The world’s oldest daily newspaper is reporting this pandemic as it has reported other global health crises over the centuries

Readers who followed our 2018 and 2019 serialisation of the earliest surviving editions of the paper, from 1738 and 1739, which we carried in a daily On This Day 280 Years Ago column, will have noticed that the paper reported extensively on a then epidemic.

Known as the Great Plague of 1738, it was an outbreak of the bubonic plague that hit central and eastern Europe, plunging communities into sickness and isolation and fear.

A June 1739 edition reported that “...the Plague still rages in Constantinople, where upwards of 130,000 persons have died of it within these five months ...”

The Belfast News Letter has reported on huge health crises since then, such as the third cholera pandemic of the 1800s and 1918 Spanish Flu, which hit Belfast and cities globally.

Now we are reporting on Covid-19, which has swept the earth. Only weeks ago, in late February, there had been no cases in Northern Ireland, now there are thought to be thousands infected with 30 dead. Unlike past pandemics, we can now report the spread in both digital and print form.

Nations everywhere have gone into lockdown to save human life at this anxious time, and these necessary measures have affected newspaper sales and advertising revenues.

JPI Media, which owns this historic title, in common with other print media groups announced yesterday that it would have to cut pay in the circumstances, albeit protecting fully all incomes up to £18,000. These are the sort of sacrifices employees are making across the world in this health crisis.

It will help to ensure that the News Letter and other titles publish daily far into the future, past when society returns to normal and coronavirus has been brought under control.

We thank our readers who are still buying us when out at a shop for other provisions, and perhaps even a spare copy to put through their neighbour’s letter box.