A new disease, a first official record of the century, and a window in 2002–2003

The notes begin from a later coronavirus outbreak that had already run a long time, with vaccines in development and no clear fall in infections, and from earlier names the writer lines up beside it: Spanish influenza, MERS, and SARS. The present report, they say, will treat SARS as a worldwide infectious-disease case of a similar kind, and will look at its origin, the scale of the harm, and the form of the response. SARS was a new infectious disease, and a definition that fitted its character was not easy to set; WHO and the CDC, they write, revised a surveillance definition several times in a short span, as new facts came in.

Epidemiologically, a person who had been in a risk area or had contact with someone who had SARS, and who within ten days had fever and respiratory symptoms, was classed as a suspected case; if an X-ray also showed pneumonia, the person was classed as a probable case. Severe acute respiratory syndrome, they add, was a new, highly transmissible, severe infectious disease, and the first novel infectious disease officially recorded in the twenty-first century. It reminded many people of the influenza pandemic of 1981 and of its grim results — the year is left as the notes write it — and early on it spread in a short time to some dozens of countries, bringing psychological panic and large economic losses.

After a first WHO report in February 2003, SARS spread in only a few months to some thirty-two countries, including Korea. The notes date its origin to China in 2002. In Korea, they write, there was no direct damage from a domestic outbreak, but if export losses were taken as a base of 2 to 3 billion dollars, the GDP growth rate fell by 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points, and the unemployment rate rose by 0.1 of a point — indirect harm, in that window, not a later official total. Demand and production were also said to have contracted, and, when things worsened, foreign firms withdrew and new investment declined.

A government alert in 2003, and the counts the notes keep

In November 2002, the notes say, the government issued nationwide instructions to tighten prevention. Soon after the Roh Moo-hyun government took office, WHO issued a worldwide SARS alert on 16 March, and the Korean government then issued a SARS alert of its own and put the prevention system fully to work. Around the National Institute of Health, thirteen national quarantine stations, sixteen cities and provinces, and 242 public health centers were to keep a twenty-four-hour emergency watch. Forty-one regional isolation hospitals, with 138 beds in all, were secured for early finding and treatment.

During some 114 days of emergency prevention duty, the 242 health centers, the notes write, traced about 230,000 people who had arrived from risk areas, by telephone from the fifth day after entry. The thirteen quarantine stations inspected some 5,400 aircraft and 620,000 passengers, and 10,000 ships and 280,000 passengers. By 7 July 2003, when Korea ended its SARS control work, there were three probable cases, seventeen suspected, twenty in all, and not one confirmed case. WHO, they say, named Korea the country that had responded most successfully in the world. About 2,200 contacts were isolated at home, and the 1339 emergency medical advice line handled some 3,300 SARS consultations. Some 120 press releases and some 190 briefings were also issued. These figures stay in the notes’ window.

A 2004 reorganisation, and a contrast the writer will not stretch

On the strength of that experience, the notes say, the government in 2004 expanded the National Institute of Health into the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, joined quarantine and prevention functions, and later institutionalised a role for that body as a control tower in an epidemic. Infectious disease was also added to the thirty-three types of national crisis to which an NSC crisis-management centre would respond, and standard and practical manuals were written. The writer returns to the later coronavirus only as a contrast, and asks that, as with SARS, the later outbreak might also come to an end. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. The notes’ account of SARS, dated to a 2002 origin, a February 2003 WHO report, and Korea’s 2003 response

Last updated: 14 November 2026