COVID YEAR IN REVIEW

Narrated by rod serling, 2020 was it.

This year has felt, for many of us, like a twilight zone episode....abandonin g beloved traditions in order to outrun a deadly virus...and wearing masks when we leave our homes.

Newschannel 2's joleen ferris has a look back on a surreal year.

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None stand up we all know what 2020 will be remembered for and it's exactly the reason eveyrone is anxious for it to end.

But county officials and medical experts warn-it won't go away midnight january first.

Life began as normal january first.

We went about our lives, hitting the gym for those new years resolutions, going to dinner, shopping, concerts...... we couldn't know at the time, that we would soon long to do those things we'd previously taken for granted.

A month prior, in december, 2019, the first case of covid 19 had surfaced, in wuhan, china.

Seemingly insulated by oceans and continents....we watched a virus that seemed a world away....until it wasn't.

Sot tony: 'we're going to see more cases....the next three months will be the most severe" if only.

Oneida county announced its first covid case march 17th, five days after herkimer county announced its first; four days before otsego county announced theirs.

Da prior, on friday the 13th of march, the county closed schools, before even learning of its first case tony : "we're gonna take a break til this calms down a little" and it did, for a time.

Summer saw new daily covid cases dip into the single digits, and even zero, a few times.

On march 16, new yorktate shutown bars, restaurants, mie theateand casio stop an invisible killer.

Sot: george penree top of themorningp to keep the place paid up" for some restaurants, like top of the morning cafe in utica, takeout and delivery just didn't take off.

Restaurants struggled.

Some closed.

The last big hurrah, before life as we knew it would do a 180, on march 7th, america's greatest heart run walk.

Hundreds and hundreds of people, crammed together utica college's athletic center, often shoulder to shoulder.

Among them, dr stephen eadline 18:39 there's probably a chance that you were seeing patients at that time who had it and we didn't know it....think back to how ourtesting was.

We didn't really have any testin gin our area and people came in with symptoms that suonded like thefs the last hurrah before life shut down to slow the spread of the virus.

That hard- earned summertime lull crashed in the fall.

Cases skyrocketed, on the cusp of 300 a day in oneida county, with people dying with the virus, every day since thanksgiving.

24:25 "i thought, you know, we would have a couple hard months of as it started in those first early days but then i never thought we'd be here in december still talking about it and with all of these things and with 300 cases a day" and while we all are eager to turn the page on 2020....picente cautions....don't expect drastic change at 12:01 am, january first 32:42 "the hope is that next year at this time, we're talking about how we got through all of this and we're not doing all the things we're doing, but at the same token, we've got to keep doing it a little while longer" 20:22 "it's gonna go away when the virus has no where to go" > here's what the team is working on for newschannel two at