China Hubei government extends time-out of operations with businesses to deal with corona virus.

Hubei provincial officials, the epicenter of the corona pneumonia outbreak (Covid-19), today asked businesses not to resume operations before February 21. The plan to open the school has also been pushed back, but there is no specific deadline.

Earlier, the government of Hubei had asked companies and businesses not to open at least before February 14. The ban will affect many large companies, including automobile manufacturers such as Dongfeng, General Motors, Honda or Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi joint venture. RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak estimates that plant closures cost around 90,000 cars in Hubei Province.

The decision to extend the ban comes after the Hubei Provincial Health Commission today recorded an additional 242 deaths due to Covid-19, more than two times higher than yesterday, bringing the total number of deaths in the province. this to 1,310.

Hubei said it had changed its method of calculating cases since February 13, finding 14,840 new positive cases of the new corona virus (nCoV), bringing the total number of local cases to 48,206. The number of new infections is nearly 10 times larger than the day before.

The Covid-19 outbreak, which began in December 2019 in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, has now spread to 26 countries and territories, leaving at least 1,367 people dead and more than 60,000 infected.