The discovery of a new COVID variant in South Africa has sent U.S. stock indexes plummeting on Friday, triggering financial-market uncertainty as well as travel bans in a number of nations in the continent.
At the open of the market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped nearly 835 points, or 2.3 percent, indicating a large sell-off in assets among traders responding to the development. The S&P 500 dropped 1.4 percent lower at the start of the day, while the Nasdaq Composite Index slumped 0.9 percent.
Amid concern that the new version of the virus could be more infectious and vaccine resistant than the Delta variant, which has defied the vaccine in terms of prevention in some cases, the World Health Organization announced it will conduct a scientific review of the strain.
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