How SARS Impacted Global Economies

The number of coronavirus cases around the world has now surpassed 45,000 with 1,116 deaths recorded as of February 12th, 2020. Now named Covid-19, economic fears about its spread have been increasing alongside its human toll. The ultimate impact on the Chinese economy, as well as the global economy as a whole, will ultimately depend on how broadly it will spread and how virulent it will be.

The disease has already proven highly disruptive to China and a new Moody's forecast estimates that it will cut more than 2 percent from Chinese real GDP growth at an annualized rate in the first quarter of this year and 0.8 percentage points from growth for the entire year. Moody's stated that the SARS experience provides a useful benchmark for assessing the economic fallout from the current pandemic.

After one year, SARS reduced China's real GDP by 1.05 percentage points while the special administrative region of Hong Kong experienced a cut of 2.63 percentage points. Elsewhere, the impact on other countries was not as severe but it certainly was noticeable. The 1-year impact in Singapore was 0.47 percentage points while in the United States, it was 0.07 percentage points.