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Crates of masks snatched from cargo planes on airport tarmacs. Countries paying triple the market price to outbid others. Accusations of “modern piracy” against governments trying to secure medical supplies for their own people. As the United States and European Union countries compete to acquire scarce medical equipment to combat the coronavirus, another troubling divide is also emerging, with poorer countries losing out to wealthier ones in the global scrum for masks and testing materials. (Bradley, 4/9)

The health of the global economy comes down to a race between money flooding out of emerging markets amid the coronavirus pandemic and the efforts of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to pump money back in. The two Washington-based finance institutions find themselves facing the greatest challenge since they were established as the heart of the international monetary system at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference. The IMF’s seminal mission was to safeguard global financial stability to prevent a repeat of the Great Depression, while the World Bank’s was to rebuild the war-ravaged economies of Europe. (Zumbrun and Harrison, 4/9)

The world is opening its wallet to fight the effects of the coronavirus outbreak. The United States unveiled a $2 trillion rescue package. European countries have announced their own spending blitz, and Japan approved a nearly $1 trillion economic stimulus plan. Then there’s China. The country that famously helped kick-start the world economy after the 2008 global financial crisis with a half-a-trillion-dollar spending splurge has been relatively restrained this time around. While it is helping companies keep workers and pushing its state-run banks to lend more, China has held back from spending on big packages or flooding its financial system with money. (Bradsher, 4/9)

As a poorer, battered south asks a richer, frugal north for solidarity, you’d be forgiven for thinking the coronavirus is throwing Europe back into last decade’s economic catastrophe. You’d be wrong. This time is set to be far worse. The pandemic and the havoc the coronavirus is wreaking on European economies has echoes of the eurozone debt crisis, but this calamity is hitting everyone, not just smaller wayward nations, and it goes well beyond the economy. It presents a watershed moment for the future shape of the European project. (Stevis-Gridneff, 4/8)

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was getting better on Thursday in intensive care where he is battling COVID-19 as his government extended its overdraft facility and reviewed the most stringent shut down in peacetime history. Johnson, 55, was admitted to St Thomas’ hospital on Sunday evening with a persistent high temperature and cough and was rushed to intensive care on Monday. He has received oxygen support but has not been put on a ventilator. (Faluconbridge, Holton and Milliken, 4/9)

Even though older people are most at risk of developing COVID-19, French health authorities have struggled to get data on the spread of the coronavirus from a key source: nursing homes. Weeks into the epidemic and shortly after a new reporting system was implemented, health officials raised concerns with Prime Minister Edouard Philippe's office about the difficulties they face with private care facilities for the elderly, according to internal emails seen by POLITICO. (Braun, 4/8)