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Coronavirus Live Updates: Markets Reel as Virus Spreads Across the World
New outbreaks in Europe, Asia and the Middle East prompted a second day of sliding stock prices. Nearly 80,000 people in 37 countries have been infected and at least 2,600 have died.
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The C.D.C. raises threat level in South Korea and warns Americans not to travel there.
Read Updates in Chinese: 新冠病毒疫情最新消息汇总
Here’s what you need to know:
- Stocks continue to fall in Asia, but at a slower pace.
- As infections slow in China, they increase elsewhere around the world.
- C.D.C. warns Americans against traveling to South Korea.
- White House asks Congress for $2.5 billion to fight the outbreak.
- A judge prevented California from moving some patients.
Stocks continue to fall in Asia, but at a slower pace.
Share prices in Asia slid for the second straight day, albeit at a more moderate pace, as investors took their cue from Monday’s sell-offs in Europe and the United States.
The steepest losses in Asia on Tuesday occurred in Japan, where markets were closed for a holiday on Monday. The Nikkei 225 index was down almost 3 percent by late morning. Most other Asian markets fell at a much slower pace.
Futures trading indicated that American and European markets may be little changed or up slightly when they open on Tuesday.
The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets dropped 2 percent by late Tuesday morning. Both markets had been fairly insulated from the global selling on Monday, a stability that analysts attributed to Beijing policies such as ordering fund managers not to sell more shares than they buy. Beijing has a history of tolerating share price declines more readily if they look like echoes of Wall Street’s activity, and that appeared to be true on Tuesday as well.
The Hong Kong market was little changed, after falling more than the mainland markets on Monday.
In South Korea, shaken by the world’s second largest outbreak outside of China, share prices rebounded on Tuesday morning after enduring on Monday one of the sharpest drops of any large market around the world. By late morning, share prices there were up about 0.5 percent.
Stock markets in commodity-exporting countries continue to suffer losses as traders worry that demand for their goods may decline if more countries suffer the kind of bruising deceleration in economic activity that China has endured. Australia’s stock market fell 1.6 percent by early Tuesday afternoon, and New Zealand’s dipped 1 percent.
As infections slow in China, they increase elsewhere around the world.
China appears to be getting the new coronavirus under control, but infections are spreading rapidly in South Korea, Iran and Italy. And the world is not prepared for a major outbreak, World Health Organization officials said on Monday.
A W.H.O. mission to China has said that the daily tally of new cases there peaked and then plateaued between Jan. 23 and Feb. 2, and has steadily declined since.
Chinese officials reported 508 new cases and 71 deaths as of Monday, a slower pace than in previous days.
By Tuesday, South Korea had reported a total of 893 cases, the second most in the world. Of the 60 new cases reported by South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 49 came from Daegu, the center of the outbreak in that country.
In Iran, a spike in coronavirus infections has prompted fears of a contagion throughout the Middle East. In Italy, one of Europe’s largest economies, officials are struggling to prevent the epidemic from paralyzing the commercial center of Milan. And in New York, London, and Tokyo, financial markets plummeted on fears that the virus will cripple the global economy.
The emergence of Italy, Iran, and South Korea as new hubs of the outbreak underscored the lack of a coordinated global strategy to combat the coronavirus, which has infected nearly 80,000 people in 37 countries, causing at least 2,600 deaths.
C.D.C. warns Americans against traveling to South Korea.
American citizens were advised on Monday to avoid nonessential travel to South Korea because of the rapid spread of the coronavirus there. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has raised the travel warning to Level Three, its highest warning.
“There is a widespread, ongoing outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel (new) coronavirus that can be spread from person to person,” the C.D.C. said in an advisory. “Older adults and people with chronic medical conditions may be at risk of severe disease.”
The C.D.C. also warned that “there is limited access to adequate medical care in affected areas.”
The warning came as South Korea reported Tuesday that the number of cases in the country had risen by 60 to 893 overall. The majority of the cases have been centered in the area in and around Daegu, South Korea’s fourth-largest city, 180 miles southeast of Seoul. And roughly half the patients in the country are members of the Shincheonji religious group, a church that has a large following in the city.
President Moon Jae-in on Sunday put the country on the highest possible alert in its fight against the coronavirus.
White House asks Congress for $2.5 billion to fight the outbreak.
The Trump administration, after weeks of pleading from lawmakers, asked Congress on Monday to allocate at least $2.5 billion in emergency funds to bolster its coronavirus response, according to three White House officials and a request letter obtained by The New York Times.
The request from the White House, $1.25 billion in new funds and $1.25 billion in money diverted from other federal programs, is a significant escalation in the administration’s response to the outbreak of the virus and a sign of how long the fight to stop it may be.
The letter, which was signed by Russell T. Vought, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the funds would be spent on emergency medical supplies, lab testing, the development of vaccines and other forms of monitoring, among other features.
Representative Nita M. Lowey of New York, the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, called the request “woefully insufficient to protect Americans from the deadly coronavirus outbreak.”
“It is profoundly disturbing that their answer now is to raid money Congress has designated for other critical public health priorities,” she said in a statement. “Worse still, their overall request still falls short of what is needed for an effective, comprehensive government-wide response.”
A judge prevented California from moving some patients.
In a decision that could complicate California’s efforts to deal with the coronavirus crisis, a federal judge on Monday kept a temporary restraining order in place that would prevent infected patients on a military base from being moved to a state-owned facility in the city of Costa Mesa.
The judge said she would reconsider the issue after state and federal authorities provide more details about how they plan to protect the health of the community, as well as the people with coronavirus. “The state has shown great empathy for the patients,” Judge Josephine L. Staton said in a ruling that drew applause, adding that she wanted to see “the same empathy for the residents of Costa Mesa.”
Costa Mesa had asked the judge to prevent California from moving people infected with the new coronavirus into a former residential home for developmentally disabled people, where the patients would remain in isolation while recovering. The area, which is in Orange County, is too heavily populated to host people infected with such a dangerous virus, the local officials argued.
Federal officials had planned to move the patients to a facility in Alabama operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, court documents said, but officials in California thought that moving the group out of the state would be detrimental to their health and well-being.
The standoff over where to send the patients underscored the unwieldy, decentralized nature of the U.S. health system, even as federal authorities were warning of serious risks from the coronavirus outbreak
China makes it easier for businesses to reopen, but cracks down on price gouging.
Beijing officials announced on Tuesday that they had ordered local governments to streamline the many new requirements they have imposed before companies can reopen after weeks of stalled production as a result of the outbreak
Worried that further infections might be blamed on them, local officials all over China have been demanding that companies’ pass extensive reviews and even on-site inspections before they can restart production. Rules include making sure that companies provide employees with face masks, keep track of employees’ temperatures and set up hand-washing stations.
Manufacturers of medical protection equipment can bypass the new rules almost entirely, so as to produce more face masks and other gear as quickly as possible.
But while Beijing is trying to restart the private sector, it does not want companies to mark up prices steeply for scarce products. Tang Jun, the deputy director of the State Administration of Market Regulation, said at a news briefing on Tuesday morning in Beijing that the Chinese government had investigated 4,500 companies for price gouging and was filing more than 11,000 legal cases.
The cases involved, “medical protective supplies and important commodities related to the people’s livelihood,” he said. More than 36,000 online vendors have already been identified as trying to overcharge specifically for face masks, he added, and electronic commerce companies have removed their overpriced listings.
Reporting and research was contributed by Matt Phillips, Russell Goldman, Keith Bradsher, Gerry Mullany, Aimee Ortiz, Mark Landler, Steven Lee Myers, Sui-Lee Wee, Farah Stockman, Louis Keene, Noah Weiland, Emily Cochrane and Maggie Haberman.
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