The spread of the coronavirus will likely take a small bite out of the U.S. economy and perhaps an even larger chunk from the events sector, but not enough data is available to make any hard predictions, according to a new report by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research.

CEIR said Monday that it was monitoring the coronavirus outbreak in China and its potential economic fallout for the exhibitions industry. Specifically, the group is using the SARS outbreak from 2003-2004 as a model for the current outbreak, although it noted that coronavirus is spreading much more quickly than SARS did.

SARS reduced Chinese GDP by 1% and CEIR expects the coronavirus will have a similar effect, although researchers note a number of factors make an exact estimate hard to calculate. For example, China is taking more decisive measures to stop the spread of coronavirus than it did with SARS. Also, the popularity of online shopping may help mitigate the current outbreak by giving the virus fewer opportunities to jump from person to person.

CEIR expects the coronavirus outbreak to reduce U.S. GPD by 0.1%. "However, the impact on the U.S. exhibition industry will be larger than that of GDP since the impact of a decline in oversea travel on exhibitions is bigger than GDP. That said, we don't have data on the distribution of exhibitors, attendees and sponsorship revenues by countries to give a quantitative estimate."

The International Association of Exhibitions and Events is also keeping an eye on the current outbreak, CEO David DuBois said in a statement. In the meantime, his group is recommending that events organizers check with insurance brokers to determine whether their cancellation policies includes communicable disease coverage. http://bit.ly/2UrvoeG

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