SARS

SARS is a respiratory disease in humans which is caused by the SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV). To date, there has been a pandemic between the months of November 2002 and July 2003, with 8,096 known infected cases and 774 deaths. SARS spread from the Guangdong province of China to rapidly infect individuals around the world within a matter of weeks in early 2003.As of May 2006, the spread of SARS has been fully contained, with the last infected human case seen in June 2003 (disregarding a laboratory induced infection case in 2004). A short-term impact of SARS was that it influenced Singapore's economy. In Singapore, 43 per cent of industry GDP and 17,500 industry jobs were lost. The SARS caused a significant impact on travel and tourism in Singapore in March 2003, lasting for 4 months. A long-term impact is that people learnt from the SARS outbreak and knew how to act if there is another outbreak. This is why the effects of the recent H1N1 outbreak was not as serious as the SARS outbreak.