Coronavirus Is Unstoppable; So Is Dalal Street’s Free Fall

The virus’ impact on everything continues to scare us.

Coronavirus — The Story Until Now

We all know the story about coronavirus (COVID-19) and how it is spreading at an accelerated pace beyond China. On February 18, 2020, China’s health commission said that the daily infection figures declined below 2,000 for the first time since January and it said the same thing the next day as well.

Even though these instances gave us hope that China is doing a pretty good job in containing the virus, all our hopes went outside the window when the virus spread at a rapid pace across the globe in a matter of days. As per the situation report by World Health Organisation, there are 87,137 confirmed cases globally (1739 new) and 2,873 deaths (35 new).

Why Does This Matter Now?

Because India has 2 new confirmed coronavirus cases — one in Delhi and another one in Telangana.

The Indian market went through a lot last week because of the coronavirus. Both Sensex and Nifty were down by around 7% for the week, eroding a massive amount of investor wealth. However, the Asian markets opened in the green today despite weak Chinese factory activity. So, Indian equity indices followed suit and Sensex surged over 750 points on Monday opening trade.

But all of the gains were erased the moment news reports suggested that 2 new coronavirus cases are reported in India. And this doesn’t stop with domestic equity markets. Last week, the major U.S indices declined over 10% for the week due to fears of coronavirus affecting the global economy.

Can We Stop The Virus?

Right now, it looks like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Director-general of WHO, Tedros Ghebreyesus, warned that the explosion of cases “show that the window of opportunity we have for containing this virus is narrowing”. However, it looks like the window of possibility to contain this virus might have already been closed. How you ask?

Because on 21 February, epidemiologists warned that we are failing to identify two-thirds of infected people travelling globally. And that’s right. We actually do not know how many infected people have flown outside China and where and all have they gone and spread the virus.

In conclusion, we shouldn’t lose our hope. Asian Development Bank said that it will provide $4 million to its member developing countries to fight back the virus. Also, the UN has released $15 million to help fund global efforts to contain the virus. Everyone is putting their good fight to control the virus and we believe that this too shall pass but we don’t know how deep the impact will be before all this comes to an end.

If you have more questions about the coronavirus and its symptoms, please check this article, published by WHO.