A family from East Sussex may have been Britain’s first coronavirus victims, catching the virus in mid-January after one of them visited an Austrian ski resort that is now under investigation for allegedly covering up the early outbreak.
Paul Nuki writes in he Telegraph that if confirmed by official tests, it would mean the outbreak in Britain started more than a month earlier than currently thought.
As things stand, the first recorded U.K. case was on January 31, and the earliest documented incidence of transmission within Britain occurred on 28 February.
IT consultant Daren Bland, 50, was skiing in Ischgl, Austria from 15 to 19 January with three friends, two from Denmark and one from Minnesota in America.
All three fell ill on their return with classic coronavirus symptoms, and Bland passed on the infection to his wife and children in Maresfield, East Sussex.