Water market closes today.

This copy of the booth, Perhaps this is human nature.

When fear sets and reach for comfort food, Italy now has the highest number of covered 19 cases outside Asia, 219 people have tested positive and six people have died.

It's currently centred around Lombardy and Veneto and northern Italy.

Several towns have been placed on lock down here.

They're stockpiling, I'm sure when they'll be allowed to leave.

Yet do they really have more cases than the rest of Europe?

We spoke to one of the doctors treating Corona virus patients.

The question is that Did we find cases because we perform a lot of swamps and the other didn't didn't perform the warps because that was no reason, according to international protocols.

So, in other words, that there are other outbreaks in Europe that we don't know because authorities didn't look for it or we are so unlucky.

Tow the only outbreak, clean it up globally, 80% of people who contracted the virus have mild or no symptoms that can be hard to find.

But there's another theory for Italy's outbreak.

Maybe in our country we have a collective social life that is very florid, very expressive.

We have lots of contacts.

We shake hands, we kiss each other way, hug each other foods.

The virus has now officially been detected in 28 countries, and more than 2000 deaths have been confirmed.

But despite the spread, the World Health Organization has today said that this is not yet a pandemic.

For the moment, we're not witnessing the uncontained global spread off this virus.

We're not witnessing the largest scale cyber business or best that this virus have pandemic rotation, absolutely to be passed really it from our assessment?

No kid.

The message, though, is be prepared.

And South Korea's fourth largest city, Dae Gu, they've sent police officers out to track down members of a church identified as the source of hundreds of infections.

While in Iran, officials said, the number of deaths from covered 19 were now 12 Rejecting claims of a much higher death toll.

Wu Han and WHO Bay Province remains the worst affected region and the W H O said today that it has the highest death rate in China for covered 19 between 2 to 4% of cases.

The number of new infections, though, is continuing to decline.

A woman, the chili, the friend.

We cured 65 patients with zero death rates, and none of our team was affected.

Across the rest of China, the death rate is now thought to be north 0.7% lower than first thought, though still seven times higher than seasonal flu.

Whether that's similar and other countries they still don't yet know well, fears over the Corona virus have sent financial markets tumbling around the world.

Investors have become increasingly nervous that the virus could have a big impact not just on the Chinese economy but the worldwide one, too.

Our business and global trade correspondent Paul Mattman are McNamara joins us Now from the City of London.

Paul, How bad are things being on the market today?

Yeah, pretty bad.

I mean, pick pretty much any stock market around the world, Kathy.

On tight, I can show you a red line tumbling down.

Let's start with Italy tonight.

Their stock exchange down 5.4%.

Not all that surprising given the lock down.

You're so early one of Italian towns.

But it's no isolated there, though, in the U.

S.

A short time ago, the Dow Jones down 3.3% and that was echoed here in the UK Footsie tonight closed down 3.3% like a 3.3%.

How about is that pretty bad.

3.3% is the biggest single loss in a day in more than four and 1/2 years.

3.3% means that right now the 100 biggest companies in the UK are worth about £50 billion less than they were this morning.

Now some companies have fared worse than others.

The big losers today.

Travel companies so easy jet down a huge 17% i e g.

The owners of British Airways, down 9% and cheery the world's largest tour operator down Templeton on all of these losses come back to Corona virus, lots of eye watering numbers.

So just take us through why investors are so worried.

Well, one economist was saying to today, it's not so much the virus they're worried about.

It's the response to the virus and as you saw in that report?

Early run.

The response has been locked down so you could see it.

See why travel operators and travel companies being club it?

But why is everyone else being here?

Well, it's not just tourism, which is seizing up.

It's really life in quarantine zones.

No one's going to work in China.

Manufacturing has bean hit, slowing down massively, which means components are being shipped to factories across the world, which means goods are being made, which means they will not be sold.

And just to give you an indicator of how important China is now to the road economy.

Back in 2003 when SARS struck Tyra, China accounted for about 4% of global output in 2020 it's expected to be about 17% is quadrupled.

So the question now is what does central banks do to boost the economies with speculation at the moment is that the U.

S.

Federal Reserve might be getting ready to slash interest rates and if they do, pressure the amounts in the Bank of England to do exactly the same pole.