The Dow closed Wednesday with 123.77 points in the red and the S&P 500 fell by 11.82 points. The Nasdaq Composite index was up by 15.16 points. Wednesday proved the third day that US stocks took a dive this week.
Monday closed with the Dow Jones Industrial Index down by 1,031.61, the S&P 500 by 111.86, and the Nasdaq Composite by 355.31 points. The following day, the Dow Jones fell 879 points, bringing the overall loss down to some 1,900 points – the worst two-day percentage loss since 2016.
Markets started tumbling after officials with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the situation regarding the COVID-19 coronavirus had the possibility of worsening in the United States.
“Ultimately we expect we will see community spread in the United States,” Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, is quoted as saying Tuesday by NPR, referring to widespread transmission of the coronavirus within the US. “It’s not a question of if this will happen but when this will happen, and how many people in this country will have severe illnesses.”
The latest data by the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering indicates there are currently 59 cases of the novel coronavirus in the US. Worldwide, more than 81,322 people have been infected with the virus. More than 2,700 people have died as a result of the virus. Most of the deaths (2,615) occurred in China's Hubei province. No deaths have been reported in the US.