Australia has fallen into its first recession in nearly two decades due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Data released Wednesday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicate the country’s economy shrank a full 7% in the second quarter spanning April to June, coming after a mild 0.3% decline in the three months before. The second quarter numbers marked the biggest downturn since records began being kept in 1959, and was far worse than the 5.9% forecast.
This is the first recession for Australia since 1991. The economy was already under pressure from the massive wildfires earlier this year that destroyed more than 3,000 homes and millions of hectares of land.
“Today’s national accounts confirm the devastating impact on the Australian economy from COVID-19,” Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told reporters in Canberra. “Our record run of 28 consecutive years of economic growth has now officially come to an end.”
The release of the economic data comes as lawmakers in Australia’s southern Victoria state approved a bill to extend its state of emergency for another six months. Residents in the nation’s second-most populous state and its capital, Melbourne, have been under strict lockdown orders in recent weeks due to a dramatic surge of new coronavirus cases.
Australia has a total of 25,923 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 663 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracking website.
