the impact of the crisis.

The G-20 leaders, under the chairmanship of Saudi Arabia's King Salman, held a videoconference in which they resolved to use all available policy tools to minimize the economic and social damage from the pandemic that has killed over 21,000 people and infected over 4,70,000 globally.

In the first-ever video conference of G20, PM Modi spoke of the alarming social and economic costs of the pandemic and called for a concrete action plan including reforming the World Health Organisation (WHO), sources said.

In his address, Modi pitched for developing a new crisis management protocol to deal with a global health crisis and urged G20 to work towards addressing shockwaves triggered by the pandemic. PM Modi also urged the grouping to come out with a concrete action plan to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and said human beings rather than economic targets should be put at the center of its vision for global prosperity and cooperation.

According to sources, PM Modi asked for the G20 to freely and openly share medical research and said that international organizations like WHO, built on models of the previous century, need to be strengthened and reformed.