Of course at that time it hadn't been named Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) but it was spreading and obvious to the folks at the Consulate General.
From State Magazine (an official publication of the U.S. Department of State for employees and retirees), April 2020 edition:
Surviving the Outbreak: Reflections on ConGen Wuhan’s evacuation and life in quarantine
By Russell J. Westergard
By mid-October 2019, the dedicated team at the U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan knew that the city had been struck by what was thought to be an unusually vicious flu season. The disease worsened in November. When city officials began to close public schools in mid-December to control the spread of the disease, the team passed the word to Embassy Beijing and continued monitoring. The possibility of a new viral outbreak was always on the consulate’s radar. Still, the working assumption in every scenario had always been that, as in past outbreaks like H1N1 (known as swine flu), it would appear in rural areas first and then spread to major urban centers across China.
When the Chinese government announced on December 29th that the new and novel coronavirus (COVID-19) had been identified and traced to a live animal market near the U.S. consulate, it caught the team’s attention. Four hectic weeks later, ConGen Wuhan closed under ordered departure with the consulate team pulling off what some people involved have since described as a minor miracle.
Consulate staff found themselves at the airport of a paralyzed city preparing to evacuate family members and other U.S. citizens from what would turn out to be ground zero of a deadly global pandemic....
....MUCH MORE
Mr. Westergard was deputy consular chief at the U.S. Consulate in Wuhan.
Previously:
May 20, 2026 - "U.S. probing whether Chinese companies cut production of shipping containers before COVID pandemic"
June 2, 2026 - Flashback: China Began Hoarding Personal Protective Equipment Months Before The Covid-19 Pandemic Was DeclaredAs noted introducing May 28's "For the Public, Covid Is No Longer a Mystery":
Over the next six months there will be a lot of information coming out regarding coronavirus, Covid-19 and the responses thereto. A lot....Our focus/purpose is not the 'proximal origin', raccoon dog or Biosafety Level 4 Laboratory, but rather the date the virus was circulating.Possibly related, July 31's: Covid: China's Purchases Of PCR Test Kits Soared Months Before The First Cases Were AnnouncedAugust 7 - Fauci Is Covering For Someone, We May Be About To Find Out Who
August 23 - Covid Fun Fact: Early Report Of A Connection Between The Coronavirus And The Wuhan Institute Of Virology
Long-time readers know that we keep tabs on early reports of covid, not searching them out but dropping them into the link-vault as they appear. Here's one from Radio Free Asia, January 9, 2020
