GENEVA: The coronavirus pandemic is expected to take a heavy toll on funding for innovation and may well accelerate the shift in research towards Asia, the United Nations said Wednesday.

"The great risk... is that innovation expenditures and the means to finance innovation will spiral downwards as the global economy grinds to something of a halt," Francis Gurry, the head of the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), told reporters in a virtual briefing.

He said no figures were available yet on the impact the pandemic was having on research and development spending, but there were clear indications that "money to fund innovation is drying up around the world."

The impact will be felt very unevenly, he said.

Fresh start-ups and start-up companies requiring long-term research and development investment, or based in developing countries, were likely to suffer the worst.

"This is not a very good scene at all," Gurry said.

He called on governments to broaden their support, urging them to recognise that innovative and new ideas will be vital to exiting the pandemic and recovering through the post-Covid-19 era.

Gurry's comments came as the UN agency published its annual ranking of the world's most innovative countries, with Switzerland topping the list for the 10th year running.

But the data in the Global Innovation Index 2020, which WIPO compiles along with Cornell University and the INSEAD business school, was gathered before the onset of the pandemic.