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Coronavirus tanks markets, local businesses impacted

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CLEVELAND — They're working hard in Cleveland, but not all the Jergens offices nationwide have been in full production lately.

"In China we've been impacted by the virus, the virus has actually shut our offices down," said Jack Schron, the president of Jergens Inc.

The company manufactures products in Cleveland that get shipped and distributed nationwide and for awhile, it couldn't send anything to its Shanghai office because there was no one there to collect the products.

"We've had to send our people home, they've been home for about three weeks," said Schron.

Schron said they just got word Monday they can start shipping products again and some employees are finally back to work. While they've had some losses, Schron says, its not as much as their competition.

"We're manufacturing here in the United States, our competition is bringing a lot of their products in from overseas and bringing a lot of it in from China," he said.

But not all companies are that lucky, and after Monday's shock in the stock market experts say the economic effects of the coronavirus are still to come.

"Obviously today is a little crazy of a day where we're tipping right around 1,000 points down today," said Bryan Bibbo of the JL Smith Group. "What's happening is the world's starting to realize the coronavirus that it's a little more bigger than we expected."

Bibbo says we've seen the market react like this before.

"The SARS virus of 2003, initially that stock market made it go down 10% at the end of the year, the market was actually up 20% year to date, year over year so you know, could it be a temporary thing, absolutely," he said.

Bibbo adds don't do anything drastic with your stocks today.

"The worse thing you can do is change your investment plan today. That's the last thing you want to do is just go sell a bunch of stuff because who knows? We could be up 1,000/500 tomorrow and if you sell today, you miss that plan," he said.