ADB staff may temporarily work from home

The staff at the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) headquarters in Manila, Philippines, are temporarily working from their homes from Thursday following advice that a visitor to the Bank has tested positive for the coronavirus COVID-19.

According to an ADB press statement received here, the Bank's Manila headquarters facility would be closed from today (12 March) to undertake cleaning and disinfecting, adding the bank operations would continue.

The ADB Management will decide in coming days as to when the bank premises will be reopened, it added. "The safety of staff and visitors to the Bank and their families is of utmost importance to us. We are providing support to staff who interacted with the visitor," said ADB Vice President for Administration and Corporate Management Ms Deborah Stokes.

Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei index closed down 4.41 percent Thursday after the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic and US President Donald Trump announced a ban on travel from Europe.

The Nikkei 225 index lost 856.43 points to close at 18,559.63, while the broader Topix was down 4.13 percent, or 57.24 points, to close at 1,327.88.

Following the

World

Health Organization's pandemic announcement, "concerns over recession due to a contraction in various economic activities intensified", said Rikiya Takebe, senior strategist at Okasan Online Securities.

The key Nikkei index temporarily lost more than five percent after Trump banned all travel from Europe to the US for a month to fight the coronavirus, ramping up fears the global economy will careen into recession.

"Panic selling continued," said Toshikazu Horiuchi, a broker at IwaiCosmo Securities.

"It's hard to see a shortterm bottom of shares now," he told.