Wall Street's losses deepened and the Dow Jones Industrials shed 1,000 points in afternoon trading on Thursday as the death toll from coronavirus in the United States rose to 11 and travel related stocks took a severe beating.

Technology giants including Google's parent company Alphabet, Amazon.com, Facebook and Microsoft recommended their employees in Seattle work from home.

The state of California declared an emergency, a day after the US Congress approved an $US8.3 billion ($13 billion) bill to combat the outbreak.

Investors dumped stocks and rushed to the safe havens, boosting gold prices by 1.8 per cent and pushing the yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury to a record low.