Georg Schmitt, Head of Corporate Affairs, World Economic Forum: Tel.: +41 (0)79 571 8287; email: gsch@weforum.org

· The number and kind of infectious disease outbreaks have increased significantly over the past 30 years

· Since 2011, the world has seen nearly 200 epidemic events per year

· Pandemics will be the cause of average annual economic losses of 0.7% of global GDP – or $570 billion – a threat similar in scale to that estimated for climate change in the coming decades

· Companies operating globally can take action to mitigate threats posed by epidemics

· Read the full report and view data visualization of corporate risk here

Geneva, Switzerland, 18 January 2019 – The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with the Harvard Global Health Institute, today released a white paper that details why and how the business community should contribute more to manage the threat and impact of infectious disease on societies.

Outbreak Readiness and Business Impact: Protecting Lives and Livelihoods across the Global Economy describes the business risk posed by a new era of epidemic risk, which can no longer be thought of exclusively in terms of rare but devastating events like global influenza pandemics. The white paper offers recommendations to help companies more appropriately understand risks, reduce exposure and act on opportunities for public-private cooperation to optimally prepare for and mitigate these risks.

The Forum’s Global Risks Report 2019, released earlier this week, describes a world vulnerable to increasing naturally emerging infectious disease threats and risks posed by revolutionary new biotechnologies. Despite considerable progress, the world remains ill-prepared to detect and respond to outbreaks and is not prepared to respond to a significant pandemic threat. While medical and public health advances allow us to better contain the morbidity and mortality effect of epidemics, our collective vulnerability to the societal and economic impacts of infectious disease crises appears to be increasing.

“Outbreaks are a top global economic risk and – like the case for climate change – large companies can no longer afford to stay on the sidelines. Business leaders need to better understand expected costs of epidemics, mitigate these costs and strengthen health security more broadly,” said Vanessa Candeias, Head of the System Initiative on Shaping the Future of Health and Healthcare and Member of Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum.

While potentially catastrophic outbreaks may occur only every few decades, highly disruptive regional and local outbreaks are becoming more common and pose a major threat to lives and livelihoods. Recent years have seen nearly 200 epidemic events per year. This trend is only expected to intensify due to increasing trade, travel, population density, human displacement, deforestation and climate change. Further, the number and diversity of epidemic events (e.g. influenza, Ebola, Zika, yellow fever, SARS, MERS-CoV and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, among other threats) have been increasing over the past 30 years.

“For individual businesses, developing a better understanding of infectious disease risks and how they can be managed has clear financial benefits. For policy-makers, the better that businesses manage such risks, the more resilient the overall economy will be. Moreover, when business leaders are more aware of what’s at stake, maybe there will be a different dialogue about global health – from being a topic that rarely touches the radar screen of business leaders to being a subject worthy of attention, investment and advocacy,” said Peter Sands, Research Fellow at the Harvard Global Health Institute and Executive-Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Although rarely emphasized in businesses’ risk considerations, recent work on pandemics quantifies how massive the potential economic losses from infectious disease outbreaks can be and how they can extend far beyond the original outbreak’s footprint.

· Using data from the influenza pandemics of the 20th century, a report by the Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future estimated the annualized impact of influenza pandemics at roughly $60 billion, more than doubling previous estimates.

· Work by Fan, Jamison and Summers that includes statistical value of life years lost revises the annualized figure upward to $570 billion total. For context, this amount is on the same order of magnitude as the $890 billion annual impact of climate change estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

· Estimates indicate that the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa cost $53 billion, and the 2015 MERS outbreak in South Korea cost $8.5 billion. According to the World Bank, only 39% of the economic losses are associated with effects on infected individuals, with the bulk of the costs resulting from healthy people’s change of behaviour as they seek to avoid infection.

While predicting where and when the next outbreak will occur is still an evolving science, it is possible to identify factors that make companies vulnerable to financial losses from infectious disease events. Factors such as the geographic location of a company’s workforce, customer base and supply chain, and the nature and structure of its business, can help inform estimates of its vulnerability to disease outbreaks.

One threat is disease and its uncertainty; and another is the fear of disease itself or uninformed panic. As seen in past epidemics, health-related misinformation can spread as fast as viruses to undermine or disrupt the overall medical response efforts.

Effective readiness for outbreaks requires reliable, trusted public-private partnership, especially in locations where government capacities are constrained by lack of trust as well as resources. By proactively fostering public-private cooperation at local levels, businesses can help mitigate the potentially devastating human and economic impacts of epidemics, while protecting the interests of their employees and commercial operations.

In addition to the report, the research team has produced a prototype corporate infectious disease risk dashboard, meant to enable companies to visualize estimates of expected costs to their business associated with infectious disease outbreaks.

At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019 in Davos next week, the Forum and its partners will advance activities to strengthen public-private cooperation for global health security in areas of vaccines; data science; travel; communications; and supply chain and logistics.

View the white paper and prototype corporate infectious disease risk dashboard here.

Notes to editors

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