REFILE-US STOCKS-Dow set for 800-point fall at open as pandemic fears grip Wall St

(Corrects typo in paragraph 10)
* Futures drop: Dow 2.82%, S&P 2.70%, Nasdaq 2.96%
* Rate-sensitive bank stocks, high-growth tech shares fall
* VIX surges to a 6-month peak
* Health insurers fall after Bernie Sanders' Nevada victory

By Medha Singh
Feb 24 (Reuters) - The Dow Jones Industrials .DJI index
was set to shed nearly 800 points at the open on Monday as
investors scurried to safer assets after a surge in coronavirus
cases outside China stoked fears of a bigger impact to global
growth.
Gold rose to a seven-year high and the inversion between the
3-month and 10-year U.S. Treasury yields deepened as a rise in
cases in Iran, Italy and South Korea over the weekend added to
fears of a pandemic. An inversion of the curve is a classic
recession signal. US/
All of Dow's 30 blue-chip members were in the red in
premarket trading, with technology behemoths Microsoft Corp
MSFT.O down 4.2% and Apple Inc APPL.O 3.8%. Latest data
showed sales of smartphones in China tumbled by more than a
third in January. Last week, Wall Street's main stock indexes had risen to
record highs on optimism that the global economy would be able
to snap back after an initial hit, supported by central banks.
"However, some people are reassessing the extent to which
China is being damaged by the spread of the virus and, more
broadly, whether other parts of world will get contagion effects
of that," said Nitesh Shah, director of research at WisdomTree.
Chipmakers including Advanced Micro Devices Inc AMD.O ,
Micron Technology Inc MU.O and Nvidia Corp NVDA.O , which are
heavily reliant on China for revenue, slid between 6.4% and 8%.
Rate-sensitive bank stocks also fell. Bank of America Corp
BAC.N , Citigroup Inc C.N , JPMorgan Chase & Co JPM.N ,
Goldman Sachs GS.N , Wells Fargo & Co WFC.N and Morgan
Stanley MS.N were all down between 2.2% and 4.8%.
The CBOE Volatility Index .VIX , a barometer of expected
near-term stock market volatility, jumped to a six-month high.
At 8:43 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis 1YMcv1 were down 817 points,
or 2.82%. S&P 500 e-minis EScv1 were down 90.25 points, or
2.7% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis NQcv1 were down 279.5 points, or
2.96%.
Health insurers such as UnitedHealth Group Inc UNH.N , CVS
Health Corp CVS.N and Cigna Corp CI.N dropped between 3.5%
and 6% as Bernie Sanders, who supports the elimination of
private health insurance, strengthened his front-runner position
for the Democratic presidential nomination with a decisive
victory in the Nevada caucuses. In a rare bright spot, Gilead Sciences Inc GILD.O , whose
antiviral remdesivir has shown promise in monkeys infected by a
related coronavirus, rose 5.4%.