When did coronavirus first come to the UK?

While many things remain unknown about Covid-19, one thing remains abundantly clear: the virus spreads quickly, with coronavirus having now claimed over 15,000 lives in the UK in just a few months.

At the time of writing, the UK’s death toll is at least 15,464, after another 888 people lost their lives to the virus on Saturday.

This week, researchers at Cambridge University said the outbreak could have started in September, not late December as previously thought.

Having created a network using over 1,000 coronavirus genomes, researchers believe the pandemic kicked off some time between September 13 and December 7, and that three different strains have emerged.

This could mean the virus started months earlier than previously believed.

So, when was the first confirmed case in the UK?

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When did coronavirus first come to the UK?

The first confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK were on January 29, when two Chinese nationals fell ill at the Staycity Aparthotel in York.

On February 6, a British businessman in Brighton was diagnosed with the virus after catching in in Singapore.

The so-called ‘super spreader’ was later linked to 11 other cases, five of which were in the UK.

Later that month, on February 28, the first person to catch coronavirus in the UK was diagnosed, a man who lived in Surrey, but who had not been abroad.

The same day, the first British citizen died from the virus, having caught it onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

The first death in the UK came one week later, on March 5, when a woman in her seventies was confirmed to have died from the virus.

By this point, 100 people in the country had tested positive for the virus.

The sequence of events has unfolded quickly since then, with the UK going into lockdown on March 23, and the virus since claiming 15,498 deaths in the country.

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