Matthew John David Hancock is a British politician who served as Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General from 2015 to 2016, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport from January to July 2018, and Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from 2018 to 2021. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for West Suffolk since 2010. He is a member of the Conservative Party, but now sits in the House of Commons as an independent, having had the whip suspended since November 2022.
Sir Christopher John MacRae Whitty is a British epidemiologist, serving as Chief Medical Officer for England and Chief Medical Adviser to the UK Government since 2019.
Boris Johnson's term as the prime minister of the United Kingdom began on 24 July 2019 when he accepted an invitation of Queen Elizabeth II to form a government, succeeding Theresa May, and ended on 6 September 2022 upon his resignation. While serving as prime minister, Johnson also served as the first lord of the treasury, minister for the civil service, and leader of the Conservative Party. He also served as minister for the union, a position he created to be held concurrently with the duties of prime minister, becoming the first prime minister to adopt the title. Johnson's premiership was dominated by Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the cost of living crisis. His tenure was also characterised by several political controversies and scandals, being viewed as the most scandalous premiership of modern times by historians and biographers.
The COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom is a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In the United Kingdom, it has resulted in 24,651,375 confirmed cases, and is associated with 228,429 deaths.
The political impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is the influence that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on politics around the world. The pandemic has affected the governing and political systems of multiple countries, reflected in states of emergency, suspensions of legislative activities, isolation or deaths of multiple politicians and reschedulings of elections due to fears of spreading the virus. The pandemic has triggered broader debates about political issues such as the relative advantages of democracy and autocracy, how states respond to crises, politicization of beliefs about the virus, and the adequacy of existing frameworks of international cooperation. Additionally, the pandemic has, in some cases, posed several challenges to democracy, leading to it being undermined and damaged.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, the UK Government introduced various public health and economic measures to mitigate its impact. Devolution meant that the four nations' administrative responses to the pandemic differed; the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, and the Northern Ireland Executive produced different policies to those that apply in England. Numerous laws were enacted or introduced throughout the crisis.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a leading organisation involved in the global coordination for mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic within the broader United Nations response to the pandemic.
The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom from January 2020 to June 2020.
The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in England from January 2020 to June 2020. There are significant differences in the legislation and the reporting between the countries of the UK: England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is a government agency in the United Kingdom, responsible since April 2021 for England-wide public health protection and infectious disease capability and replacing Public Health England. It is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
During the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, many people began to spread false or un-confirmed data and information. This included politicians and other government officials from administrations in several countries. Misinformation about the virus includes its origin, how it spreads, and methods of preventing and curing the disease. Some downplayed the threat of the pandemic, and made false statements about preventative measures, death rates and testing within their own countries. Some have also spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. Changing policies also created confusion and contributed to the spread of misinformation. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) originally discouraged use of face masks by the general public in early 2020, advising "If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCoV infection," although the WHO later changed their advice to encourage public wearing of face masks.
This England is a 2022 British television docudrama miniseries written by Michael Winterbottom and Kieron Quirke. It depicts the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom based on testimonies of people in the Boris Johnson administration, on the various intergovernmental advisory groups, and in other affected British institutions such as care homes and hospitals. It premiered on Sky Atlantic and Now on 28 September 2022. Kenneth Branagh stars as Boris Johnson, and Ophelia Lovibond as Carrie Symonds.
The UK Covid-19 Inquiry is an independent public inquiry into the United Kingdom's response to, and the impact of, the COVID-19 pandemic, and to learn lessons for the future. Public hearings began in June 2023. Boris Johnson announced the inquiry in May 2021, to start in Spring 2022. In December 2021, Heather Hallett was announced as the chair of the inquiry.
Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice is a pressure group of over 4,000 relatives of people who have died during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. The group created the National Covid Memorial Wall and runs a support group on Facebook. They called for a statutory public inquiry into the UK government's handling of the pandemic. On 12 May 2021, then-prime minister Boris Johnson announced that the UK Covid-19 Inquiry would begin in Spring 2022.
This article documents the chronology of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2021, which originated in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Some developments may become known or fully understood only in retrospect. Reporting on this pandemic began in December 2019.
Rishi Sunak served as Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom from his appointment on 13 February 2020 to his resignation on 5 July 2022. His tenure was dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, with Sunak becoming a prominent figure in the government's response to the pandemic, giving economic support to struggling businesses through various schemes. He was also involved in the government's response to the cost of living crisis, UK energy supply crisis, and global energy crisis.
This article outlines the history of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. Though later reporting indicated that there may have been some cases dating from late 2019, COVID-19 was confirmed to be spreading in the UK by the end of January 2020. The country was initially relatively slow implementing restrictions but a legally enforced stay-at-home order had been introduced by late March. Restrictions were steadily eased across the UK in late spring and early summer that year.
Preventable: How a Pandemic Changed the World & How to Stop the Next One is a 2022 memoir about the COVD-19 pandemic by Devi Sridhar. The book documents the pandemic from the author's perspective as an advisor to the Scottish and UK governments, with criticism of the later. Preventable was met with positive critical reception, noted for humanizing the pandemic and the author's accessible style.
Emergency State: How We lost Our Freedoms in the Pandemic and Why it Matters is a book by UK human rights lawyer Adam Wagner. The book explores how the UK government during the COVID-19 pandemic and associated Government response had unprecedented powers to make and change legislation at will without accountability and what safeguards could be created to prevent this in the future. Wagner was appointed to work on the Independent Commission on UK Public Health Emergency Powers.
The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom in 2023.
