The deadly flu-like virus has infected more than 90,000 people and killed over 3,000 since it was first detected in late December, spreading to more than 70 countries around the world.
The coronavirus epidemic, which is grounding Chinese tourists, is costing the European tourism industry around one billion euros per month in lost revenue, the bloc’s industry commissioner Thierry Breton said on Monday.
Mr Breton, a former French finance minister, told the news channel BFM TV: “Chinese tourists are not coming to Europe since January.
“It means two million (hotel) nights lost. That is one billion euros per month since the start of the year.”
Europe’s tourism sector has benefited massively from China’s meteoric economic rise over the past two decades, and has been dealt a serious blow by the outbreak.
Coronavirus cases have sky-rocketed across Europe and beyond in recent weeks.
The disease has infected more than 90,000 and killed at least 3,000 in at least 70 countries – well beyond the epicentre in China where it first emerged late last year.
The flu-like virus has shaken global markets and triggered unprecedented measures from governments grappling with the outbreak, which the World Health Organisation has warned could become a pandemic.
Hopes that the epidemic would be over in months and that economic activity would return to normal have been crushed.
The European Union is considering adopting emergency measures to protect its economy against the outbreak, top officials said later on Monday, as health risks across the bloc were raised to “high” after the virus spread to most member states.
About 2,100 cases have been confirmed in 18 of the 27 EU states, according to figures released this week by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm.
“The EU is ready to use all the available policy options if and when needed to safeguard our growth,” economics commissioner Paolo Gentiloni told a news conference, saying risks threatened by the outbreak had now taken shape.
He listed transport, tourism and carmakers among the sectors most affected.
In an extraordinary conference call scheduled for Wednesday, EU finance ministers will discuss immediate actions at national level to curb risks of an economic crisis, Mr Gentiloni said.
He stressed that EU governments can take steps to “support the healthcare systems, assure liquidity to firms and perhaps (assure) phased timing of debt payments and face unemployment risk”.
Some states have already implemented such measures, Mr Gentiloni added.
The teleconference will also lay the groundwork for a possible “coordinated fiscal response”.
That could involve extraordinary measures similar to those adopted to tackle the 2008 global financial crisis, he continued, without elaborating.
At the time, Brussels introduced temporary exceptions to rules on state subsidies which allowed member countries to support their economies more freely.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, for her part, said the bloc’s disease prevention agency ECDC had raised its assessment of coronavirus risks “from moderate to high” in the EU, up from “low to moderate”.
“In other words, the virus continues to spread,” she told reporters.