WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – Global markets suffered record falls on Thursday as alarm over the coronavirus heightened, and governments from Ireland to Italy unveiled brand-new procedures to include the impact of an illness that has actually contaminated more than 126,000 individuals worldwide.
Travelers in Europe rushed to board flights to the United States after President Donald Trump enforced sweeping restrictions on travel from the continent, a decision that outraged leaders there.
Occasions from sports matches to wedding events were canceled or suspended, schools were closed and public events banned, as typical life for millions started to be straight affected.
Trump even recommended that the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo could be delayed by a year.
” Perhaps they postpone it for a year … if that’s possible,” Trump informed press reporters. “I like that better than I like having empty arenas all over the place.”
The White House announced it was stopping public tours, while Rome’s Catholic churches were ordered closed – a move thought to be unprecedented in modern-day times – and the city’s faithful offered dispensation not to participate in Sunday mass.
But in China, where the epidemic originated, authorities said the illness had peaked and the international spread could be over by June if other nations used similarly aggressive containment procedures as Beijing’s communist federal government.
Worries of the effect of such limitations on the motion of people and goods hit global stocks and oil costs hard.
Major European bourses fell by double-digit portions for their greatest daily losses on record, led by a 17%slide for Italian stocks FTMIB, as stimulus efforts from the European Reserve bank did little to calm nerves. [.EU]
A 7%slide after the opening bell on Wall Street triggered a 15- minute suspension of trading, but stocks fell even more later to put the Dow Jones DJI on course for its worst