How Queensland responded to COVID-19

It was late January when the spectre of COVID-19 was first felt in Queensland.

A handful of cases had already been recorded in Sydney and Melbourne when Jeannette Young, Queensland’s Chief Health Officer, mentioned almost as an afterthought during a media conference that a man was being tested for what was then known as the “novel coronavirus”.

Dr Young appeared professional, as always, but there was a sense of urgency to her words that day as she outlined that a man was being tested in Brisbane for coronavirus after returning from the Chinese province of Wuhan.

While that first suspicious case was never confirmed as COVID-19, a tour group from Wuhan proved to be the state’s first…