Covid in the UK: how first cases exposed flaws in response

Handling of earliest cases early last year provided ominous foretaste of things to come

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The handling of the first two cases of Covid in the UK a year ago this week provided an ominous foretaste of the country's response to the pandemic, according to those caught up in the incident.

On 30 January last year the official threat level from coronavirus was moved from low" to moderate", as rescue flights were organised for 273 people stranded in Wuhan in China's Hubei province, where the outbreak began.