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Live updates: Coronavirus pummels Asian financial markets as deadly outbreak rages Live updates: More infections worldwide as new coronavirus cases indicate virus is spreading in U.S.
(1 day later)
Asian stocks took a heavy hit on Friday, with global markets on track for their worst week since the financial crisis as investors grew increasingly alarmed that a novel coronavirus pandemic could push the world economy into recession. More coronavirus infections were reported from South Korea to France to Qatar on Saturday after health officials in Washington, Oregon and California on Friday reported a worrying development: new cases among people who have not traveled recently to countries hit hard by the outbreak or come into contact with anyone known to have the disease, which public health officials refer to as community transmission.
Tokyo’s Nikkei index and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng both slumped. The Shanghai Composite Index also fell, reversing a positive trend for Chinese stocks that had accompanied indications that the outbreak may be slowing in the country where it originated. The four new cases Friday bring the total number of covid-19 cases detected through the U.S. public health system to 19, according to the CDC.
New cases of the virus continued to surge outside of China, which on Friday announced 327 new cases and 44 deaths. South Korea’s tally surpassed 2,000, while countries from New Zealand to Belarus confirmed their first cases, among almost 50 nations now afflicted, as governments respond with measures such as school closures and event cancellations. A day earlier, infections soared in Europe and the Middle East, while the first known case in sub-Saharan Africa was confirmed in Nigeria. Washington State announced late Friday that a high school student in Snohomish County, just north of Seattle, tested positive for the deadly virus and was in home isolation in a suspected community transmission case. Washington health officials also said a woman in her 50s in King County tested positive after traveling to Daegu, South Korea, the site of a major coronavirus outbreak. She, too, is in home isolation.
Investors have watched the outbreak’s progress with increasing concern, dumping risk assets and piling into havens such as U.S. Treasury bonds. U.S. oil futures Earlier Friday, Oregon health officials reported a presumptive positive test in a resident in Washington County with no known travel history or contact with infected individuals. California also reported a second case of community transmission, in Santa Clara County, after reporting the nation’s first such case, in Solano County, earlier in the week.
slipped more than 3 percent, raising expectations that producing nations will cut output after meeting next week.
Here are the latest developments:Here are the latest developments:
Mapping the spread of the coronavirus | What we know about the virus | How to prepare for coronavirus in the U.S. (Spoiler: Not sick? No need to wear a mask.) Mapping the spread of the coronavirus | What you need to know about the virus | How to prepare for coronavirus in the U.S. (Spoiler: Not sick? No need to wear a mask.)
Asian stocks extended their losses on Friday amid continued concern about the spread of the novel coronavirus outbreak, with Japan’s Nikkei down over 1,000 points, or 4.6 percent, by midafternoon before recovering a little. France on Saturday banned public gatherings with crowds of 5,000 or more as a preventive measure against the spread of coronavirus after the government announced an additional 16 cases of infection.
Substantial falls were also recorded on Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index, which dropped 2.8 percent; China’s Shanghai Composite index, which fell 3.4 percent; and India’s BSE Sensex, which fell 2.7 percent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 ended the day down 3.3 per cent as the country’s commodity-linked currency, closely tied to China’s economy, fell to its weakest level against the U.S. dollar since 2009. U.S. stock futures were down about 1.8 percent. “All public gatherings of more than 5,000 people in a confined space are temporarily banned across France,” Health Minister Olivier Veran told journalists, Reuters reported.
The moves came the day after a record fall on Wall Street, with the Dow Jones industrial index losing 1,200 points and all major indexes in correction territory, down more than 10 percent from market highs. No one in France has died of coronavirus, but there are 73 confirmed infections. France’s health ministry said Saturday that the country is now preparing for an epidemic.
Fears about the outbreak "have become full-blown across the globe as cases outside China climb,” market analysts Chang Wei Liang and Eugene Leow of DBS said in a report. While there is no vaccine for covid-19, preventive steps and awareness are the best tools to prepare and protect yourself in the event of an outbreak. Learn more here:
There is widespread speculation that the turmoil may prompt the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. “With financial conditions deteriorating rapidly and downside risks to the economy materializing, we suspect that the Fed may have to act sooner than anticipated,” Chang and Leow wrote. Routine care and elective surgeries — such as knee replacements and gallbladder removal — could be scaled back if the coronavirus spawns a pandemic, hospital executives are warning, delivering economic shocks to the hospital system beyond the immediate challenges of protecting health-care workers and dealing with those stricken with the virus.
Oil prices also fell sharply, with U.S. crude futures down over 3 percent to $45.50. Market participants say oil-producing nations appear likely to agree to slash output when officials from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meet in Vienna next week. Rural hospitals could bear the early brunt. They sit furthest from international airports and urban hubs where outbreaks are more likely, but they are at the tail end of supply chains for vital medical goods such as protective masks and gowns.
TOKYO – The Disney theme parks in Tokyo will close until March 15, its operators said Friday, the latest in a long line of events and attractions that have fallen victim to the new coronavirus. In addition to preparing for victims and the demands of protecting health-care workers from infection, fragile hospital networks also are readying for disruptions to the bottom line. If the spreading coronavirus puts heavy demand on health systems, billable work that keeps revenue flowing on a weekly basis to hospitals small and large will be curtailed, executives said.
Already a whole host of sporting events and pop concerts have been canceled or postponed and museums have shut their doors on government advice for organizers to reconsider anything that involves large public gatherings for at least the next two weeks. The hospital industry warned policymakers this week that Congress needs to quickly pass emergency funding for the crisis and direct some of the funding to plug anticipated gaps in hospital operating budgets. In the event of widespread sickness, costs would soar for isolation rooms for infected patients, equipment and training.
Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea will close from Saturday, but the reopening date could change depending on further advice, the operator said, according to public broadcaster NHK. Read more here:
On Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe asked schools around the country to close until the start of the new school year in April. And on Friday, Japan’s infrastructure minister said public works projects would be suspended until March 15 to prevent the further spread of the new illness. Kazuyoshi Akaba said the state will shoulder costs incurred during the suspension period, NHK reported. The global coronavirus outbreak dominated headlines this week as it entered the political debate and sent markets tumbling. In response, Americans did what we always do when confronted with something new, big and scary: We dumped our anxieties into the nearest Google search bar.
TOKYO — Tokyo 2020 Olympics organizers will announce “at some point” next week how they are planning to a hold the torch relay amid the coronavirus outbreak, the spokesman for the organizing committee said Friday, according to Reuters. Here are a number of charts illustrating search terms that saw big jumps this week, which give a sense of our collective coronavirus-related worries, as well as a few hopes.
On Wednesday, the chief executive of the organizing committee said the Olympic torch relay, due to start in Fukushima prefecture on March 26, could be scaled back or downsized to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. One important caveat about Google trends data: It doesn’t reveal exactly how many people are searching for a given term; it just gives a sense of whether that term has risen or fallen in popularity. So to approximate absolute search volume, presumably popular search terms like “Donald Trump” and “Kim Kardashian” will serve as guide posts.
“Bringing spectators together in large numbers increases the risk of infection. Downsizing is among the approaches we can consider,” CEO Toshiro Muto told reporters. Muto, however, rejected any suggestion that the relay might be canceled, Kyodo reported. Read more here:
On Thursday, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said the IOC is fully committed to ensuring the Games go ahead on schedule. As numbers of coronavirus infections continued to rise around the world, governments ramped up travel advisories for citizens and even travel bans on incoming travelers from affected countries.
From the United States to Italy, Iran to South Korea, the coronavirus epidemic is getting worse. The virus spread to its sixth continent this week and continued to send markets whipsawing, with the Dow set for its worst single week since the financial crash of 2008. Governments have issued new rounds of travel bans: Saudi Arabia said Thursday it would temporarily suspend travel to the holiest sites in Islam, months ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage. The number of cases in South Korea rose to 2,022 on Friday, the highest figure for a single country outside China. Japan announced the closures of all of its schools until early April. And Coca-Cola, along with other multinational companies, said outbreak-linked supply chain disruptions could lead to shortages. The U.S. State Department raised its travel advisory for Italy to level three, urging citizens to reconsider all nonessential travel. Italy is the center of Europe’s coronavirus outbreak, with 888 confirmed cases.
“There is every indication that the world will soon enter a pandemic phase,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, whose country has confirmed at least 23 cases of coronavirus, told reporters in Canberra. The emergence of a new sort of coronavirus case in the United States, unrelated to foreign travel or contact with someone already known to be infected, suggested the virus had defied efforts to contain it. President Trump attempted to play down the scale of the threat, even as U.S. officials warned Americans to prepare for a crisis. Russian officials on Saturday urged citizens not to leave the country. Kuwaiti health officials have also discouraged traveling, as the small Gulf country grapples with 45 confirmed cases of the virus. Saudi Arabia likewise urged its citizens to cancel all nonessential travel to Lebanon, where four coronavirus cases have been confirmed.
Europe is feeling the jitters, too. So far, the largest cluster of cases on the continent has been in northern Italy. “If the virus spreads, and it will spread, I think any local or national politician would have to take very drastic action, and that will virtually halt the economy,” Roberto Perotti, an economist at Milan’s Bocconi University, told my colleagues. “For how long, we don’t know. Can you imagine a [car] factory if there is one case in the factory? Can you imagine it not shutting down? I doubt it.” “In order to consider yourself protected today, first of all, possible future trips outside the native country need to be reduced as much as possible,” Anna Popova, a Russian public health official, told local news affiliates, according to Reuters.
Read more from Today’s WorldView newsletter Kuwait has evacuated hundreds of citizens from Iran, the regional focal point of the virus outbreak in the Middle East. The two latest cases involved people who had entered Kuwait from Iran, according to the Kuwaiti health ministry.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Friday that the country has recorded its first case of the novel coronavirus, adding that officials were rolling out a plan to cope with a pandemic. Following the case of a woman who tested positive for the virus who had recently returned to Australia from Iran, the Australian government is imposing a travel ban on Iran to begin March 1.
“A pandemic plan always exists in New Zealand. We’ve been well prepared," Ardern said during a visit to Sydney. "We are rolling out all of the protocols as we would expect.” After that date, Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt told reporters Saturday, Australian travelers returning from Iran will be required to self-isolate for a period of 14 days after their arrival.
The patient, aged in their 60s, had returned from a trip to Iran on Wednesday, New Zealand’s Health Ministry said in a statement. The person displayed symptoms and was taken by family members to Auckland City Hospital on Thursday, where they were tested three times for coronavirus. All non-citizens, non-permanent residents and those who are not family of Australian citizens and permanent residents will be denied entry into the country unless their departure from Iran occurred more than 14 days before their arrival date in Australia.
Though two tests came back negative, a third used a more specific sample and came back positive, the Health Ministry statement said. Travelers who fit this category will be required to spend 14 days in another country before being granted permission to enter Australia.
The person is being held in isolation at the hospital and their immediate contacts are also being put in isolation. New Zealand’s government is now seeking anyone who was on the final leg of the person’s return journey, from Bali to Auckland. “There is likely at this stage a high level of undetected cases, and therefore those cases won’t be intercepted or identified on departure from Iran,” Hunt said.
At a news conference Friday, Health Minister David Clark said travelers coming from Iran would face temporary restrictions. He added that New Zealand would not allow exemptions for overseas students from China to enter the country. BAGHDAD — Qatar announced its first case of coronavirus Saturday, days after the country’s ruler ordered the evacuation of its citizens from Iran.
At least 48 countries have confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus. The country’s state-run news agency did not provide further details about the individual’s background or travel history.
SEOUL — South Korea is taking steps to reassure foreigners about its safety, as the number of novel coronavirus cases in the country surged past 2,000. The Qatari government announced Thursday that it had completed the evacuation of its citizens from Iran, the focal point of the region’s outbreak. “A hotel has been set up as a quarantine facility to be used by the Qatari citizens for a 14 day period and will be cared for and monitored by medical,” the Government Communications Office said. “They have arrived in Doha.”
On Friday, the country held its first English-language briefing on the outbreak. The same day, Korean Air announced that it would check the temperature of passengers traveling to the United States and refuse travel to any who had a fever. Qatar is one of a growing number of Middle Eastern states to publicly announce the detection of coronavirus, and Iraq said Friday a sixth citizen had tested positive.
The country reported 256 additional cases of novel coronavirus on Friday, bringing its total to 2,022. The jump was expected as health authorities have expanded coronavirus testing in recent days. Although the Baghdad government has ordered a temporary shuttering of public spaces including cafes and cinemas, the capital’s streets were still busy Friday night as residents wore protective masks but did not stay home.
More than 12,000 people had been tested since the previous day, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which added that more than two-thirds of the latest cases were in southern city of Daegu. The arrival of coronavirus in Baghdad has even delayed the formation of a new government: Parliament announced last week that a planned vote on the new cabinet would not be possible Saturday, since the chamber was being disinfected.
South Korea’s government has designated Daegu city and surrounding North Gyeongsang province as “special care zones” where virus support will be concentrated. All but one of South Korea’s 13 coronavirus deaths were in Daegu and North Gyeongsang. PARIS — France confirmed 19 additional cases of coronavirus late Friday, bringing the national total to 57. Health officials warned that an epidemic was now imminent.
Oh Myoung-don of Seoul National University, who leads a panel of South Korean experts on the infectious disease, told a briefing Wednesday that the infection in the country could continue growing for another month. “We are preparing for an epidemic,” French Health Minister Olivier Véran said. He added that “we are now moving to stage two. The virus is circulating in our country and we must stop its spread.”
More than 50 countries have banned or restricted entry of visitors from South Korea as of Friday. Twenty additional cases had been confirmed in France late Thursday; the new 19 cases were diagnosed in the 24 hours since then.
Five Chinese provinces have mandated 14 days of quarantine for people arriving from South Korea, according to data compiled by Seoul’s Foreign Ministry. Authorities on Saturday were still struggling to identify the initial source of an outbreak in the Oise region north of Paris, with particular attention being paid to links between the Creil military base in that region and the nearby Charles de Gaulle international airport, one of the busiest passenger airports in Europe.
Taylor reported from Hong Kong On Friday, France’s Le Monde newspaper, citing airport security officials, reported that one airport worker who lives in the Val d’Oise region had tested positive for the virus.
HONG KONG — China’s National Health Commission said Friday that there had been 327 new confirmed infections from the novel coronavirus outbreak throughout the country, along with 44 deaths. The rapidly growing numbers of coronavirus cases come at a time of general malaise among public health workers in France. Earlier this year, hundreds of hospital department heads resigned over complaints about insufficient resources and staffing.
In total, China has reported 78,824 confirmed cases and 2,788 deaths in the mainland since the outbreak started. “We are facing an epidemic that will affect the whole system and will very quickly impose a reorganization of care,” Xavier Lescure, an infectious disease specialist at Bichat hospital, one of the three designated coronavirus treatment hospitals in the Paris region, told Le Monde.
The number released Friday showed, again, a decline in the number of new cases in China. Most of the new cases, 318, were found in Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak. Forty-one deaths were recorded in Hubei, along with two in Beijing and one in Xinjiang. ISTANBUL — Iran on Saturday confirmed more than 200 new cases of the coronavirus — as well as nine deaths — amid a widening outbreak that has put other Mideast nations at risk.
Some Chinese officials have suggested that the declining numbers show China has gotten the outbreak under control, despite international skepticism about the reliability of official statistics in the autocratic society and uncertainty about the nature of the novel coronavirus. At least 205 new infections appeared in Iran in the last 24 hours, including in provinces with no previous known cases, bringing the total number of patients to 593, Health Ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur said.
Prominent Chinese pulmonologist Zhong Nanshan told reporters Thursday he believed China could “basically control” the coronavirus by the end of April and questioned whether the pathogen originated from China at all. The death toll from the virus, which causes the disease known as covid-19, rose to 43, Jahanpur said. Iran has suffered the highest number of deaths from virus outside of China, where it originated in December. It was first detected in the Iranian holy city of Qom earlier this month.
“Foreign countries should consider China’s model of early detection, early quarantine,” Zhong said. “This is humanity’s disease, not China’s disease.” Jahanpur and other officials have warned citizens that the number of cases will rise in the coming days and weeks. In Iran, several senior officials have also been infected, including a vice president, the deputy health minister and as many as four parliamentarians. A former ambassador to the Vatican also died this week after contracting the virus.
Lyric Li and Gerry Shih in Beijing contributed to this report. Authorities suspended the activities of parliament, banned Friday prayers in multiple cities and shuttered schools and theaters in an effort to contain the outbreak.
BEIJING — In China, parents and students alike are beginning to wonder: When will schools reopen? TOKYO — Acknowledging widespread public criticism of the government’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said it had been a “tough” but necessary decision to request schools across the country to close in March and also promised to expand and enhance virus testing capacity.
The subject of the reopening of schools, shut across the country for weeks already due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, trended on social media on Friday after Chinese Premier Li Keqiang urged universities, schools, and kindergartens to further postpone the spring semester in a bid to prevent infections among children. “We understand that people have various views and criticism to any decisions made by the government that would directly affect your lives,” Abe said at a televised news conference on Saturday. “Of course, we need to sincerely listen to your voices. However, as the prime minister of Japan, I need to protect the lives and health of the people.”
“In principle, universities, schools, and kindergartens should continue to postpone campus reopening,” the premier said at a Thursday meeting in Beijing, adding that a strengthened protection of children and elderly people is in line with Communist Party central instructions to introduce more targeted epidemic-control measures. Abe reiterated the government’s view that the next one to two weeks are a critical time to curb the speed at which the new coronavirus will spread around Japan and said the government “must never allow a mass infection” of children at school.
Asked whether college entrance exams would be delayed, China’s Vice Minister of Education Weng Tiehui said at a Friday briefing that they are “keeping close watch on students’ and parents’ concerns” and would announce relevant work arrangements after “careful and cautious research.” “The closure of schools will put a burden on parents, especially families with small children,” he said. “I understand the difficulties these people will have to go through, yet we need to put children’s health and safety first.”
More than 10 million students are expected to sit this year’s college entrance exams, which usually fall on June 7-8. Abe pledged additional spending to tackle the impact of the virus, as well as an expansion of child care services.
Few local governments in China have set concrete timeframes for resuming regular classes. Guizhou, a province in China’s mountainous southwest, announced on Thursday that Grade 9 and Grade 12 students will be allowed to return March 16 to revise for graduation exams or college-entrance exams. A more general school reopening would be announced later after further “scientific evaluation,” it said. Abe’s government has also been widely criticized for a shortage of virus tests, which has left doctors around the country unable to get tests for patients they believe could be infected.
Most provinces have encouraged online learning for students, focused on revision and non-academic subjects — music, fine arts, indoor exercises, education on epidemic control and personal hygiene — out of concerns of poor remote education quality and inequality for kids with no tech help and adult supervision. Abe vowed to increase testing capacity so anyone who doctors felt needed a test could obtain one and also pledged to roll out a new test in March that could give results in 15 minutes. He said three drugs are being used to treat patients with the virus.
On social media, some parents worried about the strain home-schooling would put on families. “It’s a headache for working-class parents because we cannot handle work and children at the same time," one mother wrote on Weibo. "Kids will be left home by their own. So work resumption should be delayed like school openings.” “All those drugs have been confirmed to have efficacy to a certain degree in the basic study using new coronavirus,” he said. “Therefore, we will use them with the consent of patients so as to develop therapeutic drugs as soon as possible.”
Some students weren’t happy either. “Personally I don’t care about school that much, but online learning is just killing me: so much homework and so much reading to do!" a college student wrote. "It is worse than going to school.” Japan has more than 200 confirmed coronavirus cases, not including more than 700 people from the Diamond Princess, but medical experts believe the real number of infections is significantly higher.
Read more here.
BAGHDAD — Saudi Arabia urged citizens Saturday not to travel to Lebanon, after the number of confirmed coronavirus edged steadily upward.
In a statement, the Saudi Embassy in Beirut asked Saudi nationals to postpone non-urgent travel and, if in Lebanon, stay away from crowded places, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency.
Lebanon confirmed its fourth coronavirus on Friday, with Beirut’s Rafik Hariri Hospital describing the individual as a Syrian national, now in quarantine. It was unclear whether she had recently traveled to China or Iran, where many other cases appear to have been contracted.
Lebanon is in the throes of its worst economic crisis since its civil war and the downturn has hit the health care system hard. As foreign reserves evaporate, doctors have staged sit-ins at hospitals to warn that lifesaving medicines are in short supply. Health care professionals have also pointed to an increasing shortage of medical equipment.
The Lebanese government has been slow to react to the spread of coronavirus, only stopping flights from affected countries on Friday, a week after the first case was confirmed there. Shortly afterward, Lebanon’s education ministry announced Friday that it would close all universities and schools until March 8, as a precautionary measure.
“In the interest of the health of students and their families ... the minister of education Dr. Tarek Majzoub requests all educational institutions including kindergartens, schools, high schools, vocational institutions and universities to close,” the education ministry said in a statement.
South Korean health officials on Saturday reported the country’s biggest single-day increase in new coronavirus cases since infections there began to surge earlier this month.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had confirmed 594 new cases, bringing the country’s total number of infections to nearly 3,000. Before Saturday, South Korea had not tallied more than 334 new cases in a single day, according to the KCDC.
Seventeen people have died from the novel virus in South Korea, and 27 have recovered, according to the country’s health officials.
Nearly all of the new cases came from the sprawling southeastern city of Daegu, where earlier in February officials linked a sudden burst of infections to an obscure church.
South Korean vice health minister Kim Kang-lip said the country has reached a “critical moment” in stopping the spread of the virus, and advised citizens to refrain from going outside or taking part in public events this weekend, as Reuters reported.
BEIJING — Taiwan on Saturday reported five new confirmed coronavirus cases, including nurses and a cleaner working at a hospital and a woman who began showing symptoms while traveling through the Middle East.
Including the five, Taiwan’s case count now stands at 39.
Three nurses became infected while treating a coronavirus patient at an emergency ward, and one of the nurses came in contact with the cleaner, who subsequently contracted the disease, Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center said.
In a statement, the command center did not positively pinpoint where the fifth case, a woman in her 60s, contracted the illness but noted that she was in the United Arab Emirates and Egypt between Jan. 29 and Feb. 21, when she began coughing. Authorities are now following up with other people she traveled with.
The Emirates, a regional transportation hub with a significant population of Chinese businesspeople, has seen a slight uptick in cases, with the total reaching 21 on Friday. Several of its other cases include travelers from Iran, where officials have reported at least 245 cases.
BEIJING — China reported its lowest manufacturing numbers on record for the month of February, as the epidemic-stricken economy ground to an unprecedented standstill.
China’s National Statistics Bureau said Saturday that the Purchasing Managers’ Index plummeted to 35.7, a reading below the previous record low of 38.8 in November 2008, during the global financial crisis. Any reading below 50 signals that manufacturing activity contracted.
Aside from languishing factories, the services industry also reported record-low activity, the statistics bureau reported.
“There was a plunge in demand for consumer industries,” the bureau said, noting a deep freeze in restaurants, transportation and tourism.
The extent of the historic drop will likely fuel fears that China will struggle to mount a swift economic recovery, with knock-on effects for the rest of the world. China’s factories remain at the heart of the global supply chain.
Chinese monetary authorities have promised to take drastic action to jump-start the economy, including breaking ground on massive new infrastructure projects. The government is also pressuring banks to pump out loans and landlords to forgive late payments to help businesses back on their feet.
Chinese manufacturers say they have had difficulty staffing factories with their rural employees reluctant to return to work and in some cases even running into logistical difficulties, such as quarantine controls and roadblocks erected by fearful communities.
In recent weeks, the state railway and other transportation authorities have been chartering trains and buses to shuttle workers from the countryside back to factories. An economic planning official said this week that three-fourths of industrial firms have restarted production.