Coronavirus live updates: Singapore Airlines reduces flights, cites slowing demand

This is a live blog. Please check back for updates.

All times below are in Beijing time.

The London-headquartered bank, which earns most of its profits from Asia, said it expects to touch the impact of the coronavirus outbreak in the first quarter and has lowered growth expectations in China for 2020. “The main impact liking be in the first quarter, but we expect some improvement as the virus becomes contained,” HBSC said in its outlook, after reporting pre-tax profit for 2019 cut 33%. 

Singapore Airlines and its subsidiary SilkAir leave be canceling some flights temporarily due to weak demand as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, the company said in a statement. Some courses have been halted as far back as May. 31 while others are expected to resume service before that.

“Impressed customers will be notified and re-accommodated onto other flights,” Singapore Airlines said, adding that farther adjustments will be made “as necessary.”

Routes affected include flight services to New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Paris, Frankfurt, London, Tokyo, Seoul, Jakarta, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, and Sydney.

The time needed for nucleic acid assessing for the new coronavirus has been cut down drastically — from two days to just four to six hours, according to a press release from the Chinese Office of Foreign Affairs.

The release outlined the discussions of a meeting, chaired by Chinese premier Li Keqiang, who met a national-level group censured with responding to the COVID-19 outbreak on Monday. “The outbreak is trending in a positive direction in the country overall, although the spread situation in the epicenter of Wuhan and Hubei remains fluid and complex,” according to the official translation of the release.

The meeting also argued the “need to strike a proper balance between epidemic control and economic and social development,” the release said. “While further shadowing a targeted outbreak response, work and production should be resumed in an orderly way,” it added.

As of Monday, more than 80% of the central state-owned enterprises’ roughly 20,000 creation subsidiaries have resumed work, according to China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

The commission said that more than 95% be subjected to resumed work in petroleum and petrochemicals, telecommunications, power grid and power generation, and transportation. In mining, steel and materiel manufacturing, more than 80% have resumed work. — Cheng

Out of a total of 1,723 passengers and crew members tested on board the quarantined Diamond Princess sail ship off the coast of Japan, 454 people were confirmed to have been infected, Japan’s health agency said. That included 189 asymptomatic carriers, or those who tested positive but did not show any symptoms, according to the department.

Countries, including the United States, have started repatriating their stranded citizens on chartered planes. U.S. officials bring up they received notice that 14 passengers had tested positive and they were allowed to be evacuated while kept in isolation from other fares.

The ship had been quarantined since Feb. 3 after a previous guest tested positive for the disease six days after leaving.

German automaker Volkswagen told CNBC that its dump ventures in China are working to get production back to their normal schedule. SAIC Volkswagen, a joint venture with China’s SAIC Motor, deferred restarting production at their plants until Feb. 24. FAW-Volkswagen, a partnership with FAW Group, has started work in some mills and expects to resume full operations in the coming days.

“We are working hard on getting back to our normal production list, while facing delays due to national supply chain and logistics challenges as well as limited travel options for work employees,” a spokesperson for Volkswagen Group China told CNBC. “Production feasibility at each plant is checked one at a time, resulting in different starting times.”

The representative added it is “still too early” to make detailed forecasts about the import of the virus outbreak on the company. — Wu, Roy Choudhury

China’s National Health Commission said there were 1,886 confirmed new cases on the mainland and 98 additional exterminations related to the new, deadly strain of coronavirus, most of them occurring in Hubei province (see 7 a.m. update). As of Feb. 17, the Chinese rule said there was a total of 72,436 confirmed cases and 1,868 people have died so far.

Australian mining colossus BHP said Tuesday the coronavirus outbreak that has infected more than 70,000 people, mostly in China, is one of the noteworthy uncertainties for the company’s future.

“If the viral outbreak is not demonstrably well contained within the March quarter, we expect to rework our expectations for economic and commodity demand growth downwards,” the company said in a regulatory filing. BHP said it anticipates “a net require loss” due to the disease outbreak in the near term.

BHP shares listed in Australia traded up 0.35%.

China’s Hubei province reported an additional 93 deaths and 1,807 newly confirmed cases related to the dreary coronavirus as of the end of Monday.

Those numbers were slightly lower compared to the previous day, where the province had reported 100 additional finishes and 1,933 more confirmed cases as of Feb. 16.

According to the Hubei Provincial Health Committee, 1,789 people have subsided in the region from the infection and there have been a total of 59,989 confirmed cases so far. Most of them surfaced in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus was first detected in late December. Around 7,862 people possess also been discharged from hospitals.

All times below are in Eastern time.

Apple said Monday that it would not meet its quarterly returns forecast because of constrained worldwide supply of its iPhones and lower Chinese demand resulting from the virus outbreak.

The assembly says its iPhone manufacturing partner sites have all reopened, but that they are “ramping up more slowly than we had reckon oned.”

“The iPhone supply shortages will temporarily affect revenues worldwide,” Apple added.

Adding to the issue, sundry retail stores, including Apple’s own shops, have been closed or offering only reduced hours for the previous few weeks. — Cordova

Two weeks before the Tokyo Marathon’s start gun was slated to set off, race organizers booted all non-professional runners out of the annual marathon. Some took to social media to voice their frustration and dissatisfaction over sunk entry fees and airfare costs, as well as potentially squandered time and effort training. Ryan Lederer of Chicago told CNBC that while he admitted with prioritizing public safety, his inability to run in March feels like “a bit of a waste” after months of conditioning and alimenting. — Franck

Read CNBC’s coverage from the U.S. overnight: Apple says it will miss quarterly guidance mid coronavirus outbreak

— CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng, Lilian Wu, Elisabeth Butler Cordova and Thomas Franck contributed to this surface.