The Wuhan coronavirus is spreading across China, causing disruption, severe illness and even death. In addition to the tragic human cost of an epidemic, widespread disease can cause meaningful macroeconomic damage.
The historical contagion patterns and economic costs of similar infectious diseases allow us to estimate the potential impact of the Wuhan coronavirus on China’s GDP growth.
An Emerging Epidemic
As of January 22, there are more than 500 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, or 2019-nCoV, across China, and that figure has been rising rapidly. To date, the virus has caused at least 17 deaths. Additional deaths may have been incorrectly attributed to influenza.
The epicenter of the disease is Wuhan, a city of 11 million in central China and the capital of Hubei Province. The Chinese government has now suspended all travel to and from the city, as well as public transit within it, just days before the Lunar New Year on January 25.
Between January 10 and February 18, Chinese travelers will make an estimated three billion trips in celebration of the Chinese New Year holidays. Such mass migration risks accelerating the person-to-person spread of the virus, which may incubate without symptoms.
The Wuhan coronavirus has drawn comparisons to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), a particularly lethal strain of coronavirus that caused an epidemic in the same region in 2002–2003. SARS was responsible for nearly 8,100 cases, 774 deaths and estimated economic losses of more than US$40 billion, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
With a mortality rate of 3.1% as of this writing, the newly identified virus does not appear to be as deadly as SARS, which had a mortality rate of 9.6%. In addition, its symptoms tend to be milder. However, SARS’ contagion pattern in China and the known lifecycle of coronaviruses suggest a likely timeline for the current outbreak.
The first case of the Wuhan coronavirus was documented on December 8, 2019. According to University of Göttingen’s Xiaohua Yu, Ph.D., Chair of Agricultural Economics in Developing and Transition Countries, the period between the sickening of patient zero and classification as a major outbreak typically runs 50 days. That puts a sudden increase in cases in late January 2020. Indeed, we’ve recently seen such a surge.