Business Continuity and the Pandemic Threat

CHAPTER 3: SARS – CASE STUDY

 

“SARS is just the beginning. The world massively miscalculated the nature of infectious disease and arrogantly wrote off the ability of bacteria and viruses to change, adapt, mutate and strike back. I believe that the next 10 to 15 years will see a substantial increase in exotic and interesting infectious diseases.” – Professor Peter Curson, Historical Epidemiologist at Sydney’s Macquarie University

With the current millennium still very much in its infancy, the first new virus of the 21^st century was already upon us. In 2003, the world successfully fought off this new disease which could have become a global catastrophe. The ‘Index Case’⁷ of what was later named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS as it ...