The global economy suffered a severe contraction in the three months through June, and it is becoming clear that the strength of its recovery will depend on authorities’ success in dousing continued pandemic flare-ups.

Countries’ freshest economic growth figures, to be released in coming weeks, are likely to show that the global economy entered a recession in the first half of this year and shrank in the second quarter at the fastest peacetime rate since modern records began after the Great Depression of the 1930s.