Queensland's fourth year of living with COVID-19 begins today – marking the anniversary of the first time the state's then Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young warned the public of a novel coronavirus emerging out of China.
On January 21, 2020, Dr Young told Queenslanders about a mystery new virus with reports of 200 patients being admitted to hospital in China, about nine of them identified as serious, and confirmation of human-to-human spread.
"We need to be alert," Dr Young said at the time.
"It's a coronavirus, so it's transmitted the same way as with all the other coronaviruses, which is through the air."
Fast forward to today, more than 672 million cases of COVID-19 have been recorded worldwide, including 6.7 million deaths, about 18,000 of them Australians.
Queensland has had 2,574 deaths, most of them occurring since December 13, 2021, when the state's borders reopened to COVID hotspots after almost two years of closures.
The initial modelling by QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in October, 2021, predicted the deaths of 200 Queenslanders in the first three months after borders reopened.
Dr Young's successor John Gerrard, an infectious disease physician, began his time in the role before Christmas, 2021 telling Queenslanders the spread of coronavirus "is inevitable, it is necessary."
"In order for us to go from the pandemic phase to an endemic phase, the virus has to be widespread," Dr Gerrard said on December 23, 2021.
"We all have to have immunity. You will all have to develop immunity. There's two ways you can do that – by being vaccinated or getting infected. There are only two choices, there are only two ways to do that."
More than a year later, Dr Gerrard is less certain about the future.
At a news conference this week, he said "2023 is very much a critical phase as we really learn what happens with a pandemic."
"What exactly happens with the pandemic now, nobody knows for certain," he said.
"We've never followed a pandemic like this in real time before."
The hope, he said, was that the regular waves of COVID-19 would become less frequent and eventually, the virus would morph into a once-a-year seasonal illness, much like the flu.
"But this is, at this stage, still a theory," he said.
"We don't have a clear sense of the time course, whether this will resolve into that pattern this year, or whether it will take several years."
COVID-19 vaccination moving forward is also uncertain.
“The strategy for vaccination, both in Australia and worldwide, is yet to be determined,” Dr Gerrard said.
“We know that immunity wears off significantly after six months. This is a particular problem in older people.”
About 47 per cent of Queensland’s eligible population – those aged greater than 30 years – have received a fourth COVID-19 dose.
Here's a look back on how the virus was affecting our lives 12, 24 and 36 months ago.
January, 2022: Testing issues and Omicron parties as the state opens up
After Queensland brought forward the reopening of its border on December 13, many Australians were delighted to be able to spend Christmas with relatives they hadn't seen in person in years.
But there was also a fear of the latest wave of the virus, Omicron, which was seeing it spread like never before.
Authorities were warning "COVID chasers" not to try and catch Omicron amid news that people were holding parties in order to get infected in order to become temporarily immune.
"All this nonsense about COVID parties, it is ridiculous. Reinfection can occur with Omicron," then prime minister Scott Morrison said.
On January 4, Queensland Health Minister Yvette D'Ath and new Chief Health Officer John Gerrard acknowledged the testing system in the state was under strain as lengthy delays were experienced in queues across the state.
Queensland's testing clinics were so overwhelmed, many people were being turned away without getting swabbed, while others were going to extreme lengths to get tested to protect family members, satisfy work and childcare requirements, or to have elective surgery.
Queensland was so concerned about the Omicron wave, with 18,000 new cases reported on January 9, that the return to school was delayed by two weeks.
"Queensland is expected to reach [our] peak during the last week of January and the first week of February," Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said.
Ms Palaszczuk said it was not desirable to have children back at the peak of the Omicron wave and so the government moved the school year start from January 24 to Monday, February 7.
On January 21, 2022 there were 329,362 total COVID cases in Queensland, 155 deaths and 884 people in hospital with the virus.
January, 2021: Lockdown and panic buying
On January 7, 2021, a cleaner at a quarantine hotel in Brisbane tested positive for COVID, sparking a health alert in three suburbs amid fears of the new mutant strain of the virus, N501Y, which had arrived from the UK.
The cleaner, who was in her 20s, had taken trains to and from work in the city.
The next day more than 2 million people living in the Greater Brisbane region were plunged into a three-day lockdown.
Ms Palaszczuk said it was a harsh but necessary decision.
"Think of it as a long weekend at home, we need to do this," she said.
Long queues formed at supermarkets within an hour of the announcement, prompting Queensland Health to urge people not to panic buy.
The chief health officer at the time, Jeannette Young, defended the lockdown on January 12, with the state recording three new cases that day.
"We had to go and do something immediately, do it quickly and just get it managed," Dr Young said.
"I think that three-day circuit-breaker — is what I am calling it — just sets the framework, and the response here in Greater Brisbane was absolutely brilliant."
While the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine would likely be the first to get approval in Australia, most of us would end up receiving the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot, Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said on January 10.
Australia had secured 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 53.8 million of the AstraZeneca vaccine at that point.
On January 21, 2021 there were 1,317 total COVID cases in Queensland and six deaths.
January, 2020: SARS-like coronavirus emerges from China
The ABC first reported on the novel coronavirus on January 15, 2020: WHO says new mysterious China coronavirus linked to SARS could spread, warns hospitals worldwide.
On January 20, science reporter Tegan Taylor asked: What is a coronavirus and why is a new virus strain making people in China so sick?
The Australian Department of Health said in a statement it was aware of the outbreak and was watching developments closely, but there was no need for alarm in Australia.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australians should be assured that all necessary procedures were "swinging into place".
A Brisbane man was tested for coronavirus on January 21 after returning from Wuhan, but Queensland Health announced he was cleared the next day.
By late January, interest in the new virus was immense.
Queensland's first case was confirmed on January 29, with the chief health officer at the time, Jeannette Young, saying: "A 44-year-old Chinese national, who is currently isolated in the Gold Coast University Hospital, has been confirmed to have novel coronavirus."
The biggest stories of the month were when three cases were confirmed in NSW and one in Victoria on January 25 as the death toll rose in China, and the news that a Melbourne lab was the first to copy the coronavirus, fuelling hopes of a vaccine.
