Hardly anyone in the UK had heard of Covid 19 when a new year dawned on January 1, 2020.

But just the day before, on December 31, 2019, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission in Wuhan City, Hubei province, China, reported a cluster of pneumonia cases with a common reported link to Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a wholesale fish and live animal market.

By January 20, there were reports of confirmed cases from three countries outside China: Thailand, Japan and South Korea. These cases had all been exported from China.

On January 23, Wuhan City was locked down – with all travel in and out of Wuhan prohibited – and movement inside the city was restricted.

On January 24, the first European case was reported in France.

On January 28, Germany, also reported cases, related to a person visiting from China

Little did we know that, in the immortal words of Prince, a big disease with a little name would change the lives of practically everybody in the whole world.

Even when the disease made its way to UK shores landing in Brighton in February, nobody was really worried about how serious this disease would become.

Yet here we are, now marking the one-year anniversary of Cornwall's first confirmed case. 

Here is how the past year unfolded: 

March 2020

  • Falmouth Packet:
  • SHOPPERS were urged to stop panic buying as supermarkets, including in the Falmouth and Helston area, are being left with empty shelves. The warning came, from among others, Andrew Wallis, who is a Cornwall councillor for Helston and Porthleven. He went to Helston Tesco to pick up some essentials, only to discover aisle upon aisle of empty shelves. He even met one couple who had travelled all the way from Truro to Helston in the search of toilet roll, as their local shops had run out.
  • Read here: https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/18289197.coronavirus-panic-buying-warning-shelves-left-empty /
  • FALMOUTH Spring Flower Show is cancelled due to Coronavirus, as is Helston Flora Day and Falmouth’s International Sea Festival. Spring Flower Show organiser Organiser Jean Carr said: “Many of the organising committee are over 70 in what is a truly community event, with ages ranging from four to over 80. “It is a great shame but we’ll now concentrate on making next year’s event bigger and better than ever.”
  • Read here: https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/18317566.falmouths-international-sea-shanty-festival-cancelled/
  • Read Here: https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/18310399.coronavirus-cancels-helston-flora-day-2020/

April

Falmouth Packet:

May

  • THERE was anger at The Lizard after some visitors set up tents and stayed overnight in vans in “blatant disregard” to public safety. This was the view of some residents, after at least five tents and four vans were found staying overnight at various spots around the village and nearby Kynance over a weekend. It included sightings of tents at Pistol Meadow, near the former wireless station and at Pentreath, with vans also seen staying overnight in the National Trust car park for the lighthouse and on land adjoining the Kynance car park.
  • POLICE joined other emergency services warning people to ‘Think Twice’ before heading out over bank holiday weekend - but it seems not everyone has been able to resist the lure of the sun. One reader contacted the Packet to say how both Gyllyngvase and Swanpool beaches in Falmouth were busy with people. This included families with picnics and what appeared to be inflatable kayaks in the water, she said.
  • Read here: https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/18438318.people-head-falmouth-beaches-amid-bank-holiday-warning/

June

July

Falmouth Packet:

  • A FALMOUTH pub and restaurant joined many other disappointed and frustrated local businesses to appeal to customers’ decency after numerous no-shows. The Greenbank Hotel’s Water’s Edge restaurant and pub The Working Boat saw nearly 50 bookings not show up in seven days. The discussion on no-shows in the hospitality industry had been a hot topic on social media over the past few weeks, with top chefs complaining about those who failed to show with no explanation or notice.
  • Read Here: https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/18609767.cornwall-restaurants-pubs-angry-rise-table-no-shows/
  • A FALMOUTH resident complained about “ugly” social distancing plastic notices on display at Pendennis Castle - saying ‘some’ people are even taking matters into their own hands. The resident contacted the Packet to complain about the “ugly plastic notices.

August

  • EXTRA coronavirus testing was brought in at a food factory in Pool after an outbreak there. Public Health England (PHE) South West and Cornwall Council confirmed that there had been “a small number of confirmed cases of Covid-19” at Pilgrim’s Pride Ltd.The cases were discovered as part of the enhanced contact tracing service put in place by Cornwall Council’s public health team, the council said. 170 cases out of 500 workers were eventually confirmed.

September

  • RESIDENTS from various parts of Cornwall contacted the Packet to share their stories after struggling to book Covid-19 tests at local centres. This followed Cornwall Council releasing a statement that “urgent changes” are needed in the Covid-19 testing system and asking residents to get in touch about any difficulties they’ve had in order to make recommendations to government. David McGuire from Penryn booked at test for his 12-year-old daughter Harriet, who attends Camborne Academy, spent all weekend trying to book a test. When he finally got one at Honiton he wasn’t told it now wasn’t available until he’d got to Okehampton.

October

  • CASES of coronavirus were confirmed at one of Helston’s supermarkets. On October 27, Tesco Helston told the Packet that three members of staff had tested positive for Covid-19.As a result a “small number” of colleagues at the store were now self-isolating.
  • BY the end of the month the number of Coronavirus cases recorded in the UK since the start of the pandemic has now risen to more than one million. Official figures for Cornwall stood at 94 deaths.
  • ON October 31 Boris Johnson announced a second full UK lockdown for England until December 2.

November

Falmouth Packet:

  • A HEALTHCARE worker who publicly resigned from the NHS over the second lockdown was accused by the trust she worked for of “spreading lies” and putting people’s lives at risk. Shelley Tasker, a 43-year-old healthcare assistant at the Royal Cornwall Hospital, Treliske, resigned in front of a small crowd of fellow anti-lockdown protestors in front of Truro Cathedral at a “Cornwall Freedom Rally”. A video was then posted on Facebook. In it she claimed that at the height of the “plandemic” she had no work for three weeks and that as of the previous Friday there were just three people in Covid ward. She said the NHS has shut down for no reason and therefore she was publicly resigning. But a spokesperson for the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust accused her of spreading lies saying: “We’re in the middle of a once in a lifetime pandemic and it is unacceptable for anybody to spread lies which could be harmful to people’s health, let alone from somebody in a respected position.”
  • Read here: https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/18854742.nhs-worker-shelley-tasker-covid-lockdown-treliske-cornwall/

December

  • THE second lockdown ends and Cornwall is the only mainland area to go into Tier 1.

Falmouth Packet:

  • A CARE worker told how she was “devastated” when she was sacked for making a dancing video to help cheer up her colleagues. Michelle Cooper, from Helston, was sacked from her job as a team leader with Cormac helping to rehabilitate people at home after being discharged from hospital. She filmed the video with three colleagues dancing to Beyonce’s Single Ladies while in uniform and wearing PPE. While Michelle’s three colleagues were all given final written warnings, she was dismissed, before being reinstated on appeal - but she later resigned after her experience.
  • Read here: https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/18946880.cornwall-care-worker-michelle-sacked-dance-video-helston/
  • ONE of the first people in the world to have the Covid vaccine revealed that she suffered from a full range of side effects following her injection but said she was so ‘proud and privileged’ to have been able to have it. Donna MacKinnon, aged 47 and head of care at Roscarrack House Care Home in Falmouth, together with her 18-year-old daughter Erin Lilly, who also works as a carer within the home, were the first people in Cornwall to receive their Covid-19 vaccination. She said the day after receiving the vaccine at the Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro she went down with the full range of side effects which lasted 24 hours.I did have quite bad side effects,” she told the Packet. “I had the vaccination on the Wednesday then on the Thursday I had all of them. Fever, I was absolutely exhausted and I was sick through the night, aches and chills.
  • Read here: https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/18943727.first-person-cornwall-get-covid-vaccine-side-effects/
  • A CARE home at the forefront of the rapid Covid testing pilot said it was ‘really disappointing’ that it had to discontinue the pilot because of fears over its accuracy. Melissa Jones, manager of King Charles Court Nursing Home in Falmouth said she had taken the decision because of concerns over accuracy. The home in Marlborough Road was the first in the country to trial the rapid lateral flow tests three weeks ago. But after reading a report by Jonathan J Deeks, professor of biostatistics at Liverpool University, that the lateral flow tests cannot rule out Covid infection she decided to stop conducting them. “It’s really disappointing,” she said. “I have had no positive results in tests we have carried out on people but out of all those negatives we don’t know if they were positives.”
  • CORNWALL moves up into Tier 2 on Boxing Day then rapidly into Tier 3 on New Year's Eve after a spike in cases in the UK.

January 2021

February 

  • BY the end of February more than half of Cornwall is no longer reporting new cases of Covid-19 on the Government's cluster map. 
  • A BARBER shop in Cornwall is fined £1,000 after staff were caught cutting hair during lockdown. Responding to information from the public, council staff and officers from Devon and Cornwall Police attended the premises and found a customer was having their hair cut in a screened area of the shop.
  • Read here: https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/19077335.barber-shop-cornwall-fined-cutting-hair-lockdown/

Falmouth Packet:

March 

  • THE first day of March sees the daily number of new cases of Covid-19 in Cornwall fall to single figures, for the second day in a row.