Connor Reed, a 25-year-old from Llandudno in North Wales, was working at a school in the Chinese city of Wuhan when he began to feel "a bit sniffly".

He would soon face a painful ordeal and become the first known British man to catch the coronavirus.

It was 25 November, 2019, when he first felt unwell. He told Sky News: "I was feeling like I just had a normal cold and the problem with this virus is it progresses in stages. It started with a cold."

Image: Mr Reed was working at a school in the Chinese city of Wuhan when he got coronavirus

It's possible that Connor's cold was unconnected with the virus and he just happened to catch it several days before he was struck by coronavirus. For a while he continued to work and was feeling relatively normal, but just as the cold was tailing-off, in early December, he was struck by flu.

"I woke up and I was just feeling really bad. I was coughing a lot and subsequently I lost my voice.


"One of my Irish friends mentioned that hot whisky and honey really helps with symptoms. So, that's what I tried and honestly, it did help. It really did. But in no way am I condoning that whisky and honey will cure the virus. I mean, it definitely doesn't."

At this point, in early December, Connor decided he wasn't going to go back to work for a while. He had a fever and he didn't want to pass the illness onto his colleagues. Despite living in what was the epicentre of the virus, as yet, the local authorities were unaware that Wuhan in China was incubating a nasty new disease that would spread across the globe.

"I was feeling achy," says Connor "I just wanted to curl up into a ball and I had ear problems and sinus problems where it felt like there was a balloon being blown up in my face. And that was probably the worst symptom. It really bothered me.

"I also had a raking cough. It was terrible. And it was happening so much, I lost my voice. Sometimes, I couldn't make any sound at all. Sometimes, I sounded like a frog."

Image: Wuhan is the Chinese city where the coornavirus was first seen

For most people who catch the virus, it won't get any worse than this, it may not even get that bad, but for Connor the scariest part was still to come. He actually felt like he was recovering from the flu and was feeling optimistic about going back to work when one morning he woke up struggling to breathe.

"It scared me because breathing is a necessity of life, like if you have the flu, you really feel like you're going to die, but you're really not. But when your lungs get affected, that's where it scared me. And I couldn't take a full breath. And the breaths I did take, it sounded like I was breathing through a bag. It was very crackly, and I could only take half breaths. If I walked to the kitchen, for instance, I'd be breathing really shallow and really fast."

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Connor continued drinking hot water to try and clear it up but, a day later when things didn't improve, he went to hospital.

On 5 December he had a day of blood tests, x-rays and breathing tests. The next day, two weeks after he'd first caught the cold, the results came back that he had pneumonia.

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He said: "At no point was I thinking that I'm going to die. I mean, it wasn't that serious. I'm a young person. I don't smoke. I don't drink. It really didn't affect me as bad as if I was elderly or I had pre-existing health problems."

Connor recovered from his illness and a few weeks later doctors realised he had suffered from the virus that was now spreading across the province, which would become known as COVID-19.

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Wuhan is still under quarantine. Connor recalls getting an alert on his phone at 3am announcing the quarantine for the city. "Luckily, I was awake to read that text message. So, I bolted out of the house and went to the 24-hour supermarket downstairs. I knew that it was going to be bad and I knew that shops were going be sold out."

He stocked up. But weeks later the city continues to maintain strict rules. Connor said: "As more and more new cases came, and it started spreading, the government sanctioned harsher penalties and a lot harsher quarantine. For instance, at the moment, one person is allowed to leave their house every three days, and that's just to purchase necessities."

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He said when going out there is "no atmosphere", and very few people on the streets. "If you go to a shop, there are some shops that are open that have blocked the door off. You tell them what you want. They put it into a bag and then they pass the bag to you on a long stick just to avoid personal contact."

Connor said the national government had dealt with the crisis well and learned lessons from previous outbreaks such as SARS. He believes the numbers for infected people that the authorities are releasing are accurate.

He added: "There are not many Western countries that can build a hospital in 10 days. China is one of the most efficient countries at getting stuff done. In regard to this outbreak, they've got it done. They had to. They had to take the drastic measures, that many other countries wouldn't have taken."