Coronavirus live updates: WHO calls Iran and Italy cases ‘deeply concerning,’ Goldman cuts GDP forecast

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

All times below are in Eastern time.

As coronavirus fears hit financial markets, U.S. bond yields are tanking, pushing mortgage rates that loosely follow the 10-year Treasury yield toward a four-year low. The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage hit 3.42% on Friday, according to Mortgage News Daily. “Aggressive lenders will be at 3.25% today, and 3.375% will be the new going rate for the average lender,” said Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily. —Olick

Twelve people have died and 61 have been infected with the coronavirus in Iran, Tehran’s health ministry said. However, a member of parliament said 50 people had died in the city of Qom, 75 miles south of the capital Tehran, alone in the past two weeks from the coronavirus. Meanwhile more than 10,000 drug addicts have been quarantined in treatment centers in Tehran province to guard against the coronavirus, state-run IRNA news agency reported, citing a local official.

Goldman Sachs lowered its U.S. growth outlook for the first quarter as the domestic economy takes a hit from the global outbreak. The bank slashed its U.S. GDP growth forecast to just 1.2% from 1.4%, seeing a more severe drag from the epidemic. That growth rate is drastically slower than the 2.1% increase in the fourth quarter and 2.3% for the full year 2019. “The risks are clearly skewed to the downside until the outbreak is contained,” Jan Hatzius, Goldman’s chief U.S. economist, said in a note on Monday. “An increasing amount of companies [are] suggesting potential production cuts should supply chain disruptions persist into Q2 or later.” —Li

Austria said it would stop suspected coronavirus cases from crossing its border, a day after it held up a train from Italy for four hours to wait for test results on two passengers. Austria has yet to have a confirmed case of coronavirus and is extremely wary because of Europe’s largest outbreak next door in northern Italy. More than half of freight crossing the Alps passes through Austria. – Reuters

The White House is planning to ask Congress to approve an emergency spending package to help the Trump administration battle the spread of the coronavirus, a source familiar with the situation told CNBC, adding that the proposed spending deal could be sent to Congress as soon as this week. The Washington Post first reported the White House’s preparations. —Breuninger

WHO officials stopped short of calling the coronavirus a pandemic but said now is the time to prepare for one. “Does this virus have pandemic potential? Absolutely it has. Are we there yet? From our assessment, not yet,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, said at a press conference. “This is not the time to focus on what word we use. That will not prevent a single infection today or save a single life today.” —Feuer

While cases in China have slowed, the “sudden increase in new cases” outside of China is “deeply concerning,” Tedros said. Outside of China, there are 2,074 cases across 28 countries, including 23 deaths, he said. “What we see is epidemics in different parts of the world, affecting countries in different ways and requiring a tailored response,” he said. —Lovelace

Airline stocks fell as fears about the spread of the coronavirus beyond China added to worries about travel demand and the broader economy. American Airlines shares led the S&P 500 lower with an 8.6% drop in morning trading, hitting a more than four-month low. Delta Air Lines‘ stock lost 6.7% to the lowest price in nearly four months, while United Airlines was off 4%. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 was down 2.6%. —Josephs

A seventh person has died in the coronavirus outbreak in northern Italy, news agency ANSA said, while the number of confirmed cases rose to more than 220 in the country. ANSA said the latest person to die was an 80-year-old man who had been taken to hospital last week in Lodi after suffering a heart attack. Doctors believe he caught the virus there from another patient. —Reuters

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged by more than 900 points in morning trading as the number of cases outside China surged, stoking fears of a prolonged global economic slowdown from the virus. “I’ve now come to the view that equity markets, global equity markets, have to reprice to take into account or fully discount the dramatic economic impact that all of this is going to have,” Jonathan Pain, author of The Pain Report, told CNBC’s “Street Signs” on Monday in Asia. “I believe that repricing … has just started and I think it’s going to be approximately 20% to 25% in the next month or so.” Pain said there isn’t “a letter in the alphabet which adequately describes the profile of the economic shock that … we’re beginning to see.” —Imbert, Huang

World Health Organization officials are holding a press conference at 9:30 a.m. ET to update the public on the outbreak. In the past week, the virus has spread substantially beyond China. It’s infected more than 220 people in Italy as of Monday morning. The majority of the cases are in the northern region of Lombardy and neighboring Veneto, where authorities have shut schools and banned public gatherings in an attempt to contain the virus. South Korea confirmed 231 new cases on Monday, bringing the total there to more than 830. The recent surge in cases prompted the South Korean government raise the COVID-19 alert to its highest level. Iranian health officials have confirmed 61 total cases in the country as of Monday, with 12 deaths nationwide. Most of the confirmed cases were found in the city of Qom. However, last week health ministry official Minou Mohrez warned about unconfirmed cases. Watch the live press conference here.

Coronavirus fears spread to Milan, Italy’s financial hub, where the final two runway shows of Milan Fashion Week scheduled for Monday were canceled. While most fashion houses held shows as usual Sunday, Giorgio Armani and Laura Biagiotti presented their collections behind closed doors, streaming live for the fashion public. —Associated Press

U.S. stock futures pointed to sharp declines on Wall Street as the number of coronavirus cases outside China surged, stoking fears of a prolonged global economic slowdown from the virus spreading. As of 7:47 a.m. ET, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were indicating a drop of 767 points at the open. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures were down by 2.5% and 2.8%, respectively. Futures indicated the biggest one-day point drop for the Dow since August, when the 30-stock average slid 800 points. Stock markets around the world old off Monday as spiking coronavirus cases in Italy, South Korea and the Middle East sparked fears of further spread beyond China. South Korea’s Kospi index closed down 3.9% while Italy’s FTSE MIB plunged more than 900 points in early trading. The pan-European Stoxx 600 benchmark tumbled 3.5%, with Britain’s FTSE 100, France’s CAC 40 and Germany’s DAX all falling sharply. —Imbert, Huang, Smith

Ireland said its citizens should not travel to parts of Italy affected by an outbreak of the new coronavirus. Italy’s government has moved to close off the worst-hit areas in the northern regions of Lombardy and Veneto, and the death toll in the country from the disease rose to five on Monday. “There has been an increase in the number of confirmed cases of Coronavirus in Italy… Citizens are advised not to travel to affected areas,” the foreign ministry said on its website on travel advice updated on Monday. —Reuters

As the ongoing coronavirus outbreak hits stocks, Buffett said “a very significant percentage of our businesses one way are affected.” He added, however, that the businesses are being affected by a lot of other things too, and said the real question is where those businesses are going to be in 5 to 10 years. “They’ll have ups and downs,” he said. Specifically, he pointed to Apple and Dairy Queen being hit, as well as carpet maker Shaw Industries. —Stevens

The Hong Kong government warned residents on Monday to avoid all non-essential travel to South Korea, as the government in Seoul reported 231 new cases of the coronavirus, taking the country’s total to more than 800. Fears of a coronavirus pandemic grew on Monday after sharp rises in new cases reported in Iran, Italy and South Korea but China relaxed restrictions on movements in several places, including Beijing, as its rates of new infections eased. —Reuters

Italian authorities on Monday confirmed a fifth person infected with the coronavirus has died. The Civil Protection agency also said more than 200 cases of the coronavirus had been confirmed in the north of the country since Friday, Reuters reported. Italian stocks tumbled during European trading hours, as the euro zone’s third-largest economy continues to grapple with the largest coronavirus outbreak outside of Asia. —Meredith

Iran’s health ministry reported its first case of the coronavirus on Monday, Reuters reported, saying the flu-like virus had been contracted by an Iranian theology student in the city of Najaf. The patient was thought to have entered Iraq before the government closed border crossings and banned the entry of non-Iraqis coming from Iran. The patient has been quarantined and medical staff are observing international health standards, Iraq’s health ministry said in a statement, according to a Reuters report. Iran, which neighbors Iraq to the west, had confirmed 61 cases of the coronavirus earlier on Monday, with 12 deaths. —Meredith

Read CNBC’s coverage from the Asia-Pacific team overnight: Global stock markets tumble as death toll climbs past 2,500.

Reuters and CNBC’s Diana Olick, Yun Li, Fred Imbert, Eustance Huang, Pippa Stevens, Leslie Josephs, Kevin Breuninger, Will Feuer, Berkeley Lovelace and Sam Meredith contributed to this report.