UK economy shrank by a quarter in depths of lockdown

Britain’s economy shrank by a quarter in the March-April period as entire sectors were shuttered by the coronavirus lockdown, reaching what looks likely to be the bottom of a “catastrophic” crash before a long and slow recovery.
In a slump dwarfing previous downturns, the economy contracted by 20.4 per cent in April from March, when it shrank by nearly 6 per cent. It was 24.5 per cent smaller than in April 2019.