California has declared an emergency over the coronavirus outbreak, as tests continue Thursday on board a Princess cruise ship that has been linked to two cases of the illness in the state.
The first death in California related to coronavirus was confirmed Wednesday, while another fatality in Washington brought that state's death toll to 10.
Congressional leaders have agreed on an $8 billion emergency funding package to help fight the coronavirus that is headed to the House.
The virus is now spreading more rapidly outside China, where the epidemic started, with mainland China recording just 119 new confirmed cases while hundreds of cases were reported globally.
South Korea alone recorded an additional 516 cases of coronavirus Wednesday, bringing the total to 5,328 confirmed cases, the largest outbreak outside of mainland China.
Governments around the world are introducing a range of measures to stop the spread of the disease. In Italy, where there have been more than 2,000 cases, all schools and colleges are shut for 10 days.
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Number of coronavirus cases in the U.K. rises to 40
The United Kingdom now has at least 40 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, the government confirmed Monday.
The country has tested 13,525 people, meaning just 0.29 percent were positive.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the country needed to be prepared for the new coronavirus to spread further.
“I think it’s very important to stress that this is a problem that is likely to become more significant for this country in the course of the next days and weeks,” Johnson said.
Adviser to Iran's supreme leader dies after contracting coronavirus
Iran's state media reported Monday that an adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader has died after contracting coronavirus.
The death comes as Iran struggles to contain an outbreak that has already claimed 66 lives, and sickened more than 1,500 people. The vast majority of coronavirus cases and deaths have been registered in China.
Last week, two members of Iran’s parliament contracted the virus as well as the deputy health minister, who was sokeen wiping his brow and looking feverish at a press conference a day before he announced he had tested positive.
Videos show worshipers lick, kiss shrines in Iran amid outbreak
Video has emerged of worshipers licking and kissing a shrine in Iran's holy city of Qom while saying they are not afraid of the highly infectious virus that has killed close to 3,000 worldwide.
While the outbreak in Iran has killed at least 54 people and infected 1,501 in Iran, according to the country's health officials, the vast majority of cases and deaths have been in China.
Trying to prevent panic, the government has not locked down Qom, a holy Shiite Muslim city identified by authorities as the center of contagion, but has imposed broad restrictions such as limitations on who is allowed in and out of the area.
Some religious hardliners, including clerics, have dismissed the idea of closing the holy site to prevent the spread of the virus, arguing that the shrine in Qom is “a place for healing."
Temple University tells students to leave Italy amid outbreak
Pennsylvania's Temple University has told students at its satellite campus in Rome to leave Italy amid a growing coronavirus outbreak in the country.
The university said Saturday it will shut down academic operations for the remainder of the spring semester in light of a level-3 travel alert from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advising to avoid all nonessential travel to Italy.
The State Department also issued a level-3 advisory for Italy urging Americans to reconsider travel to the country, which is struggling to cope with a growing coronavirus outbreak that has seen 1,694 confirmed cases and 34 deaths.
"For you, this means you will need to make arrangements to gather your belongings, leave Italy, and return home as soon as possible," the university said in a memo addressed to its students in Rome.
The Temple Rome faculty members will offer classes online beginning March 9, so students will not interrupt their academic progress, it added.
China's Wuhan closes coronavirus hospital as officials hail drop in new cases
Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the coronavirus epidemic, has closed the first of 16 specially built hospitals, hurriedly put up to treat people with the virus, after it discharged its last recovered patients, state media said Monday.
Wuhan closed its first specially built hospital after it discharged the last batch of 34 recovered patients, CCTV reported.
City officials opened 16 temporary hospitals during the outbreak, adding 13,000 beds and treating 12,000 people in response to the outbreak.
News of the closure coincided with a sharp fall in new cases in Hubei province and its capital of Wuhan, but China remained on alert for people returning home with the virus from other countries where it has spread.
"The rapid rising trend of virus cases in Wuhan has been controlled," Mi Feng, a spokesman for China's National Health Commission told a briefing.
The virus emerged in Wuhan late last year and has since infected more than 86,500 people worldwide.
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.
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.