Could coronavirus fears hit the markets again this week?

This week I’m looking to see whether investors will struggle with the stock market sell-off, as they did last week, or whether there is panic selling, when the majority of trades through the course of the day are made at a lower price than the trades before, which we haven’t yet seen.

I don’t typically get too concerned with swings below the 3 percent range, although multiple drops of 3 percent or more in the course of a week, like last week, are concerning.

We came nowhere near the top 10 biggest percentage drops on major markets last week. We’d have to drop close to 8 percent in one day, or 18.5 percent in one week to even be in the record-breaking game. The biggest single day drop was 22.6 percent in the crash of 1987. By contrast we lost a little more than 10 percent last week. Nothing to sneeze at, but this isn’t panic selling.

Wall Street closes worst week since financial crisis amid coronavirus fears

Feb. 28, 202001:59

If trading does get that serious, the New York Stock Exchange has mechanisms called “circuit breakers” which allow for a reset. These are particularly important in an age where automated algorithmic trading is responsible for so much of the frenetic activity. The circuit breakers allow humans to intervene and slow the pace. If the S&P 500 falls 7 percent, trading stops for 15 minutes. If it drops 13 percent, it stops for another 15 minutes, and if it drops 20 percent, trading is halted for the day.

I don’t expect any of that to happen this coming week, but there are two words you should know:

• Correction — When a stock or an entire market drops 10 percent from its recent high. We are in a correction now, and it’s a normal occurrence. The average correction lasts four months.
• Bear market — When a stock or an entire market drops 20 percent from its recent high. This is not a common occurrence, and often a sign of more serious trouble ahead.

Some people sell when it’s looking that bad. Others back up the truck and buy, understanding that most markets come back. On average, after a major incident, like 9/11 for example, markets take less than six months to recover.

A recession, which something as serious as the coronavirus can cause, takes longer. Recessions tend to last about 13 months and take another 22 months to recover. The Great Recession and the burst of the dot.com bubble are outliers — it took six and eight years, respectively to recover from those. It’s worth noting that while economists are discussing the idea that Covid-19 will slow global economic growth, talk of it triggering a global recession are still whispers.

Ali Velshi is a business correspondent for NBC News and an MSNBC anchor.

Tourists in face masks walk through an unusually empty Grand Palace in Bangkok

Amazon employees in Milan quarantined after testing positive for coronavirus

Amazon said it was "supporting" two employees in Milan, Italy, who tested positive for coronavirus. 

“We’re supporting the affected employees who were in Milan and are now in quarantine,” a company spokesperson told NBC News in a statement. 

The company told its workers Friday to defer all non-essential travel within the United States and beyond.

The United States on Saturday hiked its travel advisory and urged U.S. citizens not to travel to the Veneto and Lombardy regions in the north of Italy because of the coronavirus outbreak there. Italy, the worst-hit country in Europe, has so far reported 1,694 coronavirus cases and 34 people have died.

Number of confirmed cases in mainland China tops 80,000

The number of confirmed novel coronavirus cases in mainland China climbed over 80,000 as of Sunday. 

Officials with China’s National Health Commission reported 202 new confirmed cases, sharply down from 573 new cases the day before. That is the lowest number of daily new cases since January 23, the day when emergency measures —  including placing entire cities in lockdown — were introduced.

They also reported 42 new deaths, compared to 35 new deaths the day before. 

That brings the total death toll of the epidemic in mainland China to 2,912, most of them in the Hubei province that was hardest hit by the outbreak. 

Murder probe sought for South Korea sect at center of coronavirus outbreak

The mayor of Seoul has asked for a murder investigation into leaders of a Christian sect at the center of the country’s deadly coronavirus outbreak.

A large majority of the more than 4,000 confirmed cases of the South Korean outbreak, the largest outside China, have been linked to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a secretive movement that reveres founder Lee Man-hee.

Seoul’s city government said Sunday it had filed a criminal complaint, asking for an investigation of Lee and 12 others on charges of murder, injury and violation of prevention and management of infectious diseases. 

"Lee Man Hee, the chairman, and the rest of the accused not only evaded the test and are in hiding but are not taking any measures to get their sect members to actively work with the health authorities to prevent further spreading of COVID-19,” Park Won-soon, mayor of the capital Seoul, said in a Facebook post Sunday. 

Park said if Lee and other leaders of the church had cooperated, effective preventive measures could have saved those who later died of the virus.

More than 4,200 cases have been reported in South Korea as of Monday, with 22 deaths.

In a press conference Monday, Lee said that he took the test for the novel coronavirus and was told the result was negative. 

Many have blamed the church’s secretive nature and tightly packed conditions at services for the large number of cases linked to it.

How to wash your hands properly, according to doctors

Hand-washing is the easiest way to prevent the spread the coronavirus and the common flu. Believe it or not, there’s a right way to wash your hands. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) breaks it down into these five steps:

1. Wet your hands (to the wrist) with clean, running water (the temperature doesn’t matter). Turn off the tap, and apply a good amount of soap.
2. Lather up the soap by rubbing your hands together. Don’t forget to spread that lather to the backs of your hands up to your wrists, between your fingers, and under your nails.
3. Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds. Both doctors recommend humming the “Happy Birthday” song from beginning-to-end twice to get the timing right. “Before surgery, surgeons have to stand at the scrub sink for 5 full minutes, and use an under-the-nail brush, and a very strong soap with a scrub brush on each finger, both sides of their hands, and scrub all the way up to their elbows. No one expects the rest of us to scrub as much, but that gives you an idea of what is needed to really kill most germs,” Laird says.
4. Rinse your hands thoroughly under clean, running water.
5. Dry your hands using a clean paper towel (best bet), hand dryer (OK), or let them air dry (in a pinch).

Read more about when to wash your hands.

France closes the Louvre as virus spreads

Louvre museum closed as global coronavirus fears grow

March 1, 202001:40

In Paris, the Louvre Museum closed its doors Sunday as coronavirus continue to spread globally.

Workers who guard the museum's trove of artworks were fearful of being contaminated by the museum's flow of visitors from around the world.

“We are very worried because we have visitors from everywhere,” said Andre Sacristin, a Louvre employee and union representative for its staffers.

“The risk is very, very, very great," he said in a phone interview. While there are no known virus infections among the museum's 2,300 workers, “it’s only a question of time,” he said.

A short statement from the Louvre said a staff meeting about virus prevention efforts stopped the museum from opening as scheduled Sunday morning. On Sunday afternoon, would-be visitors were still waiting to get inside.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declares health emergency after two coronavirus cases

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a public health emergency Sunday after officials reported two presumptive cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

The cases must still be confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but DeSantis said the declaration was necessary to control the virus.

He said the patients are residents of Manatee and Hillsborough counties on the Gulf Coast.

Both adults are isolated and being cared for, the state Health Department said. Additional information was not immediately available.

Dominican Republic, France report Caribbean virus cases

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — Health officials in the Dominican Republic and France on Sunday reported the first confirmed cases of the new coronavirus in the tourist-rich Caribbean, while British cruise ship passengers who had been trapped at sea due to virus fears were finally set to come home.

Dominican Public Health Minister Rafael Sánchez Cárdenas said a 62-year-old Italian man had arrived in the country on Feb. 22 without showing symptoms. He was being treated in isolation at a military hospital and “has not shown serious complications.”

France, meanwhile, reported three cases on the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe, the first in one of France's overseas territories.

The announcements came shortly before the Braemar cruise ship, which had been denied entry to the Dominican Republic due to the virus fears, at last found a place to dock — the Dutch territory of St. Maarten.