Less than four months into the 2019–2024 Parliament, the nation was in lockdown and the Prime Minister was in intensive care. Reports had emerged from China in the final days of 2019 of a new, highly infectious and often lethal respiratory virus, Covid-19. By the end of January, large parts of China were under strict quarantine and the first cases of the virus had been detected in most European countries—including, on 30 January 2020, the UK. By the end of February, case numbers were rising rapidly in multiple hotspots across the globe, and health experts who understood the remorseless logic of exponential growth were warning that a once-in-a-century pandemic had arrived and that, without drastic action to slow its spread, healthcare systems would collapse under the strain.