Latin America is set for its worst ever recession with a fall in GDP of 5.3 percent in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, a UN body said Tuesday.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean said the last time the region had seen "a contraction of a comparable magnitude, you need to go back to the Great Depression of 1930 (-5%), or even further to 1914 (-4.9%)" and the start of World War I.