On Wednesday, the World Health Organization released its latest situation report on the outbreak of a novel coronavirus that began near Wuhan in China late in 2019. That report shows a disease that has exceeded 24,000 confirmed cases and has spread to at least 24 countries. It also shows a disease that has added over 4,000 new cases in a day. Both of those things sound worrisome—and they definitely are.
Still, 2019-nCoV is not yet a global pandemic. Despite some alarming cases, including a number of infections aboard a now-quarantined cruise ship, it remains an outbreak with just one real epicenter. However, keeping things that way is going to be difficult. And expensive.
The coronavirus outbreak has already had an extremely significant effect on the Chinese economy. Many companies have decided to extend the traditional end-of-the-year holidays. For some people that means working from home. For many more it means simply not getting paid until travel restrictions and implementation of health rules are eased. Companies with headquarters outside of China have shut down many of their stores and offices across the nation; that includes companies as large, and as different, as Apple and McDonald’s. The coronavirus is also having an impact on goods manufactured in China, as well as the general flow of imports and exports. At the moment, the impact of this on the U.S. economy is small, but it will not remain small if the Chinese economy stays in a significant slowdown for long.
The saying used to be, “If the U.S. economy sneezes, the world catches a cold.” Right now, a lot of people in China really are sneezing, and if the world’s second-largest economy is depressed for a period of months, the world is certainly going to feel less than spectacular—and that’s even if the coronavirus itself doesn’t break out and form new centers of infection outside China.
But WHO is now warning that without a significant global effort, it is likely that more epicenters will appear, infinitely increasing the difficulty of preventing this infection from becoming a true pandemic. The organization has launched a $675 million offensive over the next three months. The Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan for 2019-nCoV provides resources to support the rapid identification of suspected cases and the isolation of infected patients, especially in those nations where the health system may not be up the the challenge of a novel, fast-moving disease. Unlike diseases such as Ebola, which require physical contact to spread from one person to another, the Wuhan coronavirus can be spread casually and rapidly through air. No one has immunity. Procedures required to protect health workers and prevent a single case from becoming a new epicenter require a stringent approach.
Total cases of 2019 novel coronavirus (from WHO daily situation reports)
At this point, the distribution of cases shows that 2019-nCoV is a disease that has been largely confined to China. However, there are definite causes for continued concern outside of that country as well.
New cases of 2019 novel coronavirus (from WHO daily situation reports). New=within China, New Outside=outside China
There are two reasons for concern indicated by the number of new cases each day. First, the number of new cases confirmed each day within China continues to increase. SARS, which followed a similar initial curve, was contained more quickly. Over the course of a six-month epidemic, SARS totaled 8,000 confirmed cases. The new coronavirus cleared that level on Jan. 31, and the rate of increase … has continued to increase. Until Tuesday, it had appeared that this rate was beginning to flatten out, but it spiked to new highs on Wednesday, as the total number of cases soared past 24,000. At the same time, there was an increase in new cases outside of China, including the small cluster onboard a cruise ship. Numbers outside China continue to be erratic, but the number that occurred outside China on Tuesday and Wednesday may indicate efforts to contain the coronavirus are beginning to fray.
At this point, with the rate of increase in the number of cases in China still going up, it’s impossible to predict the total course of the disease. But even if the coronavirus remains restricted to a single epicenter, it will be several months before the possibility of a rapid emergence or the establishment of new centers of infection will be reduced to a low probability.
The global threat of a genuine pandemic remains high, and while the death rate from 2019-nCoV is currently running around 2%, that percentage could represent a massive number if the infection becomes widespread. Additionally, the threats from panic, closed borders, and disrupted services remain as potent as the disease itself.
