The first COVID-19 case in Finland was a female Chinese tourist in her 30s, who had left Wuhan on 22 January and arrived in Finland on 23 January. Her first symptoms were a runny nose on 26 January and nausea on 27 January. Because of high fever (39 °C), weakness and cough she sought medical attention on 28 January. Suspicion of COVID-19 led to her direct transfer to the Lapland Central Hospital in Rovaniemi, where she was isolated and sampled on 28 and 29 January for laboratory confirmation of SARS-CoV-2 infection (Figure 1). SARS-CoV-2 infection was confirmed from nasopharyngeal samples on 29 January by the Helsinki University Hospital Laboratory (HUSLAB), and further confirmed at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) (Table). Both laboratories performed real-time RT-PCR testing for three targets: the envelope (E), the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) and the nucleocapsid (N). Primers and probes were based on the Corman et al. method [2]. Cycle threshold (Ct) values above 37 were considered negative.