European markets climb higher on hopes of Covid-19 pandemic recovery

Stocks in Europe opened stronger on Tuesday, following gains in US and Asia as investors’ fears about coronavirus and its effects on the global economy subside.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 surged 2.6 percent at the opening, with travel and leisure stocks rising 6.3 percent to lead the gains. Britain’s benchmark FTSE 100 index of major UK companies jumped over two percent to 5,571.09 points. In the Eurozone, Frankfurt’s DAX gained nearly four percent, and the Paris CAC 40 grew over three percent.

Stocks in Asia also rose on hopes that the spread of the global coronavirus pandemic may be slowing.

Markets have been reacting to the news that some of the world’s worst-hit countries reported falling Covid-19 death rates. The rally came despite the news that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been moved to intensive care, as his coronavirus symptoms worsened.

“Johnson is struggling to shake-off Covid-19 and his government is in a panic mode to contain the current crisis,” AvaTrade analyst Naeem Aslam told the Guardian. “However, when it comes to markets, traders have decided not to overreact to the current leadership situation because sterling is still holding ... its ground against the dollar,” he added.

Death tolls in some of the world’s coronavirus hot spots, including Spain and Italy, showed signs of slowing. New York state, the hardest-hit region in the US, also reported its first decline in daily confirmed deaths on Sunday. Still, the cases in the United States, the world’s most affected country, topped 368,000 with nearly 11,000 deaths.

South Korea reported on Tuesday less than 50 new cases of infection for the second day running. China also posted no new deaths as of April 6, for the first time since January, when it started publishing daily updates.The total number of coronavirus infected worldwide is over 1,362,000, while more than 76,000 people have died.

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