Italy, South Korea and Iran reported sharp rises in coronavirus cases on Monday, but China eased curbs as the rate of infection there slowed and a visiting World Health Organization team said a turning point had been reached in the epicenter, Wuhan.

The virus has put Chinese cities into lockdown in recent weeks, disrupted air traffic to the workshop of the world and blocked global supply chains for everything from cars and car parts to smartphones.

But China’s actions, especially in Wuhan, had probably prevented hundreds of thousands of cases, said the head of the WHO delegation in China, Bruce Aylward, urging the rest of the world to learn the lesson of acting fast.

“The world is in your debt,” Aylward, speaking in Beijing, told the people of Wuhan. “The people of that city have gone through an extraordinary period and they’re still going through it.”

The surge of cases outside mainland China triggered sharp falls in global share markets as investors fled to safe havens. European share markets suffered their biggest slump since mid-2016, gold soared to a seven-year high, oil tumbled nearly 5% and the Korean won  fell to its lowest level since August.

Wall Street dived around 3% after it opened .N as the ugly sell-off spread. Italian shares tumbled nearly 5%.

But U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the global economy or supply chains, saying it was simply too soon to know.

The WHO’s Aylward said multiple data sources all suggested that the rate of infection in Wuhan was falling: “They’re at a point now where the number of cured people coming out of hospitals each day is much more than the sick going in.”

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that using the word “pandemic” did not fit the facts. “We must focus on containment while preparing for a potential pandemic,” he told reporters in Geneva, adding that the world was not witnessing an uncontained spread or large-scale deaths.

Source:- Reuters

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