Economist David Rosenberg warns that the economic impact from the coronavirus will leave quite a scar.

While efforts are underway to quell the spread of the COVID-19 virus and contain it to China’s Hubei province, the economic damage that the outbreak inflicts on the Chinese economy could easily have a ripple effect eventually around the globe.

“I could see Chinese [gross domestic product] growth for this quarter and next quarter being hit at least four percentage points,” Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Rosenberg Research and Associates, told BNN Bloomberg in a recent interview.

 “All of a sudden, you’ve taken a half percentage point off of global GDP growth, and for countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand that are very sensitive to global shifts in the world economy, that’s going to come back and bite us pretty hard,” he said.

Rosenberg said China’s exponentially-larger place in the global economy will make the coronavirus’s impact far harder to handle than that of the 2002-03 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

“The reality is that China bulks a lot larger (now),” Rosenberg said. “The impact, I think, is going to be a lot bigger in terms of GDP,” he added.

Meanwhile, fellow investment guru Warren Buffett called the coronavirus outbreak "scary stuff" but said that it was no time to sell stocks despite the threat of a pandemic, Reuters reported.

Speaking on CNBC, Buffett said investors with a 10- to 20-year time horizon and focused on companies' earnings power will fare well in stocks, and that the outbreak has "not changed" his long-term outlook.

"It is scary stuff," Buffett said. "I don't think it should affect what you do in stocks."

Markets worldwide fell on Monday on concern about how the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak, which began in China and has spread to countries including Italy, South Korea and Iran, could disrupt supply chains and slow global economic growth.

Buffett, however, said long-term investors should not get caught up in daily headlines, and that Berkshire would "certainly be more inclined" to buy stocks than on Friday.

"If you look at the present situation," he said, "you get more for your money in stocks than bonds."

He said this was true though the U.S. economy, while sill strong, had become "a little softer" than it was six months ago.

Material from Bloomberg and Reuters has been used in this report.

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