Asian stock markets on Friday plunged further on spreading virus fears, deepening a global rout after Wall Street endured its biggest one-day drop in nine years.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 on Friday plunged 805.27 points, or 3.7 percent, to 21,142.96, plummeting 9.6 percent from 23,386.74 on Feb. 21.
Seoul’s KOSPI on Friday dropped 67.88 points, or 3.3 percent, to 1,987.01, a dive of 8.1 percent from a close of 2,162.8 a week earlier.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng on Friday fell 648.69 points, or 2.4 percent, to 26,129.93, a drop of 4.3 percent from 27,308.81 a week earlier.
The Shanghai Composite on Friday closed down 111.03 points, or 3.7 percent, at 2,880.30, plunging 5.2 percent from a close of 3,039.67 on Feb. 21.
Sydney, New Zealand and Southeast Asian markets also retreated.
In Taipei, the TAIEX on Thursday closed down 141.45 points, or 1.24 percent, at 11,292.17, dropping 3.4 percent from 11,686.35 on Feb. 21. Turnover totaled NT$201.34 billion (US$6.64 billion).
The market was closed on Friday for the 228 Memorial Day long holiday weekend.
Investors had been confident that COVID-19, which emerged in China in December last year, might be under control.
However, outbreaks in Italy, South Korea and Iran have fueled fears that the virus is turning into a global threat that might derail trade and industry.
Anxiety intensified on Thursday, when the US reported its first virus case in someone who had not traveled abroad or been in contact with anyone who had.
A growing list of major companies has been issuing profit warnings and saying that factory shutdowns in China are disrupting supply chains.
They have said that travel bans and other disease-prevention measures are also hurting sales in China, a major consumer market.
Virus fears “have become full-blown across the globe as cases outside China climb,” Chang Wei Liang and Eugene Leow of DBS Bank said in a report.
Markets in China and Hong Kong had been doing relatively well in the past few weeks, despite anxiety over the virus.
In China, authorities flooded markets with credit to shore up prices after trading resumed following an extended Lunar New Year holiday.
Chinese investor sentiment has also been buoyed by promises of lower interest rates, tax breaks and other measures to help revive manufacturing and other industries.
China shut down much of its economy to stem the spread of the infection.
Most access to the city of Wuhan, a manufacturing hub at the center of the outbreak, was suspended on Jan. 23. The Lunar New Year holiday was extended to keep factories and offices closed.
The government told the public to stay home.
Authorities have been shifting to trying to reopen factories and other businesses in areas with low disease risk, but travel controls are still in effect in many areas.
Elsewhere, governments are tightening disease-prevention controls as new cases mount.
Japan might close schools nationwide. Saudi Arabia banned foreign pilgrims from entering the kingdom to visit Islam’s holiest sites. Italy has become the center of the outbreak in Europe, with the spread threatening the financial and industrial centers of that nation.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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