Fears of a coronavirus pandemic grew on Monday after sharp rises in new cases reported in Iran, Italy and South Korea, but China relaxed restrictions on movements in several places including Beijing as its rates of new infections eased.
"There is lots of bad news on the coronavirus front," Shane Oliver, chief economist at Sydney-based wealth manager AMP, wrote in a note.
The Geneva-based World Health Organization said it no longer had a process for declaring a pandemic but the coronavirus outbreak remained an international emergency.