Blog: ​Coronavirus: Life and Death at the Speed of Risk

In his blog, IIA President and CEO Richard Chambers, CIA, QIAL, CGAP, CCSA, CRMA, shares his personal reflections and insights on the internal audit profession. Here’s an excerpt from his latest post:

The coronavirus outbreak is quickly becoming one of the greatest global risks we have seen in a decade. Its rapid emergence and maturation into an imminent health and economic threat is disrupting businesses and markets, slowing productivity, and generating huge public-health expenditures. The possibility that it could usher in a global recession is real.

Yet, the most astounding aspect of this dynamic global threat is that it was not on anyone’s radar three months ago.

While the current outbreak of the COVID-19 virus was unexpected, strains of coronavirus have caused epidemics twice this century: SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2012. But in those cases, the number of infections was significantly smaller, never exceeding 10,000 confirmed cases. In contrast, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases topped 100,000 last week, having spread to about 90 countries. While the outbreak had not been labeled a pandemic — a disease that has spread globally — by publication of this blog post, it certainly is working its way toward that terrifying threshold.

Read the full InternalAuditor.org blog post from IIA President and CEO Richard Chambers.