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Live updates: Coronavirus pummels Asian financial markets as deadly outbreak rages

A man wearing a face mask walks past statues of bulls in Beijing on Friday, as global markets turn increasingly bearish due to the coronavirus. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
By Adam Taylor
February 28, 2020 at 2:39 AM EST
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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.

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.

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.

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

slipped more than 3 percent, raising expectations that producing nations will cut output after meeting next week.

Here are the latest developments:

Asian stocks fell sharply, with Japan’s Nikkei index down 1,000 points in afternoon trading. This followed another rough day on Wall Street, where the Dow Jones industrial average shed nearly 1,200 points and all major indexes fell into correction territory, down 10 percent from recent highs.
There looked set to be far more cases confirmed outside China, the epicenter of the crisis, then within it. China announced 327 new cases and 44 deaths. South Korea had announced 256 new cases on Friday morning, bringing its total up to 2,022, while New Zealand announced its first case.
President Trump tweeted that the virus was spreading “very slowly in the U.S.” and suggested his political opponents were blaming him for the outbreak. His remarks came forward after a whistleblower alleged that the U.S. government sent workers without proper training for infection control or appropriate protective gear to greet evacuees from Wuhan, China.
Organizers of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics said they would announce next week how they plan to hold the torch relay. On Thursday, Japan asked schools to close until early April.
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.)

February 28, 2020 at 2:39 AM EST
Mongolian president under 14-day quarantine after traveling to China for one day

President Khaltmaagiin Battulga during an interview with The Washington Post on May 22, 2018. (Giulia Marchi for The Washington Post)
Mongolian President Khaltmaagiin Battulga is under a two-week quarantine after returning from a trip to China, where he met with President Xi Jinping and gifted the Chinese leader 30,000 sheep during a brief one-day visit.

Battulga had visited Beijing on Thursday as a show of support to Mongolia’s larger neighbor amid the coronavirus outbreak. China’s Foreign Ministry noted that Battulga was the first foreign head of state to visit the country since the outbreak began in the city of Wuhan.


State news agency Montsame reported Friday that Battulga and other members of his delegation that went to China had been placed under an immediate 14-day quarantine. A number of high-ranking officials were in the delegation, including the country’s foreign minister and the head of the national emergency management agency

The top-ranking officials, including the president, are being held at a government hospital in Ulaanbaatar, AKIpress news agency reported.

By Adam Taylor
February 28, 2020 at 1:50 AM EST
Asian stocks sink, oil slides as investors run for cover

People wearing protective face masks walk past a screen showing the Nikkei index at a brokerage in Tokyo on Friday. (Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

By Adam Taylor
February 28, 2020 at 1:22 AM EST
Tokyo Disneyland to close over coronavirus as Japan enters partial shutdown
Students wearing Disney character hats and face masks leave Tokyo Disneyland on Friday as the park announced it would close until March 15. (Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images)
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.

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.

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.

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.

By Simon Denyer
February 28, 2020 at 1:19 AM EST
Japan to announce plans next week for scaled-back Olympic torch relay
Mask-clad people pose with an installation of the Olympic rings in Tokyo on Friday. (Charly Triballeau/Afp Via Getty Images)
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.

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.

“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.

On Thursday, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said the IOC is fully committed to ensuring the Games go ahead on schedule.

By Simon Denyer
February 28, 2020 at 1:17 AM EST
Coronavirus epidemic reveals a world in political crisis
Military officers wearing face masks stand outside Duomo cathedral, closed by authorities due to a coronavirus outbreak, in Milan, Italy, on Feb. 24. (Flavio Lo Scalzo/Reuters)
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.

“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.

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.”

Read more from Today’s WorldView newsletter

By Ishaan Tharoor
February 28, 2020 at 1:17 AM EST
New Zealand confirms first case of coronavirus
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaking in Sydney, Australia, on Friday. (Bianca De Marchi/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
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.

“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.”

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.

Though two tests came back negative, a third used a more specific sample and came back positive, the Health Ministry statement said.

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.

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.

At least 48 countries have confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus.

By Adam Taylor
February 28, 2020 at 1:16 AM EST
As South Korea cases top 2,000, country tries to reassure foreigners
Medical staff take samples from passengers with suspected symptoms of novel coronavirus at a drive-through screening clinic of a hospital in Daegu on Thursday. (-/Yonhap/Afp Via Getty Images)
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

More than 50 countries have banned or restricted entry of visitors from South Korea as of Friday.

Five Chinese provinces have mandated 14 days of quarantine for people arriving from South Korea, according to data compiled by Seoul’s Foreign Ministry.

Taylor reported from Hong Kong

By Min Joo Kim and Adam Taylor
February 28, 2020 at 1:16 AM EST
China reports 327 new cases, 44 deaths, from novel coronavirus
Residents wait for food and medical supplies purchased through group orders at an entrance of a residential area in Wuhan on Thursday. (Stringer/Reuters)
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.

In total, China has reported 78,824 confirmed cases and 2,788 deaths in the mainland since the outbreak started.

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.

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.

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.

“Foreign countries should consider China’s model of early detection, early quarantine,” Zhong said. “This is humanity’s disease, not China’s disease.”

Lyric Li and Gerry Shih in Beijing contributed to this report.

By Adam Taylor
February 28, 2020 at 1:15 AM EST
Chinese parents and students ask: When will schools reopen?
Elaine, 11, studies at home in Beijing on Feb. 19. Schools remain closed as the country battles the coronavirus outbreak. (Roman Pilipey/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
BEIJING — In China, parents and students alike are beginning to wonder: When will schools reopen?

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.

“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.

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.”

More than 10 million students are expected to sit this year’s college entrance exams, which usually fall on June 7-8.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

By Lyric Li
Coronavirus: What you need to read
Updated February 27, 2020
The latest: California is monitoring 8,400 people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus after traveling to Asia. U.S. workers without protective gear assisted the first Americans coronavirus evacuees, according to a HHS whistleblower.

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses whose effects range from causing the common cold to triggering much more serious diseases, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. Here are the biggest questions surrounding the virus and what we know so far.

Mapping the spread of the new coronavirus: More than 30 countries have reported at least one case of novel coronavirus since it originated in Wuhan, China.

How does the coronavirus make people sick, and why does it kill some of them? It’s not just the virus that kills them — it’s their own immune system. Here’s how to prepare for coronavirus in the U.S. (Step 1: Don’t panic).

What do you want to know about coronavirus? Let us know here.

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Adam Taylor
Adam Taylor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. Originally from London, he studied at the University of Manchester and Columbia University. Follow
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