Coronavirus live updates: Asia markets plummet, Facebook tells employees to stay home

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• Global cases: At least 95,270, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization
• Global deaths: At least 3,280, according to the latest figures from the WHO

All times below are in Beijing time.

Japan markets led losses across Asia as investors continued to fall back amid virus fears.

The Nikkei 225 and the Topix index both fell around 3%. Australian and South Korean stocks also plummeted more than 2%.

Shares of airlines in the region declined on Friday as the outbreak hit air travel. Australia’s Qantas Airways dropped 7.1% while Japan’s ANA Holdings fell 3.76%. Over in South Korea, Korean Air Lines’ stock plummeted 5.58%. Hong Kong-listed shares of China Eastern Airlines also slipped 4.08%. 

“One succumbs to the sheer fear of community spread, prospects of deep economic impact from sharp drop off in demand for travel and seizures in supply-chains,” said Vishnu Varathan, head of economics and strategy at Mizuho Bank. — Tan, Huang

Trips involving taxis and online ride-hailing in China plummeted 85% in February, according to the country’s transport ministry.

Railway, highway and air passenger volume fell nearly 80% in February, it added. — Cheng

Facebook is telling employees in the San Francisco Bay Area that they should stay home after the coronavirus outbreak touched down locally. That includes its Menlo Park, California headquarters.

“Based on guidance from Santa Clara County today, we are strongly recommending that all Bay area employees and contingent staff work from home starting tomorrow, Friday, March 6th,” Facebook spokesperson Anthony Harrison Thursday evening said in a statement to CNBC.

The company has several offices and thousands of employees across the region. It is also scrapping all events in the Bay Area and recommending employees cancel all business travel in and out of the region. — Elias

Microsoft on Thursday committed to paying normal hourly wages to non-employees providing services to Microsoft workers, like bus drivers and cafeteria workers, who might otherwise receive less pay while many of the company’s employees spend the next few weeks working from home to avoid exposure to the coronavirus.

“We recognize the hardship that lost work can mean for hourly employees,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, wrote in a blog post on Thursday. “As a result, we’ve decided that Microsoft will continue to pay all our vendor hourly service providers their regular pay during this period of reduced service needs. This is independent of whether their full services are needed. This will ensure that, in Puget Sound for example, the 4,500 hourly employees who work in our facilities will continue to receive their regular wages even if their work hours are reduced.” — Novet

New York City has made it mandatory for all educators, health-care workers and first responders to get tested for the new coronavirus if they are ordered to, according to a directive from its health commissioner.

They would be required to undergo testing if they are determined to “present a danger of infection to others.” These workers would also not be allowed to return to work until they test negative for the virus or when they no longer pose a danger of infection to others, according to the order.

The city may also order any of those workers to quarantine themselves at home or other locations if they refuse to submit for such testing. If they do not comply with this order, they may be subject to penalties such as a fine or imprisonment. — Tan

Gap has closed its New York City headquarters after an employee tested positive for the new coronavirus, the apparel maker told CNBC. The company said it was asking its employees to work from home until further notice.

“We learned today (March 5) that one of our employees in our Gap headquarters building in New York is confirmed to have Coronavirus. The individual was not in the office today and is currently recovering at home. As a result of this information, we have decided to close our New York office and are asking employees to work from home until further notice,” Gap said in a statement. — Ruggiero, Tan

China’s National Health Commission reported 143 new confirmed cases as of March 5, and 30 more deaths. Of the new cases, 126 were from the epicenter of Hubei, and 29 of the 30 additional deaths were from that province. That brings the country’s total to 80,552 confirmed cases, and 3,042 deaths. — Tan

South Korea reported 518 new cases as of Friday morning, bringing its total to 6,284 cases. There were seven more deaths, bringing the country’s total to 42 deaths, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most cases have been from Daegu, South Korea’s fourth-largest city and where many cases were traced back to the Shincheonji church group. Hospitals in Daegu were scrambling to accommodate the surge in patients, with 2,300 people waiting to be admitted, according to a Reuters report on Thursday. —Tan

South Korea called Japan’s decision to impose a two-week quarantine for visitors from its country “unreasonable, excessive and extremely regrettable,” according to a Reuters report. Seoul’s foreign ministry will summon the Japanese ambassador on Friday to lodge a complaint, it said, according to Reuters. — Tan

The coronavirus crisis could knock $211 billion from economies throughout Asia Pacific, S&P Global Ratings said in a report.

It will particularly affect Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Thailand which will “enter or flirt with recession,” the report said. S&P Global Ratings also trimmed its growth forecast for China from 5.7% for 2020, to 4.8%. — Tan

Australia ordered its first school closure, after a 16-year-old student in Sydney tested positive for the new coronavirus, according to Reuters.

The Epping Boys High School in Sydney will be closed for at least a day, while almost 1,200 students and staff will be put under quarantine, the report said. Australia has 60 cases so far, and two deaths. — Tan

All times below are in Eastern time.

Santa Clara County public health officials have confirmed six new cases there, bringing the total number of infections in the northern California county to 20. Seven of the 20 cases have “no known travel or direct contact with other known cases,” James Williams, director of emergency management, told reporters at a press conference.

Santa Clara County Public Health Department Director Dr. Sara Cody said the county is recommending the cancellation of mass gatherings and other big events to help slow the spread of the outbreak. There were 53 cases in California as of Wednesday, according to the state health department, with dozens of new cases announced by public health officials Thursday. 

“Our cases to date indicate to us that the risk of exposure to the virus in our community is increasing,” she said, adding that the number of cases are expected to rise.

Employers are being asked to suspend all non-essential employee travel, keep employees from working more than arms-length from each other, allow more flexible sick leave policies and increase tele-commuting. —Kopecki

San Francisco health officials announced the first two cases of COVID-19 in the city, and said they were unable to determine the source of the infections.

The first patient is a man in his 90s who has underlying health conditions and is in “serious condition,” San Francisco public health director Dr. Grant Colfax told reporters Thursday. The second person is a woman in her 40s who is in “fair” condition.

“We do not know at this point how they were exposed to the virus, which suggests it is spreading in the community,” he said in a statement. “We expected that to happen and are further investigating the circumstances of these patients’ exposure.” —Feuer

The COVID-19 outbreak has disrupted the education of nearly 300 million students across the world and could threaten their future educational rights, according a UNESCO report released Wednesday.

The U.N. organization that monitors global education said the number of children missing school globally is unprecedented. 

“While temporary school closures as a result of health and other crises are not new unfortunately, the global scale and speed of the current educational disruption is unparalleled and, if prolonged, could threaten the right to education,” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in a statement. —Bursztynsky 

Read CNBC’s coverage from the U.S. overnight: Starbucks’ China sales drop, US cases jump to 197

— CNBC’s Jennifer Elias, Jordan Novet, Ryan Ruggiero, Dawn Kopecki, William Feuer and Jessica Bursztynsky contributed to this report.