Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, April 6th. This is your F.T. News briefing.

Yesterday, Boris Johnson was hospitalized 10 days after being diagnosed with COVID-19.

The UK Prime Minister has suffered persistent symptoms.

Downing Street said Mr Johnson's doctor advised the hospitalization as a, quote,

precautionary step.

Meanwhile the death toll in the United States is closing in on 10,000 people

as the country enters what President Donald Trump is calling a rough two weeks.

And while much of the focus is on the US and Europe and the UK,

the F.T. David Pilling says emerging markets are struggling

and will continue to struggle as this pandemic progresses.

Plus we'll take a look at how US banks are fighting

to keep their dividend payment plans

and how major oil producers are handling the price

war between Saudi Arabia and Russia.

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day. So far 85 countries have approached the International Monetary Fund for short-term emergency

assistance in the wake of this pandemic.

That's double the number of countries who reached out for help in the immediate aftermath

of the 2008 financial crisis.

But as the F.T.'s Africa editor, David Pilling explains, things are different this time around for emerging markets, especially when you compare their situations to those in the U.S. and Europe.

With Europe and the U.S. what happened was the coronavirus hit first and then you had the kind of dawning

of the economic impact and what that would mean.

In a sense, with emerging markets, the reverse has has happened partly because of where they are located geographically and partly because of their ties to China.

...