Stocks surged on Wednesday as major victories from former Vice President Joe Biden during Super Tuesday sparked a massive rally within the health-care sector.

Stocks in Asia Pacific traded higher Thursday morning after the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared more than 1,000 points overnight stateside.

The coronavirus, which is spreading fast in Europe, is disrupting the operations of hotels and travel firms in Vietnam due to mass cancellations of tour bookings.

 Vietnam’s border trade with China has resumed, but customs clearance of goods through the northern border gates remains slow, with hundreds of container trucks carrying farm produce still stuck there due to the impact of the coronavirus.

 The weak performance of large-cap stocks dragged the VN-Index of the southern market down 0.14% at 889.37 points today, March 4.

CapitaLand Limited has achieved a total profit after tax and minority interests (PATMI) of over S$2.1 billion (US$1.5 billion) in fiscal year 2019, 21.2 per cent higher than that of last year.

Vietnamese shares hobbled Wednesday as purchases for hard-hit stocks helped offset a prolonged foreign net selling amid fears of the slowdown of the global economy.

The HCMC government, which has scrutinized a number of controversial build-transfer (BT) infrastructure projects in the Thu Thiem New Urban Area in District 2, has permitted investors to resume construction.

Vietnamese steelmakers were in need of State support to minimise the damage caused by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), which could well reach a pandemic as dozens of countries reported new infections, said industry leaders and experts.

The site clearance work for the second metro line project in HCMC is expected to be completed by June 30 so that work on the project can start in October, according to the Management Authority for Urban Railways (MAUR) of HCMC.