Experts say the coronavirus will hasten the decline in the use of cash as people make a long-term switch to digital payments. Experts in the UK say the long-term future of cash could be at risk, before the United Kingdom is ready to cope with the change. This could leave behind an estimated 20% of the population who rely on cash, they say.

The lockdown has led to a 60 percent fall in the number of withdrawals from cash machines, although people are taking out bigger sums. Payment card use has risen with online shopping, particularly for groceries.

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World shares eked out slim gains on Wednesday, with optimism over economies easing coronavirus lockdowns and oil prices clawing back ground leavened by caution over corporate earnings.

MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in 49 countries, ticked up 0.2 percent, with European shares mirroring a buoyant day in Asia after initially choppy trading.

The broad Euro STOXX 600 gained 0.1 percent, with German automaker Volkswagen saying it expected a full-year profit even after a plunge in first-quarter earnings. Daimler says it is also eyeing an operating profit for its Mercedes-Benz Cars & Vans unit. Still, major drugmakers Roche fell 2 percent and Novartis dropped 0.7 percent.

Markets in Frankfurt and Paris both gained 0.3 percent, with London adding 1 percent.

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Turkey has extended the closure of schools until the end of May as part of its measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus. Turkey's Minister of Education, Ziya Selcuk, made the announcement on Wednesday during a news conference.

Turkey announced the initial closure of schools on March 12 after it reported its first case of COVID-19 and now has nearly 115,000 cases with a death toll of nearly 3,000.

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Meanwhile, the CEO of Barclays, Jes Staley, says the coronavirus pandemic could permanently change how many bankers make the daily trudge into tightly packed city centre offices. Speaking after the bank reported a fall in Q1 profits, Staley says the bank will not revert fully to its pre-January working habits.

According to him, there will be a long-term adjustment in how things are done strategy-wise. He says the notion of putting 7,000 people in a building may be a thing of the past. Stalye says social distancing rules will limit how many workers can return and impose restrictions, such as limiting elevators to two people at a time.

The comments by the head of one of Britain’s biggest banks show how business leaders are contemplating making possibly permanent alterations to work methods.

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Barclays has warned that the coronavirus pandemic could cost the bank about £2.1 billion, largely due to customers being unable to repay their loans. The firm said it was setting the money aside to cover its "initial estimates" of the impact of the virus. The impairment charge meant its profits for the first three months of 2020 dived 38 percent to £913 million.

The latest warning by Barclays comes a day after rival lender, HSBC, reported a 50 percent fall in profits linked to the pandemic. HSBC had forecast that bad loans would rise to 3 billion dollars due to customers not being able to repay them during the crisis.

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The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa has told members not to go back to work at Harmony Gold’s Target mine on Friday.

The union gave the directive as mines across the country prepare to restart ahead of an ease of the COVID-19 restrictions.

In a statement, NUMSA said Harmony has not implemented the necessary safety steps to ensure that the workplace is safe. The union accuses the mining company of failing to maintain proper health and safety standards.

Mineworkers worldwide are resisting going back to work in deep mines where social distancing is nearly impossible and where they are sometimes not provided with adequate personal protective equipment.

On May 1 South Africa will begin a phased reopening of the economy with travel restrictions eased and some industries, such as mining, allowed to operate.

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Safaricom, Kenya’s biggest telecoms operator, has posted a 13.3 percent jump in annual earnings before interest and tax to 101.5 billion shillings. Safaricom's finance Chief, Sateesh Kamath, on Wednesday, said the growth was driven by higher revenue from internet provision and its mobile financial services business M-Pesa, as well as a first ever drop in operating expenses.

Revenue from M-Pesa jumped 12.6 percent to 84.4 billion shillings, a third of Safaricom’s service revenue. Mobile data rose 12.1 percent to 40.7 billion shillings.

The company, which is part-owned by South Africa’s Vodacom and Britain’s Vodafone, proposed a dividend of 1.40 shillings per share and said the coronavirus pandemic has made it impossible to issue guidance for the year to March 31, 2021.

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The World Bank says Kenya’s economic growth is expected to drop to 1.5% this year, and contract 1% in the worst-case scenario under the impact of the coronavirus outbreak that has hit tourism, agricultural exports and remittances. In its economic update released on Wednesday, the World Bank says tourism and horticulture, which are major foreign exchange earners for Kenya, will be most affected by the outbreak-induced slowdown. The bank says measures taken to slow down the rate of infection are expected to affect both production and consumption.

The World Bank adds that a more severe global recession would hit Kenya’s export demand, tourism earnings and remittances, while weather-related shocks and a widening fiscal deficit could also present more downward risks.

The bank said Kenya’s economic growth could rebound to 5.2% in 2021 if its virus containment measures ease by the second half of this year.

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The Kenya Medical Research Institute, Kemri, has depleted its supplies of coronavirus screening and testing kits. The institute's director, Yeri Kombe, said at least 790 million Kenyan shillings are needed to restock reagents and other materials used for testing for coronavirus.

Kemri is co-ordinating the country's screening and testing of coronavirus cases, as well as conducting research on a possible vaccine for the pandemic. Kenya, to date, has confirmed 373 cases and 14 deaths.

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The World Health Organisation says the number of reported COVID-19 cases in the W.H.O. African Region has increased from 33,000 to over 34,000 in the past 24 hours. The WHO Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Congo, gave the update in a tweet on Wednesday.

The WHO African Region COVID-19 dashboard showed that in sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa suffered the most severe outbreak, while Cameroon and Ghana had more than 3,300 confirmed cases. The figures showed South Africa, Algeria and Cameroon had continued to top the list of countries with the highest reported cases.

Sao Tome and Principe, the third country with the lowest cases, had recorded 11 confirmed cases with zero death. The dashboard also showed Nigeria was number five among the countries with the highest cases with 1, 337 confirmed cases and 40 deaths.

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