TODAY marks a year since two guests were taken ill at a York hotel - which found itself at the centre of a media storm.

For days in the run up to Wednesday, January 29 last year the country was waiting to find out where the first case of coronavirus in the UK would be detected.

A woman from York contacted The Press to say she’d seen an ambulance at the 220-bed Staycity near York Barbican in Paragon Street, at 7.40pm that night, sparking a chain of events that thrust the hotel, it’s staff and guests in to the spotlight.

Two guests, a University of York student and his mother, were taken ill and along with the student’s father, were taken out of the property at about 7.50pm by paramedics wearing hazmat suits. They were taken by ambulance to hospital in Hull where they were tested.

The first staff knew something was amiss was when paramedics entered through reception and went straight up to the room. They didn’t know if they were still in the room as they left through a laundry exit.

Recalling how events unfolded a Staycity spokesperson said: “The guests’ belongings were left in the room and we didn’t even know where they had been taken. All the way through, we followed the advice we received from Public Health England (PHE). It’s important to remember, it wasn’t an outbreak to begin with, it was a suspected case. The guests were taken ill on the Wednesday, but there were lots of false alarms across the country and we were told that until it was confirmed it was just another suspected case.

“PHE announced at around 3pm on the Friday that there was a confirmed case in York and we weren’t told until about 3.30pm that day that it was us. We were told to inform all our guests and staff. We had a statement from PHE which we put into a letter and put under guest’s doors and we told anyone checking in. We gave people the option to check out and roughly a third checked out.

“Everybody was asking us when we were going to have the room deep cleaned, but the guests’ belongings were still in the room and we had to have clearance from PHE.

“The room had been cordoned off - no-one was allowed in - and our team at York were told they didn’t have to come in to work if they didn’t want to and most staff were off work that week.”

By February 5 the room at the centre of the outbreak had been cleaned and was open again after a specialist firm were brought in to carry out the work.

At the time advice in circulation was that, to catch the virus, you had to have had at least 15 minutes exposure to someone infected who was within two metres and that it was unlikely to be transferred on hard surfaces.

“We were told there was minimal risk and that advice has now moved on considerably, but that’s as much as was known at the time,” said the spokesperson.

“The outbreak at Staycity was contained, nobody else caught it and it took quite a few weeks before there was another confirmed case in York.”

The two patients were released from hospital in Newcastle - where they had been transferred - after twice testing negative on February 17. They suffered relatively mild and short-lived symptoms, according to the doctors who treated them. There were no further confirmed cases linked to their infections.

And what of business at the hotel? The hotel offered guests the chance to cancel bookings, offered them refunds and helped find alternative accommodation, but their trade was badly affected.

Approximately 15 rooms of guests checked out on the Friday night – January 31, 2020, after the two guests’ tests had been confirmed as positive. Six checked out early on the Saturday night, but 123 rooms remained occupied.

The total number of guests booked into the property on the Friday night was 264 guests.

Over that weekend between January 31 and February 2 the hotel had 388 room cancellations and lost £55,000 in revenue. From the period January 31-March 31 last year they had 2,044 room cancellations, 99 per cent of which was down to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Today the hotel remains open to guests and has helped house rough sleepers during the pandemic. Staycity says it remains optimistic that its business, and that of other hotels in York, will return.