Asian stock markets have seen a dip this morning after Apple’s announcement that the outbreak was causing shortages of the iPhone and that it would fail to meet its revenue target for this quarter.
The Nikkei in Tokyo fell 0.6% this morning and the ASX200 was down 0.2% in Sydney. Seoul was down 0.56%. Chinese and Hong Kong markets open shortly.
Apple’s announcement follows a profit waring from Cathay Pacific on Monday. The Hong Kong-based airline, already hit hard by the city’s protest movement, has cancelled 40% of its flights this month and next because of the virus.
BHP, the world’s biggest mining company, said that it might have to cut its growth forecasts for the year if the outbreak is not contained in the March quarter.
But … stock markets have weathered the coronavirus outbreak without too much alarm because investors have bet that central banks, led by China, will pump enough stimulus back into their economies to make sure things stay on an even keel.
The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates last year and that has helped fuel a boom in the US economy which is also helping to shrug off fears about a China slowdown.
There are rumbling concerns that passengers who were allowed to leave the cruise ship MV Westerdam in Cambodia may yet be infected with the virus.
UK officials are trying to contact Britons who disembarked after experts said the checking process may not have been handled properly. One person tested positive after leaving the vessel, which was refused by five countries due to concerns that passengers were infected.
Mark Harris, a professor of virology at the University of Leeds, said: “If you have got people who are infected at an early stage they might not test positive, they might not show any symptoms but they could go on to develop full-blown disease.”
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The latest figures show that more than 12,000 people have recovered from the infection out of a total of more than 73,000 who have contracted it.
We have to assume that many more will recover if we factor in the latest comments by the head of the World Health Organization.
Speaking in Geneva, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said data from China had helped form a “a clearer picture of the outbreak” and that it appeared that four out of five people infected would recover. It was not as deadly as Sars or Mers, he said, adding:
More than 80% of patients have mild disease and will recover, 14% have severe disease including pneumonia and shortness of breath, 5% have critical disease including respiratory failure, septic shock and multi-organ failure, and 2% of cases are fatal,. The risk of death increases the older you are.
Our health editor, Sarah Boseley, has the full story here:
