Markets fear disease - ANZ

In recent trade, global markets have reacted negatively to news of virus spreading in China while US markets also took into account the gloomy IMF report after being closed the previous day. Analysts at ANZ bank explained:

Key quotes

"The outbreak of a new coronavirus in China which is related to SARS has global financial markets shuddering. The disease which was first detected in Wuhan, in the Hubei province west of Shanghai, has officially claimed six lives but there are fears the scale of the outbreak may be considerably larger as China initially covered up the seriousness of the SARS outbreak in 2002-03.

The disease which is now known to spread through human contact is disrupting Chinese New Year travel plans. Cases have been confirmed in many other places including Beijing, Guangdong, Japan and Thailand. The World Health Organisation will meet later today to consider declaring a global health emergency."