UNITED NATIONS, March 31 (Xinhua) -- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday said that the COVID-19 pandemic is the most challenging crisis since the Second World War as it represents a threat to everybody.

The pandemic "represents a threat to everybody in the world and ... it has an economic impact that will bring a recession that probably has no parallel in the recent past," Guterres said at the virtual press launch of the UN report "Shared responsibility, global solidarity: Responding to the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19."

The death toll from COVID-19 has passed 40,000 worldwide, according to the tally from Johns Hopkins University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) on Tuesday.

As of 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time (1830 GMT), nations and regions have reported a total of 40,708 deaths from COVID-19, along with more than 826,000 confirmed cases, while more than 174,000 people have recovered from the disease, an interactive map maintained by the CSSE showed.