Year One: The untold story of the pandemic in Canada

In the last hours of 2019, Dominic Cardy and Julie Smith checked into the Arenal Observatory Lodge & Spa, a hot spring resort in La Fortuna de San Carlos, Costa Rica, with a view of the spectacular Arenal volcano, which rises out of a rainforest full of waterfalls, howler monkeys and exotic birds. Their room wasn’t ready when they arrived, so they took the hotel clerk’s suggestion and had a drink in the bar. “And it flashed up on the screen that there had been the first suspected transmission,” Smith recalled later.

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