SARS outbreak (2003)

SARS is the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic, caused by the SARS-CoV coronavirus, which circulated from November 2002 to July 2003. It started in Guangdong province, reached Hong Kong in February 2003, then Hanoi, Singapore and Toronto through travelers. The WHO issued a global alert on March 12, 2003 and declared transmission interrupted on July 5. The final count comes down to two numbers: 8,096 probable cases and 774 deaths in about thirty countries. Contained as a health event, the epidemic was costly for the economy: empty hotels in Hong Kong, grounded airlines across Asia, a travel advisory against Toronto. On the insurance side, hotel groups and retailers claimed business interruption under infectious disease extensions. Some were paid, others lost for lack of physical damage. The market took the lesson in writing. In July 2006, ISO filed in the United States an exclusion of loss due to virus or bacteria for its property forms, and its filing memo cited SARS. State regulators approved it. Fourteen years later, that wording was among insurers' first arguments against COVID-19 business interruption claims, and US courts applied it overwhelmingly. SARS also sped up the revision of the International Health Regulations, adopted in 2005. Do not confuse it with SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 virus, a genetic cousin of the first.