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By Saikat Chatterjee and Hideyuki Sano
TOKYO/LONDON, Feb 13 (Reuters) - The euro fell to a
four-and-a-half-year low against the Swiss franc on Thursday and
the yen gained as investors sought safe havens after China's
Hubei province, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak,
reported a sharp increase in the number of new cases.
Using a new method of diagnosis, the province reported on
Thursday 14,840 new cases of the virus as of Feb. 12, up from
1,638 new cases on Tuesday. The number of deaths in the province
rose by 242, a daily record, to 1,310. "Taken together, it suggests fading the overnight reaction,"
said Elsa Lignos, global head of FX strategy at RBC Capital
Markets.
The initial move was to dump risky assets, however. After
weakening to a three-and-a-half-week low the day before, the yen
gained 0.3% against the dollar on Thursday JPY=EBS to 109.770
The euro dipped to 1.0622 francs, below its 2016 trough of
1.0623 and its lowest level since August 2015. It last stood
around 1.06235 EURCHF= .
"When you see numbers like this, you can't help but move to
risk-off trades, which means buy the yen and sell stocks," said
Ayako Sera, market strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank in
Tokyo.
In the onshore market, the yuan CNY=CFXS slipped 0.13% to
6.9809 per dollar. The offshore yuan CNH=D3 dropped 0.14% to
6.9830.
The Australian dollar AUD=D3 , widely used as a proxy for
risk on Chinese assets, fell 0.22% to $0.6724. The New Zealand
dollar NZD=D3 slipped 0.2% to $0.6453.