Do you remember this Covid news footage?

[Sitonyourdressmavis]

Chatting to SIL last night and we were remembering news footage we watched before the Christmas of Covid when the news was coming out of China about this virus. We clearly remember watching as a family news footage (would have been on BBC normal news not online) from China of people collapsing and fitting in the streets then being zipped up on stretchers and body bags and loaded into a black and yellow van by hazmat suited doctors/army. We all clearly remember this , it was not a film. What was this footage? Covid didn't present like that at all? We remember being really scared. SiL is a nurse and we remember her saying "what the hell is this thing"
Anyone else remember this footage?

That archive website below is a good resource of people want to search

I got

Mystery Illness Outbreak In Wuhan, China | South China Morning Post - Jan 4 2020 | Archiveby South China Morning Post
Publication date 2020-01-04

Before that BBC broadcast, major UK publications and global wire services did publish text reports — but these generally did not include actual video footage from inside China:

• Reuters — 31 December 2019: Reported that Chinese officials were investigating a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan. This was widely syndicated in UK press, but it was text/images rather than broadcast footage.
• Other written UK and international stories in early January 2020 referenced the outbreak and rising concerns (e.g., written dispatches on deaths and spread) before UK television picked it up in visual form. (These were mostly text reports rather than moving footage.)

📺
Subsequent UK TV Coverage with Footage

After the 12 January BBC broadcast:

• Other UK broadcasters (e.g., Sky News, ITV News) began to show video footage and reporting related to China and the virus through mid- to late-January 2020, often showing mobile and third-party footage or footage from Hong Kong/China airports and streets.
• For example, ITV News reported on global responses and China lockdown measures later in January as the outbreak intensified globally.

🧠
Summary

📅 Earliest known UK broadcast footage related to the virus in China:
✅ BBC News on 12 January 2020 — first UK TV news segment showing footage and reporting about the outbreak in Wuhan.

📆 Earliest written reportage by UK outlets:
📍 Articles and wire stories referencing the Wuhan outbreak appeared in UK papers and wire syndication in late December 2019–early January 2020, but these did not include broadcast footage. (The Reuters report from 31 Dec 2019 was among the earliest text reports.)

Sorry OP it couldn’t have been 2019.

i remember watching the news in December about the hospital the Chinese were building to house the sick whilst saying “no panic, nothing going on here, Definitely not a pandemic” or words to that effect.

So you knew more than the WHO?

I don't remember that particular footage about it @Sitonyourdressmavis but I do remember my dh telling us about something happening in Wuhan in November 2019, and looking it up it says about it on Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_2019

Google says cases of bird flu were reported in Mainland China in early December 2019. Unlike COVID, that can cause seizures. Could you be mixing it up with later reports of COVID?

The diggers for the hospital started work around 24 Jan, so you couldn't have seen that.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-51280586

That is all retrospective information though

It was absolutely on the news, China and then Italy. It was terrifying.
I work in the NHS as an allied health care professional and we wete prepared to not do our normal job in the community and instead care for the dying as that was what was anticipated.
It's quite strange looking back because what happened in the UK wasn't like what was shown on TV. I wonder though whether having an NHS which already had pandemic plans on place reduced the impact.

Could it have been ebola or bird flu footage then? I juts am baffled. We watched something as I wrote about it that same day of the birthday dinner.
Maybe people were hearing rumours of a flu strain and that's why they also contacted the school who had to respond..
Anyway, this will be a family mystery

I remember seeing this footage in January 2020. When I'll get back I'll see if I mentioned it in my diary, and what else I put.

I thought there was mention of a mystery illness in China just before Christmas but maybe not on the BBC.
Although as PP says it wasn't called COVID then

I was absolutely convinced one time that I had seen reports stating that Dave Hill from Slade was dating Rose West

Fascinating thread.

I think that likely you were in fact watching the news at your PIL’s house, but the footage you saw, and wrote about, was actually some sort of hoax video from social media. You may just be remembering it as ‘on the news’ when it was really on a phone during the same visit.

It could have been footage from something else but it definitely wasn't a news report about COVID.

Similar to the letter from the school. It won't have been about COVID it will have been about some other strain of flu or something else.

As an entirely irrelevant anecdote, we went to a friend’s house for NYE the year and afterwards I came down with the most horrendous flu that I couldn’t shake off for two or three weeks. My friend’s daughter had just come back from a school trip to China that December, and apparently loads of them had also been ill on their return. Coincidence maybe? I think not.

I agree, there was a lot of talk about a mysterious pneumonia type virus. I find it crazy the amount of posters going on about Covid not being talked about until 2020, there was definitely talk of a virus but it hadn't been named Covid as yet.

WTF way to gaslight someone

No gaslighting here just facts. There were no news reports on the BBC regarding COVID before Christmas in December 2019.

This is what I think happened . Obviously the school didn't name it covid!

Maybe not covid but a pneumonia type illness. Before they knew it was a coronavirus, so searching for covid reports won't come up with it.

Definitely not a film and definitely not on any phone

Can't you just type here what you actually wrote in your diary, rather than telling us what you wrote about?
Is a friend getting a letter from school about a child's trip really something you would put in your diary?

I definitely saw this on the news. We had it on the TV and we don’t have social media - except this. And I think it was pre-NYE as DH and I had been making plans for it then we watched this horrified. I’d have questioned if it was real if not on the news and I don’t think we’d have both stopped in our tracks the way we did if it was on social media or something.

Not even about a mystery illness that wasn't named that report wasn't until January.