The eurozone suffered its weakest growth since the debt crisis at the end of last year as economists warned the coronavirus will inflict more pain on the bloc"s stalling economy in coming months. Expansion fell to its slowest since early 2013, when the bloc"s economy was gripped by the sovereign debt crisis. Annual growth in 2019 slipped to a six-year low of 1.2pc from 1.9pc. The slump in growth was triggered by a fall in German growth to just 0.1pc - down from 0.3pc for the previous three months. Pantheon Macro economist Claus Vistesen said the region had been close to turning a corner, but the impact of the coronavirus now means that the first quarter could be bleak. He said: "Weakness in domestic demand appears to have been a general story across the eurozone, which is a red flag given sustained weakness in manufacturing and exports." Fresh data from Germany suggested that the currency bloc’s biggest economy flatlined in the fourth quarter after production plunged in its factories. Europe"s engine room failed to grow for the second time in a year. It was revealed last month that France and Italy"s economies both contracted in the final three months of the year. City forecasters have been forced to downgrade their eurozone forecasts as the coronavirus outbreak causes havoc in China and disrupts global supply chains. A total of 1,380 people in mainland China have now died. Rosie Colthorpe, economist at Oxford Economics, predicted the virus - called Covid-19 - will "derail the nascent industrial recovery", consigning the eurozone to more anemic growth in the first quarter. She said: "The effect of coronavirus on global supply chains is likely to keep eurozone and German growth subdued in the short term. But the economy should slowly pick up later in 2020." The Chinese economy is set to suffer its first contraction on record in the first quarter, with the knock-on effect worsening the slowdown already taking hold in Europe. In the wake of the outbreak, Citigroup cut its 2020 forecasts for global, eurozone and UK growth by 0.2 percentage points. The Wall Street bank"s economist Catherine Mann said the virus is disrupting manufacturing supply chains, tourism, transport and demand for commodities. She said: "Manufacturing spillovers loom large in the near term, but will rebound once growth resumes. The shock to tourism and transportation likely will not be recovered."