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A shrimp seller at the wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan believed to be the centre of the coronavirus pandemic, may be the first person to have tested positive for the disease, a media report said on Saturday.

The report by the London-based Metro newspaper said that 57-year-old woman, named by the Wall Street Journal as Wei Guixian, was selling shrimp at the Huanan Seafood Market when she developed what she thought was a cold last December.

Chinese digital news outlet, The Paper has said that she may be epatient zero'.

Wei was told by doctors her illness was "ruthless" and other workers at the market had come to the Wuhan Union Hospital with the same symptoms, the Metro newspaper report quoted the outlet as saying.

"Every winter, I suffer from the flu, so I thought it was the flu," the woman was quoted as saying by The Paper news outlet.

The shrimp seller added that she believed she contracted the coronavirus from the shared toilet in the market.

She said the fatal disease would have killed fewer people if the government had acted sooner.

Wuhan Municipal Health Commission has confirmed that Wei was among the first 27 people to test positive for the coronavirus.

It said she was one of 24 cases with direct links to the market, the Metro newspaper reported.

Though Wei may be "patient zero", it does not mean she is the first person to have contracted the virus, added the Metro report.

Chinese researchers have claimed that the first person diagnosed with the airborne virus had no contact with the seafood market and was identified on December 1, 2019.

Wei was later quarantined when a connection was made between the bug and the market before recovering in January.

As of Saturday, the global number of coronavirus cases stood at 104,837 with 27,862 deaths, according to the latest update by the Washington-based Johns Hopkins University.

The US has the highest number of cases at 104,837, followed by Italy 86,498 and China 81,948.

Italy has recorded the highest number of fatalities with 9,134 deaths, followed by Spain and China, at 5,138 and 3,299, respectively.

Jun 25: Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s $40 billion surge this week and the recent ascent of Pinduoduo Inc. have reshuffled the ranking of China's richest people.

The country's largest game developer has surpassed Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. as Asia's most-valuable company, with its shares rising above HK$500 in intraday trading Wednesday for the first time. Pinduoduo, a Groupon-like shopping app also known as PDD, has more than doubled this year.

The rallies have propelled the wealth of their founders, with an added twist: Tencent's Pony Ma, worth $50 billion, has surpassed Jack Ma's $48 billion fortune, becoming China's richest person. And Colin Huang of PDD, whose net worth stands at $43 billion, has squeezed real estate mogul Hui Ka Yan of China Evergrande Group out of the top three earlier this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the digitization of the workplace and changed consumers' habits, boosting shares of many internet companies. Now tech tycoons are dominating the ranks of China's richest people. They occupy four of the top five spots: Ding Lei of Tencent peer NetEase Inc. follows China Evergrande's Hui.

‘Perform Strongly'

Tencent has come a long way since hitting a low in 2018, when China froze the approval process for new games. Since then, the stock has almost doubled, and last month the tech giant reported a 26 per cent jump in first-quarter revenue.

“Tencent's online games segment will probably perform strongly through the Covid-19 pandemic, and most of its other businesses are relatively unscathed,” said Vey-Sern Ling, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.

That has been a boon for Pony Ma, 48, who owns a 7 per cent stake in the company and pocketed about $757 million from selling some 14.6 million of his Tencent shares this year, data complied by Bloomberg show.

The native of China's southern Guangdong province studied computer science at Shenzhen University and was a software developer at a supplier of telecom services and products before co-founding Tencent with four others in the late 1990s. At the time, the company focused on instant-messaging services.

It has been a long comeback for Pony Ma. He overtook real estate tycoon Wang Jianlin as China's second-richest person in 2013 and topped Baidu Inc.'s Robin Li as the wealthiest in early 2014. Later that year, Alibaba went public in the U.S., catapulting Jack Ma's fortune.

Bloomberg Intelligence's Ling notes, however, that Tencent's jump this year has lagged behind some internet peers, especially those in e-commerce, games and online entertainment. Just consider: Tencent shares have climbed 31 per cent in 2020, while PDD's American depositary receipts have more than doubled. Alibaba, meanwhile, has advanced just 6.9 per cent.

United Nations, Apr 2: The global economy could shrink by up to one per cent in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, a reversal from the previous forecast of 2.5 per cent growth, the UN has said, warning that it may contract even further if restrictions on the economic activities are extended without adequate fiscal responses.

The analysis by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) said the COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting global supply chains and international trade. With nearly 100 countries closing national borders during the past month, the movement of people and tourism flows have come to a screeching halt.

"Millions of workers in these countries are facing the bleak prospect of losing their jobs. Governments are considering and rolling out large stimulus packages to avert a sharp downturn of their economies which could potentially plunge the global economy into a deep recession. In the worst-case scenario, the world economy could contract by 0.9 per cent in 2020," the DESA said, adding that the world economy had contracted by 1.7 per cent during the global financial crisis in 2009.

It added that the contraction could be even higher if governments fail to provide income support and help boost consumer spending.

The analysis noted that before the outbreak of the COVID-19, world output was expected to expand at a modest pace of 2.5 per cent in 2020, as reported in the World Economic Situation and Prospects 2020.

Taking into account rapidly changing economic conditions, the UN DESA's World Economic Forecasting Model has estimated best and worst-case scenarios for global growth in 2020.

In the best-case scenario with moderate declines in private consumption, investment and exports and offsetting increases in government spending in the G-7 countries and China global growth would fall to 1.2 per cent in 2020.

"In the worst-case scenario, the global output would contract by 0.9 per cent instead of growing by 2.5 per cent in 2020," it said, adding that the scenario is based on demand-side shocks of different magnitudes to China, Japan, South Korea, the US and the EU, as well as an oil price decline of 50 per cent against our baseline of USD 61 per barrel.

The severity of the economic impact will largely depend on two factors - the duration of restrictions on the movement of people and economic activities in major economies; and the actual size and efficacy of fiscal responses to the crisis.

A well-designed fiscal stimulus package, prioritising health spending to contain the spread of the virus and providing income support to households most affected by the pandemic would help to minimise the likelihood of a deep economic recession, it said.

According to the forecast, lockdowns in Europe and North America are hitting the service sector hard, particularly industries that involve physical interactions such as retail trade, leisure and hospitality, recreation and transportation services. Collectively, such industries account for more than a quarter of all jobs in these economies.

The DESA said as businesses lose revenue, unemployment is likely to increase sharply, transforming a supply-side shock to a wider demand-side shock for the economy.

Against this backdrop, the UN-DESA is joining a chorus of voices across the UN system calling for well-designed fiscal stimulus packages which prioritize health spending and support households most affected by the pandemic.

Urgent and bold policy measures are needed, not only to contain the pandemic and save lives, but also to protect the most vulnerable in our societies from economic ruin and to sustain economic growth and financial stability, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Liu Zhenmin said.

The analysis also warns that the adverse effects of prolonged economic restrictions in developed economies will soon spill over to developing countries via trade and investment channels.

A sharp decline in consumer spending in the European Union and the United States will reduce imports of consumer goods from developing countries.

Developing countries, particularly those dependent on tourism and commodity exports, face heightened economic risks. Global manufacturing production could contract significantly, and the plummeting number of travellers is likely to hurt the tourism sector in small island developing States, which employs millions of low-skilled workers, it said.

Meanwhile, the decline in commodity-related revenues and a reversal of capital flows are increasing the likelihood of debt distress for many nations. Governments may be forced to curtail public expenditure at a time when they need to ramp up spending to contain the pandemic and support consumption and investment.

UN Chief Economist and Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development Elliot Harris said the collective goal must be a resilient recovery which puts the planet back on a sustainable track. We must not lose sight how it is affecting the most vulnerable population and what that means for sustainable development, he said.

The alarms raised by UN-DESA echo another report, released on March 31, in which UN experts issued a broad appeal for a large-scale, coordinated, comprehensive multilateral response amounting to at least 10 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP).

According to estimates by the Johns Hopkins University, confirmed coronavirus cases across the world now stand at over 932,600 and over 42,000 deaths.