Timeline: China's COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown of Wuhan

The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020. It was the most extreme step taken up to that point against the coronavirus.

China presents the lockdown as a huge sacrifice that bought the rest of the world time to prepare for the pandemic. Critics say earlier, more decisive measures would have prevented more people from leaving the city and spreading the virus around China and globally.

Some events before and during that crucial period:

FILE - In this Jan. 23, 2020, file photo, travelers sit with their luggage outside the closed Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020. (Chinatopix via AP, File)

— Mid-December 2019: Patients begin showing up in Wuhan hospitals complaining of flu-like symptoms including high fever, cough and breathing difficulties.

— Dec. 27: A Chinese lab assembles a near-complete sequence of the virus, showing it to be similar to the coronavirus that caused the 2002-03 SARS outbreak. The lab alerts health authorities, but the information is kept under wraps.

— Dec. 30: Doctors begin warning about the disease independently on social media — most prominently Dr. Li Wenliang, who shares a lab report indicating the pathogen is a SARS-like virus.

FILE - In this Jan. 23, 2020, file photo, a militia member uses a digital thermometer to take a driver's temperature at a checkpoint at a highway toll gate in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020. (Chinatopix via AP, File)

— Dec. 31: Officials close Wuhan's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which was linked to dozens of the earliest cases. Li is punished by police and his superiors and told he is “spreading rumors.”

— Jan. 3, 2020: The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention obtains a full sequence of the virus but doesn’t release it. China reports the outbreak to the WHO, but Chinese authorities order labs and medical institutes to destroy patient samples.

— Jan. 9: WHO says Chinese investigators have conducted gene sequencing of the virus, an initial step toward treatment and a vaccine. It does not recommend any specific measures for travelers.

FILE - In this Jan. 24, 2020, file photo, released by China's Xinhua News Agency, a medical worker attends to a patient in the intensive care unit at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020. (Xiong QiXinhua via AP, File)

— Jan. 13: The first case outside China is identified in Thailand.

— Jan. 14: Chinese health officials say in an internal meeting that “clustered cases suggest human-to-human transmission is possible” and order emergency preparations for a pandemic. In public, they downplay the virus’s ability to infect.

— Mid-January: The Lunar New Year travel rush — the world’s largest annual human migration — gets underway, with millions of people leaving Wuhan to return home or passing through on their journeys.

FILE - In this Jan. 25, 2020, file photo, shoppers wearing face masks look for groceries with many empty shelves at a supermarket in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province. The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020. (Chinatopix via AP, File)

— Jan. 18: Tens of thousands of Wuhan families take part in a mass Lunar New Year banquet hosted by the city. Many became infected.

— Jan. 20: A top Chinese medical expert, Dr. Zhong Nanshan, announces on state television that the virus is transmissible between people.

— Jan. 22: Wuhan’s top officials attend a Lunar New Year gala. Dozens of actors, dancers and musicians perform. Some have sniffles and sneezes.

FILE - In this Jan. 27, 2020, file photo, workers in protective gears catch a giant salamander that was reported to have escaped from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020. (Chinatopix via AP, File)

— Jan. 23: The Wuhan lockdown begins with a notice sent to people’s smartphones at 2 a.m. announcing the airport and train and bus stations will be shut at 10 a.m. Construction begins on the first of two hastily built field hospitals as thousands of patients overwhelm the city's health care system. Eventually, most of the rest of Hubei province would be locked down, affecting 56 million people.

— Feb. 2: The first field hospital, Huoshenshan, opens 10 days later. Eventually, more than a dozen venues such as gymnasiums and conference centers are converted to sprawling medical wards to treat and isolate the less serious cases.

— Feb. 7: Li Wenliang, the doctor reprimanded for sharing a lab report about the virus, dies of COVID-19. His death brings a national outpouring of grief and anger at authorities for punishing him.

FILE - This Jan. 30, 2020, file photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, shows construction workers at the site of the Leishenshan temporary field hospital being built in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020. (Xiao YijiuXinhua via AP, File)

— February-March: Wuhan’s streets are deserted apart from ambulances and security personnel as the city’s 11 million people are confined to their homes. Doctors and nurses arrive from around the country to help the city's exhausted medical staff, many of whom were infected in the early days when protective gear was in short supply and not always used.

— March 24: Authorities announce they will end the lockdown of most of Hubei province at midnight, as new cases subside. Wuhan remains locked down for two more weeks.

— April 8: Wuhan’s lockdown is lifted. Residents celebrate their freedom after 76 days with riverside parties while the city puts on a sound-and-light show emphasizing its resiliency and the courage and sacrifice of first responders.

FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2020, file photo, funeral home workers remove the body of a person suspect to have died from a virus outbreak from a residential building in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020.  (Chinatopix via AP, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 3, 2020,file photo, a worker in a protective suit is disinfected outside a hotel being used for people held in medical isolation in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province. The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020. (Chinatopix via AP, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2020, file photo, medical workers transfer a patient in the isolation ward for the coronavirus patients at a hospital in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province. The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020. (Chinatopix via AP, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 15, 2020, file photo, a worker wearing a protective suit transfers patients in the back of a van at a tumor hospital newly designated to treat COVID-19 patients in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020. (Chinatopix via AP, File)

FILE - In this April 3, 2020, file photo, residents climb onto chairs to buy groceries from vendors behind barriers used to seal off a neighborhood in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province. The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020. (AP PhotoNg Han Guan, File)

FILE - In this April 8, 2020, file photo, a medical worker from China's Jilin Province reacts as she prepares to return home at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020. (AP PhotoNg Han Guan, File)

FILE - In this April 15, 2020, file photo, a farewell ceremony is held for the last group of medical workers who came from outside Wuhan to help the city during the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province. The Chinese city of Wuhan is looking back on a year since it was placed under a 76-day lockdown beginning Jan. 23, 2020. (AP PhotoNg Han Guan, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.

Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.

Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.

“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.

About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.

Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.

The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.

Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.

In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.

“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.

Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.

The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.

Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.

"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.

There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.

The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."

Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.

Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.

Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.

Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.

President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)