The International Monetary Fund said Tuesday that the novel coronavirus will likely push the global economy into its worst recession since the Great Depression, warning that prospects over a global rebound are highly uncertain.

In its biannual World Economic Outlook, the IMF forecasts the global economy contracting by 3% in 2020 as governments around the world shut down economies to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The forecast is the worst print in the report’s history and is a dramatic downturn from the IMF’s January projection for 3.3% growth, published before the virus took full form.

An unprecedented amount of countries are now asking for emergency aid. IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath told Yahoo Finance that about 100 of the IMF’s 189 member countries have asked for help in the last four weeks.

“It’s a truly global crisis and we’re seeing a very large number of countries in distress,” Gopinath said.

Gopinath said the IMF has doubled its access to emergency financing, to $100 billion, and has worked with 25 members on debt service relief. She added that the IMF is also considering short-term liquidity lines and increased issuance of special drawing rights (or SDRs, which support countries with dwindling currency reserves).

Among the regions projected to see the hardest hit in 2020: the Euro Area at -7.5%, Mexico at -6.6%, the United Kingdom at -6.5%, and the United States at -5.9%. China is projected to grow by 1.2%, still a noticeable downgrade from its 2019 growth rate of 6.1%.

“Much worse growth outcomes are possible and maybe even likely,” Gopinath said in the report. The IMF forecast assumes the recovery can begin in the second half of the year, but the report cautions that its projections are clouded by difficulty in predicting the pathway of the pandemic and the efficacy of containment measures, among other factors.

Gopinath told Yahoo Finance that if the pandemic is not contained through 2021, the world could see a contraction of 6% in 2020 with “almost no recovery” in 2021.

Calling the current crisis the “Great Lockdown,” the IMF emphasized that policymakers need to tailor the health response and economic policies to first contain the virus and then set the stage for a recovery phase. The report said most of the economic disruptions are assumed to be concentrated in the second quarter of 2020 with the exception of China, where most of the shock was absorbed in the first quarter.

Encouraging signs

The IMF said it was encouraged by governments around the world “swiftly adopting a broad range of measures” to ensure that businesses and households can survive the shock. The report pointed to targeted policies like cash transfers, wage subsidies, tax relief, and postponing debt repayments as examples of fiscal policies that would help. Paid sick and family leave were also recommended as ways to support sick and quarantined workers worried about losing their jobs.