TOKYO (AP) — The health crisis surrounding the coronavirus is becoming a huge economic problem too.
The outbreak has sapped financial markets, emptied shops and businesses and put major sites and events off limits.
The list of countries hit by the illness edged toward 60 on Friday as Mexico, Belarus, Lithuania, New Zealand, Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Iceland and the Netherlands reported their first cases.
The threats to livelihoods were increasingly as worrisome as the threats to lives.
If the disease known as COVID-19 becomes a global pandemic, economists say the U.S. and other global economies could fall into recession.