Covid-19, less deadly than Sars, takes a heavier toll on Hong Kong’s financial markets and economy than the 2003 outbreak

Covid-19 has taken a far greater toll on Hong Kong’s financial markets and economy in seven out of 10 measures, compared with the city’s 122-day brush with Sars 17 years ago

Stock market transactions rose, while home prices are holding up better this time compared with Sars in 2003

7-MIN READ7-MIN

Published: 1:00pm, 23 May 2020Updated: 2:19pm, 23 May 2020

For half a century, Albert Fong Leung-fai has withstood the varying widths of men's suit lapels, survived Hong Kong's journey from British rule to Chinese sovereignty, and weathered the city's struggles through typhoons and stock market crashes. Now 70 years old, the tailor is finally throwing in the towel.

His clientele, half of whom are overseas visitors who stop by to get a suit, shirt or overcoat cut in between business meetings in Hong Kong - while his team of seamstresses and clothiers complete a made-to-measure suit in 48 hours - have disappeared, scared away first by months of anti-government protests, and now deterred by the global coronavirus pandemic.

“I see no future this time around,” in an unprecedented crisis compared with Hong Kong's struggle with the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars, Fong said during a recent interview. “The business is so bad that I lost 90 per cent of business in the first four months. It was never so bad in my 50 years of working as a tailor.”

Covid-19, as the coronavirus pandemic is called, has extracted a far greater toll on Hong Kong’s financial markets and economy in seven out of 10 measures, compared with the city’s 122-day brush with Sars 17 years ago, based on calculations by South China Morning Post. The one-two punch from the protests and Covid-19 has pushed the city’s economy into its deepest recession in decades.

Albert Fong Leung-fai, owner of Chiu Ah Tailor, on Ship Street in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai district on 20 May 2020. Photo: Felix Wong

The current outbreak, first confirmed in Hong Kong on January 23, is less deadly than the outbreak 17 years ago, with a 0.3 per cent fatality rate compared with Sars’ 17 per cent death rate, which made the city the world’s largest epicentre for the 2003 disease outside mainland China. Covid-19 has sickened 1,056 people in Hong Kong and claimed four lives at the latest count, compared with 1,755 people infected by Sars and 299 people killed.

The economic cost was far greater this time around. The city’s Hang Seng benchmark stock index fell and the amount raised through initial public offerings (IPOs) contracted, while indicators plunged in economic output, total export, employment, retail sales and tourist arrivals. Turnover in the stock market rose during the period, owing to increased volatility as global central banks unleashed an estimated US$8 trillion to stave off a worldwide recession during the pandemic’s spread.