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South Korean news organisation reports nearly 200 North Korean soldiers have died from coronavirus

Daily NK say the Covid-19 virus killed 180 North Korean soldiers in January and February

  • And that another 3,700 military personnel are in quarantine
Yonhap say almost 10,000 people in total in NK have been quarantined (nearly 4,000 have been released since they did not present symptoms).
The South China Morning Post convey the news, which is just awful if true.
  • Daily NK attributed its information to a medical corp report from within the North Korean military
  • Officials are looking into increasing the soldiers’ supply of food so their bodies are better equipped to resist Covid-19
Daily NK say the Covid-19 virus killed 180 North Korean soldiers in January and February 

Should you sell a currency if there is a virus breakout there?

What’s the pandemic trade

What's the pandemic trade
Sooner or later, there will be another country with a coronavirus breakout. Right now authorities are scrambling in South Korea, Iran and Italy.
Given that it started in China, two of those three countries were not at all where you would have expected it to land next. Scarier is that Indonesia — which is a top destination for Chinese travelers — still has zero confirmed cases. US diplomats are increasingly critical of the testing and preparations in the country.
So what if the next big outbreak is in Indonesia? Or what if it’s Australia? Or Canada?
If that happens, I expect the market to sell those currencies. Market reactions are imperfect and that’s an understandable response.
At the same time, there is a certain point where the market comes to realize that the virus is unstoppable. I don’t know if that is 5 countries or 25.
What will matter first is how quickly the case count rises. If it rises 100x like it has in Italy this week, that’s a clear sign of local transmission but the market will react more-quickly and the news comes in dribs-and-drabs.
So you can’t sell on the first case and it’s always tough to get immediate details of where people had recently visited. So it’s a situation where you have to wait for the numbers to rise, but how many cases do you need? There’s no easy answer.
A lot of trades play out like that around the virus because the information is so sketchy. If you told me there was a breakout in Indonesia, I’d sell the rupiah but the reality is that the information is lumpy.
I’d argue that it’s a better idea to focus on the global impacts and reactions than try to pin it down place-by-place.

Coronavirus – China’s Global Times says “actual number of overall infections … unknown”

Here is a piece ion China’s GT on what is going in Wuhan, the centre of the virus outbreak:

  • Wuhan was still confronted with a severe situation with slow progress. 
  • The actual number of overall infections in the city where the virus originated in December 2019 remained unknown; the number of reported cases in the city accounting for a large portion of total infections in China. 
  • And despite over three weeks of city lockdown, the human-to-human transmission still continued and many patients could still not be treated in time, according to medical experts and observers.
  • It’s time to sound horns for a full-scale mobilization of Wuhan people, 
Link here for more
Here is a piece ion China's GT on what is going in Wuhan, the centre of the virus outbreak: