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.