TODAY marks the one year anniversary of the first cases of Covid-19 being reported in the world - in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

The World Health Organisation tweeted on January 4, 2019, there had been a "cluster of pneumonia cases - with no deaths - in Wuhan" and investgations were underway to identify the cause of the illness.

 

This mystery illness was Covid-19, thought to have originated from bats in a market in the city.

It went on to spread to almost every country in the world, and exactly one year on the WHO said there have been 83.3 million confirmed cases worldwide and more than 1.8 million people have lost their lives to the virus, with countless millions more requiring hospital treatments, and suffering the long-term effects and permanent damage to their health because of the virus.

In the UK, more than 82,000 people have died with Covid-19 with hundreds still dying on a daily basis, and more than 2.6 million people have tested positive for the virus.

In Bradford there have been 34,065 confirmed cases and 899 deaths with Covid on the death certificate.

The UK has been placed under two national lockdowns with people's freedoms restricted in a bid to try and control the spread of the virus, causing major damage to people's physical and mental health, people not being able to visit or hug loved ones for months on end, hospitals stretched to breaking point under the weight of Covid admissions, and major damage to the UK economy.

As the first anniversary of the first Covd cases comes, the UK is in the grip of a third wave of the virus, with cases rising rapidly on a daily basis, hospitals filling up, schools closed and a new strain running rampant.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine already rolled out and the first Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines being administered today which will hopefully bring an end to the disruption caused by Covid-19 and allow life to return to normal.