SYDNEY - Asian stocks slumped to a seven-week low and government bonds rallied on Thursday amid mounting evidence that the coronavirus epidemic is disrupting the world's second-largest economy.
Japan's Nikkei index slid 1.6 per cent while Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1.6 per cent. South Korea's Kospi index fell 0.9 per cent and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 Index declined 0.5 per cent.In Singapore, the Straits Times Index was down 14.53 points or 0.5 per cent at 3,168.04 by 10:59am, after first opening up on Thursday.Foxconn's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co - which makes most of the world's iPhones, and has major facilities in China - plunged as much as 10 per cent.
"At this point the real impact of the coronavirus depends on how fast the containment of the virus is," Eugenia Victorino, head of Asia strategy at SEB, told Bloomberg TV in Singapore."There is really a lot of uncertainty and we do not know when the peak of the infections will be."