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Pastimes : SARS - what next? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (130)	4/15/2003 8:09:58 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1070

Masks Can't Stop This Virus Watch out: The SARS economic contagion is spreading. FORTUNE Monday, April 14, 2003 By Clay Chandler fortune.com As a deadly virus spawned in China rages from Toronto to Thailand, readers in Beijing are snapping up copies of "SARS Is Not Terrible." The 28-page booklet assures mainlanders that they can avoid contracting the virulent new strain of pneumonia, known as severe acute respiratory syndrome, by eating right and washing their hands. China's leaders, it promises, have everything under control. Would it were so. As any Hong Kong resident will tell you through his surgical mask, SARS isn't terrible; it's catastrophic. The virus has killed 30 people in Hong Kong since mid-March, when it hitchhiked out of Guangdong province aboard a mainland doctor. Now new infections--tallied in morning papers alongside the weather forecast and daily race results--are running at 40-plus per day. Hong Kong is bracing for as many as 3,000 SARS patients in the weeks ahead. The virus is so contagious that 25% of the people who have fallen ill so far are health-care workers. The economic toll is also mounting. Hong Kong itself has been hammered. Thousands of frightened expats have fled. Schools are closed. Retail sales have plunged 50%. Passenger traffic at Hong Kong's airport has dropped by half, and occupancy rates at many swank hotels have tumbled into single digits. Clients won't come to Hong Kong and don't want anyone from Hong Kong to visit. In a region where commerce is built on relationships and personal contact, many feel they're living in a leper colony. Like others on the lookout for opportunities in Asia, SARS is finding Hong Kong an efficient base for regional expansion. The Thai government canceled a summit aimed at promoting--what else?--regional tourism. Malaysia has banned all travelers from China and Hong Kong. In Singapore, where SARS has infected more than 100 people and killed nine, the Catholic archbishop has forbidden priests to hear confessions. Until further notice, "general forgiveness" has been granted. But that won't protect large companies with significant operations in the region. Motorola was forced to temporarily suspend production at a Singapore factory after one of its employees was diagnosed with SARS. Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, canceled tech conferences in Taipei and Beijing because of concerns about the virus. It also closed its Hong Kong office. Economists have lopped one or two percentage points off their 2003 GDP forecasts for Asia. Morgan Stanley's Steven Roach calls SARS the "nail in the coffin" ensuring a global recession. Hong Kong officials joke darkly that the government's only hope of staving off an epidemic of SARS-induced business failures is to post a man outside the bankruptcy office and order him to cough. If things get much worse, that might not be such a bad idea.