CNN News:经济学家预测美国失业人数达2200万人

The U.S. government's monthly jobs report is due out today. It gives a snapshot of two major factors in the economy — the number of jobs gained or lost from the month before and the unemployment rate from the month before, the percentage of American workers who didn't have a job. Economists say they expect the report will have a lot of bad news as far as those statistics go. They predict that roughly 22 million jobs were lost last month as the U.S. shutdown because of coronavirus fears and they think that the unemployment rate jumped to 16 percent.
These numbers, if they hold up in the government report, would reflect America's worst layoffs ever recorded in such a short amount of time. Is there any good news here? Maybe. The number of initial jobless claims, the number of Americans asking the Federal government for help because they've just been laid off, has been decreasing for five weeks in a row. They're still historically high. The Department of Labor says last week 3.2 million Americans started asking for unemployment benefits. The number was around 200,000 each week before the pandemic hit. But because initial jobless claims have been decreasing weekly since late March, economists say that's a sign the employment picture isn't getting worse. What no one knows is how long the economic toll of COVID-19 will last, whether it's a temporary scrape that heals in the months ahead or a deeper cut that leaves longer-lasting scars.

Meantime, research into coronavirus treatment is in overdrive around the world. There are some medicines already in existence that are being tested for their effectiveness against the disease, one of them, an antiviral drug named Remdesivir has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use against coronavirus. It's also been approved in Japan. The U.S. government funded study found that Remdesivir helped COVID-19 patients recover faster. There are also international efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine though one of those is likely months away.