Lloyd’s of London chief executive John Neal said last week that the impact for the 330-year old commercial insurance market was likely to be felt through claims for supply chain disruption.

Indian equity markets quickly erased the gains made in a volatile start on Friday to head southwards, dragged down by index heavyweights HDFC twins and ICICI Bank( down 3 per cent). HDFC Bank slipped over 7 per cent and HDFC was down 4 per cent.

The S&P BSE Sensex hovered around 28,000 levels, down 200 points, or 0.7 per cent, after the initial jump.  The Nifty50 index was trading with slight cuts at 8,240 levels. The Nifty sectoral indices were trading mixed. While Nifty FMCG and Nifty Pharma indexes traded over 3 per cent up each, the Nifty Bank and Nifty Financial Services indexes dipped 3 per cent each.

Trump, speaking at a news conference, pointed to efforts on Gilead Sciences Inc’s experimental antiviral drug Remdesivir and the generic antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, saying he had called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to streamline its regulatory approval process.

With over 242,000 infections and nearly 10,000 deaths, the epidemic has stunned the world and drawn comparisons with painful periods such as World War Two, the 2008 financial crisis and the 1918 Spanish flu.

“This pandemic has become a major global crisis. It requires forceful action at national, regional, and global levels,” ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa said.

“With our developing member countries, we are formulating an aggressive set of actions to combat the pandemic; to protect the poor, the vulnerable, and wider populations across the region; and to ensure economies will rebound as swiftly as possible.”

“We have never lived through anything like this,” Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told a parliament chamber nearly empty with more than 90% of lawmakers staying away and a masked and gloved cleaner wiping handrails between speeches.

There was particular alarm in Italy, which has experienced an unusually high death rate – 2,503 from 31,506 cases – and was calling on student and retired doctors to help an overwhelmed health service.

Nearly every stock market in Asia was down and circuit breakers were hit in Seoul, Jakarta and Manila. Traders reported huge strains in bond markets as distressed funds sold any liquid asset to cover losses in stocks and redemptions from investors.

In recent days, China has increasingly focused its counter-epidemic efforts on inbound travellers as the coronavirus rapidly expanded its global footprint, raising the prospect of a second wave of infections arriving from abroad.