Main coronavirus symptoms – a fever or dry cough (affects breathing and respiratory system)
- 31 December 2019 - World Health Organisation’s (WHO) China office first reports of a previously unknown Coronavirus known to jump from animals to humans. Suspected to have originated from a market where wild animals, including marmots, birds, rabbits, bats and snakes, are traded illegally.
United Kingdom 2020
- 22 January – Public Health England announce risk level to be moved from ‘very low’ to ‘low’
- 29 January - first two people test positive for Coronavirus after two Chinese nationals from the same family staying at a hotel in York fall ill. A plane evacuating Britons from Wuhan arrives at RAF Brize Norton. Passengers go into a 14-day quarantine at a specialist hospital on Merseyside.
- 4 March – cases surge in the UK, as officials announce the biggest one-day increase so far as 34 cases bring the total to 87
- 10 March - 6 people in the UK have now died of the illness
- 11 March - World Health Organisation officially declared the Covid-19 outbreak a global pandemic.
- 13 March - UK sporting events postponement including the London Marathon. Premier League fixtures are suspended.
- 16 March - prime minister Boris Johnson led the first daily coronavirus press conference, saying that the government now advised all UK residents to avoid non-essential social contact and travel where possible.
- 19 March - government took the unprecedented step of extending a lockdown to the entire country, shutting cinemas, theatres, gyms, discos and pubs and banning weddings and all but immediate family to funerals. In the UK, the government has shut schools, pubs, restaurants, bars, cafés and all non-essential shops for at least six weeks. Schools in England, Scotland and Wales were shut until further notice. Only vulnerable children, or those who are the sons and daughters of employees in the NHS or other key industries, will be permitted to remain at school.
- 20 March - The chancellor announces the government will pay up to 80% of wages for workers at risk of being laid off.
- 23 March – after a weekend where many seemed to flout the social distancing recommendations, the prime minister Boris Johnson put the UK under lockdown.
- Police have the power to fine groups of more than two and those outside for non-essential reasons. People are only allowed to leave their homes for essential work, for food or medical supplies, to care for a vulnerable person or for one exercise session per day.
- Social distancing rules – 2mtrs and no physical contact
- The NHS has identified the 1.5 million people most vulnerable, people older than 70, or those who have underlying health conditions. and sent them letters instructing them to self-isolate for 12 weeks.
- 30 March - Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announces the government is to spend £75 million on charter flights and airline tickets to repatriate up to 300,000 Britons stranded abroad as countries have closed their borders to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
- 9 April - UK records its highest daily death toll at 938 deaths recorded in 24 hours.
- 16 April - foreign secretary Dominic Raab announced that the UK lockdown would be extended for at least another three weeks.
- 17 April- NHS ask Doctors and nurses to work without some PPE as supplies begin to run out.
- 22 April - (UK) 138,078 confirmed cases and 18,738 hospital deaths however the true number is likely to be considerably higher.
- April 26 - Dominic Raab confirmed that the UK will not ease lockdown measures despite intense pressure to get the economy moving and said the Government would proceed “cautiously” to avoid a second peak in the outbreak.
A vaccine for Covid-19 isn’t around the corner. Bringing vaccines to the market is a notoriously slow process and any potential vaccine will have to pass multiple stages of testing for safety and effectiveness. And once we know a vaccine is safe, we will also need to manufacture it at a scale high enough to use across the world. It’s likely that any vaccine is around 18 months away.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-coronavirus
https://bfpg.co.uk/2020/04/covid-19-timeline/