Of the 176 million people expected to be pushed into poverty by the coronavirus crisis, two-thirds are in South Asia, a World Bank report released this week has warned.

But experts warned that the real situation could be worse as testing rates in the region were still extremely low. The US Institute of Peace (USIP) has also noted that this week that South Asia’s “diverse, densely situated, and economically precarious populations add further complexity to fighting the coronavirus pandemic”.

Officially, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh had the third, seventh- and tenth-most new cases in the world this week.

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