Global Spread

SARS was carried out of the Guangdong Province on February 21, 2003, when an infected medical doctor spent a single night on the 9th floor of a Hong Kong hotel when he visited his family (Hotel M). He had become unwell a few days earlier and was now seriously ill. He was admitted to a hospital on February 22 and died ten days later (Tsang).

Before the end of February, guests and visitors to the hotel’s ninth floor had seeded outbreaks of cases in the hospital systems of Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Singapore. Simultaneously, the disease began spreading around the world along international air travel routes as guests at the hotel flew home to Toronto and other cities around the world (WHO. SARS: Status of the Outbreak).

SARS, the first severe infectious disease to emerge in the twenty-first century, has taken advantage of opportunities for rapid international spread made possible by the unprecedented volume and speed of air travel. SARS has also shown how, in a closely interconnected and interdependent world, a new and poorly understood infectious disease can adversely affect economic growth, trade, tourism, business and industrial performance, and social stability as well as public health.