Financial pain deepens as nearly 60 countries report coronavirus
North American markets have worst week since global recession in 2008
NEW YORK—The coronavirus outbreak began to look more like a worldwide economic crisis Friday as anxiety about the infection emptied shops and amusement parks, cancelled events, cut trade and travel and dragged already slumping financial markets even lower.
More employers told their workers to stay home, and officials locked down neighbourhoods and closed schools. The wide-ranging efforts to halt the spread of the illness threatened jobs, paychecks and profits.
“This is a case where in economic terms the cure is almost worse than the disease,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “When you quarantine cities ... you lose economic activity that you’re not going to get back.”
The list of countries touched by the illness climbed to nearly 60 as Mexico, Belarus, Lithuania, New Zealand, Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Iceland and the Netherlands reported their first cases. More than 83,000 people worldwide have contracted the illness, with deaths topping 2,800.
The head of the World Health Organization announced that the risk of the virus spreading worldwide was “very high,” citing the “continued increase in the number of cases and the number of affected countries.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all governments to “do everything possible to contain the disease.” “We know containment is possible, but the window of opportunity is narrowing,” he told reporters in New York.
The economic ripples have already reached around the globe.
Stock markets around the world plunged again Friday. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones index took yet another hit, closing down nearly 360 points. The index has dropped more than 14 per cent from a recent high, making this the market’s worst week since 2008, during the global financial crisis.
Canada's largest stock index flirted with correction territory Friday after plunging for a sixth-straight day.
The S&P/TSX composite index was down as much as 821 points after a technical problem forced an early end to trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Thursday.
That marked an 11.5 per cent drop from the record high set Feb. 20.
It partially recovered to move slightly below the 10 per cent correction threshold but still had its worst day in 15 months, losing 454.39 points, or 2.7 per cent, to close at 16,263.05.
The effects were just as evident in the hush that settled in over places where throngs of people ordinarily work and play and buy and sell.
“There’s almost no one coming here,” said Kim Yun-ok, who sells doughnuts and seaweed rolls at Seoul’s Gwangjang Market, where crowds were thin as South Korea counted 571 new cases — more than in China, where the virus emerged. “I am just hoping that the outbreak will come under control soon.”
In Asia, Tokyo Disneyland and Universal Studios Japan announced they would close, and events that were expected to attract tens of thousands of people were called off, including a concert series by the Kpop group BTS. The state-run Export-Import Bank of Korea shut down its headquarters in Seoul after a worker tested positive for the virus, telling 800 others to work from home. Japanese officials prepared to shutter all schools until early April.
In Italy — which has reported 888 cases, the most of any country outside of Asia — hotel bookings are falling, and Premier Giuseppe Conte raised the spectre of recession.
The Swiss government banned events with more than 1,000 people, while at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany, basins of holy water were emptied for fear of spreading germs.