The chancellor’s measures for supporting employers will help many – but there’s still no remedy for the most vulnerable

Editorial: Unlike the coronavirus itself, there is a ready treatment immediately available for the potential economic damage wrought by this invisible enemy

Rishi Sunak faces a formidable task in the months ahead (AP)

Containment of the coronavirus contagion is an approach that applies as much to the economy as it does to the general population. And limiting and delaying the financial contagion rushing through the economy is the urgent imperative that Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has had to turn his attention to for the third time in a little over a week since his formal Budget. Never has a chancellor had so much to do in so short a time. Nor too in the nation’s history has a British government subsidised wages on a national scale. It is a bonfire of economic vanities.

So Mr Sunak mostly seems to have “got it”, albeit in a piecemeal way. The crucial task is to protect employment, and that now entails underwriting hundreds of enterprises, large, medium and small across the land. The logistics of such an exercise – not even seen in wartime – are formidable, and the schemes will never be perfect. However, the plan to pay 80 per cent of the majority of salaries by subsidising wages is precisely correct. Further help for the self-employed is also wise, as is a relaxed and enhanced regime for universal credit and statutory pay. There is still, though, an impression that those in the “gig economy” will still fall through the gaps in the safety nets.