A few days ago I posted on the All Things Iceland Instagram and Facebook pages that I do plan to give a rundown of how the Coronavirus is spreading in Iceland and what the government has been doing to control it. I do not plan to give updates every few days about the virus.

I think it is important to talk about it. However, I mainly created All Things Iceland to share about Icelandic culture, history, language and nature. Not to just focus on one topic. Also, I think it is nice to be able to escape the news for a while and hear about Iceland.

Like many others, I am closely monitoring what is going on with the virus where I live. I want to do as much as I can to stay safe.  I still do my weekly news round-up in my Instagram stories each Sunday. You can check that out if you want to hear about what happened in Iceland the week before.

As I thought about how to format this particular episode, it dawned on me that it might be helpful to give you a bit of backstory regarding when Icelandic officials made it public that they were starting to prepare for the virus coming to the country. Also, I am going to speak a little about how deeply this affects the Icelandic economy, especially the tourism industry.

When Did Iceland Start to Prepare for the Coronavirus?

To start off, Iceland did take note when the World Health Organization’s (or the WHO) China office started sharing reports of the virus spreading in the Eastern Chinese city Wuhan in late December and into January. Of course no one knew it would spread so quickly around the world. In late January, Iceland started to prepare for it possibly coming our way.

According to Iceland Monitor, on January 27th, Þórarinn Guðnason, the Chief Epidemiologist in Iceland, recommended that Icelanders should,

Cancel any unnecessary trips to areas in China affected by the coronavirus, known to cause pneumonia, coughs, fever and breathing difficulties.  This applies in particular to the Hubei province.

Þórarinn Guðnason, the Chief Epidemiologist in Iceland

He was also said “health care officials in Iceland are preparing for the possible spread of the virus to Iceland. “That is our approach – that this will arrive in Iceland… We try to prepare as well as possible. We prepare for the worst, hoping it won’t happen. But we assume it will arrive here.”

Chinese Tourism Was on the Rise in Iceland

One thing many people who live outside of Iceland may not be aware of is that Chinese tourism in the country has been on the rise over the last couple of years. Some of the tourists are groups coming directly from China and others are people who were born in China but are studying or working abroad in different places, such as in Europe.

I have worked in tourism Iceland for about four years, from 2016 to present day and it was clear that even though U.S. visitors were still the highest number of tourists that it was evident that numbers were declining fast. Chinese tourists were starting to increase rapidly, especially during the Chinese New Year.

According to an article published in January of this year, Iceland was expecting no less than 130,000 Chinese tourists, which would have been more than the number of Germans expected to visit, and Germans are the third numerous group behind the United States and the United Kingdom. 130,000 might not seem like a lot when you think about the fact that almost two million people visited Iceland in 2019.

However, the potential for more Chinese tourists was growing exponentially. I reported in my weekly news round-up on Instagram back in November that a Chinese airline Juneyao was going to start offering direct flight service from Shanghai to Keflavík airport in March. Of course that is not happening now but that should at least give you an idea that ties between Iceland and China were strengthening.

The tourism industry in Iceland is very competitive and all of the companies are fighting for market share. Many of them have been trying to capture the Chinese market because they could all see the writing on the wall.

Icelanders Expected Coronavirus Infections to Come Directly From China

As a person that lives here and pays a decent amount of attention to the news as well as talks to natives and expats, I can tell you that most of us assumed that Iceland wouldn’t be hit hard by this virus. It felt a world away. Also, most people thought that since this virus originally popped up in China, that it will be either Chinese visitors or Icelanders that had been in China or an already labeled “high risk” area that would bring the virus to the island. Well, to many’s surprise that is not what happened.

People on the Front Lines Started to Prepare

Before any cases of the virus were confirmed in Iceland, a few interesting things happened. First, which was reported on January 31st, is that some employees at Keflavík airport started wearing face masks and gloves. Ísavia, the company that operates the airport, said that they provide the masks and gloves to their employees but it was up to them to wear them.

The second is that Landspítali National University Hospital started reviewing their contingency plans, started planning out routes if they have to transport infected patients to minimize risk of spreading, put in place protective equipment like hospital suits, googles, etc  and began educating their medical staff.

As you can tell, the people that work on the front lines such as  in travel, like at the check in counters and flight attendants as well as those working in hospitals, were doing their best to prepare. Most of us not in those professions were just going about our daily lives even though the virus has spread to about twenty countries at that time. Also, it was encouraged to only test people if the person suspected they have been infected, which basically meant that the person had just come from China and felt ill. That was in early February. 

Icelandic Family Tries to Get Home From China

On February 20th, an Icelandic family (two parents and a child) that had been traveling in China for what was suspected to be quite some time since the outbreak began, requested permission to come home. At that time, the European Union was organizing a flight to bring back European citizens from China and Icelandic authorities were trying to get the family on that plane. Luckily, that was a success.

The family traveled from Wuhan to France and then onto Iceland. They were examined upon arrival and then were instructed to be in quarantine at home for about 14 days. It is important to note that they did not feel ill when they left China nor when they came to Iceland.

Just one day after the family arrived in Iceland, it was reported that seven Icelanders vacationing in Tenerife were in quarantine along with 1,000 other people at the H10 Costa Adeje Palace hotel. The Canary Islands  are a Spanish archipelago and are the southernmost part of Spain. They are a popular vacationing spot for many Europeans, Icelanders included. I had the pleasure of going to Tenerife, the largest of the islands,  two years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. You can probably find Icelandic people there at almost any time of the year because there are many direct flights from here to Terenrife. The isolation was due to the fact that an Italian doctor that was a guest at the hotel tested positive with the coronavirus. Police were standing guard at the hotel to make sure that no one entered or left.

The First Confirmed Case in Iceland Was Announced

On February 28th,  the dam finally broke. Iceland confirmed its first case of Coronavirus. Surprisingly, the Icelandic man who had the virus had been on a skiing trip with a group of other Icelanders in Northern Italy, which was outside of a defined risk area. The man is in his forties had arrived in Iceland on February 22nd, which means that he was walking around with the virus in the country for some days. After falling ill, he was scanned at the hospital and immediately put in isolation after his infection was confirmed. His daughter and wife were also inspected. On top of that, policemen were trying to trace where he had been since arriving back to Iceland. 

After this confirmed infection, it was like a domino effect. More confirmed cases started popping up after just a few days. In less than three weeks, Iceland went from having no confirmed cases to having 182 and over 1900 in quarantine in the country, specifically in the Reykjavík area, which has about three fourths of the population of Iceland. That is accordin