The severity of the latest wave of coronavirus outbreak in Hong Kong prompting the government to impose the strictest social-distancing rules has unnerved even the cash-flushed stock market, sending share prices tumbling in the morning session.

The benchmark index of Hong Kong stocks dropped more than 400 points, or 1.6 percent to 25,362 as investors worried that even tighter lockdown will have to be introduced to contain the spread of the disease.

Hardest hit by the latest measures are of course the tourism, retail and catering industries. There are talks that the government may have to completely ban dine-in service and shut down all types of premises for public gathering

When people cannot eat out, they aren’t going to venture out to shop either. Retailers have said they feared that the strict social distancing rules would effectively have declared a curfew in Hong Kong. And nobody has any idea how long this will last.

What’s scary is not the rise in the number of new locally infected cases. The scariest part is that the origins of nearly a quarter of the new cases could not be traced.

Some medical experts suspect that there is in Hong Kong a new strain of virus that has become airborne and is many times more infectious than the previous ones. This means anyone can get infected walking in the street without wearing face mask and glasses to protect the eyes.

Social distancing measures may not have much of an impact on stock investment which is largely done online even in healthier times. But property agents are bracing for a sharp decline in sales of new and old apartments while prospective home buyers are reluctant to venture out in housing hunting trips.

The government has already spent more than a hundred billion dollar in relief. It may have to dip further into its fiscal reserves to soften the blow on the rising army of unemployed workers in the retail and catering sectors as the economic recession is going to get worse.

The only bright spot so far is that there is no sign of public panic. Those people hoarding rice, toilet rolls and face masks in the early stage of the pandemic earlier this year may have learned a lesson.