The secretary of state for health and social care,also referred to as the health secretary,is a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom,responsible for the work of the Department of Health and Social Care. The incumbent is a member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for government policy on health and adult social care matters in England,along with a few elements of the same matters which are not otherwise devolved to the Scottish Government,Welsh Government or Northern Ireland Executive. It oversees the English National Health Service (NHS). The department is led by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care with three ministers of state and three parliamentary under-secretaries of state.
Alistair James Hendrie Burt is a British politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Bedfordshire from 2001 until 2019. He was previously MP for his native Bury North in Greater Manchester from 1983 until 1997. Burt was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State then Minister of State at the Department of Social Security from 1992 to 1997,and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 2010 to 2013. Burt was also Minister of State at the Department of Health from May 2015 to July 2016.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom which is responsible for ensuring that medicines and medical devices work and are acceptably safe.
John David Penrose is a British politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Weston-super-Mare from 2005 until 2024. A member of the Conservative Party,he was the United Kingdom Anti-Corruption Champion at the Home Office from 2017 until 2022. He resigned on 6 June 2022 as the United Kingdom Anti-Corruption Champion due to the Boris Johnson Partygate scandal.
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 was Member of Parliament (MP) for West Suffolk from 2010 to 2024. He is a member of the Conservative Party.
Krystina Helena Jaczek is a Canadian physician and politician. A member of the Liberal Party,she currently represents the riding of Markham—Stouffville in the House of Commons and formerly served as the Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Receiver General for Canada.
Neil John O'Brien is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Harborough,Oadby and Wigston,previously Harborough,since 2017. He was the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Primary Care and Public Health from September 2022 to November 2023. He was previously a special adviser to Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne from 2012 to 2016 and Theresa May during her tenure as Prime Minister.
Public Health England (PHE) was an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care in England which began operating on 1 April 2013 to protect and improve health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities. Its formation came as a result of the reorganisation of the National Health Service (NHS) in England outlined in the Health and Social Care Act 2012. It took on the role of the Health Protection Agency,the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse and a number of other health bodies. It was an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care,and a distinct delivery organisation with operational autonomy.
Rachel Helen Maclean is a British politician who was the Member of Parliament for Redditch in Worcestershire from 2017 to 2024. A member of the Conservative Party,she currently serves as its Deputy Chairman for Women. She has previously served as Minister of State for Housing and Planning and has held ministerial roles in the Department for Transport and Home Office.
James Nicholas Bethell,5th Baron Bethell is a British hereditary peer and Conservative politician in the House of Lords. During the COVID-19 pandemic,he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Innovation at the Department of Health and Social Care and was involved in negotiating various controversial contracts.
The COVID-19 pandemic in the Bailiwick of Jersey was part of a global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19),a novel infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first case in Jersey was confirmed on 10 March 2020 when a person tested positive on the island after returning from Italy.
The Coronavirus Act 2020 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that granted the government emergency powers to handle the COVID-19 pandemic. The act allowed the government the discretionary power to limit or suspend public gatherings,to detain individuals suspected to be infected by COVID-19,and to intervene or relax regulations in a range of sectors to limit transmission of the disease,ease the burden on public health services,and assist healthcare workers and the economically affected. Areas covered by the act included the National Health Service,social care,schools,police,Border Force,local councils,funerals and courts. The act was introduced to Parliament on 19 March 2020,and passed the House of Commons without a vote on 23 March,and the House of Lords on 25 March. The act received royal assent on 25 March 2020.
The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom from January 2020 to June 2020.
NHS Test and Trace was a government-funded service in England,established in 2020 to track and help prevent the spread of COVID-19. The programme is part of the UK Health Security Agency;the service and the agency are headed by Jenny Harries.
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.
Operation Moonshot was a UK government programme to introduce same-day mass testing for COVID-19 in England as a way of enabling large gatherings of people to take place in that country while maintaining control over the virus. According to the British Medical Journal,the programme aimed to deliver 10 million tests per day by 2021.
The Global Travel Taskforce is an advisory body of the government of the United Kingdom. Secretary of State for Transport,Grant Shapps announced the formation of the group on 7 October 2020 as a cross-government response to an identified need to enable the safe and sustainable recovery of international travel and to introduce a COVID-19 testing system for travellers visiting the UK. In a Written Statement to Parliament of 7 October 2020,the Transport Secretary pledged to formally report to the Prime Minister by early November 2020 with the taskforce's recommendations as to how the country can help global travel resume safe operation. The Government intends that the work of the taskforce will be performed in collaboration with the transport and tourism industries along with the private sector,specifically in relation to COVID-19 testing.
Denis Francis Kinane is a Scottish immunologist,cell biologist,infection,immunity and genomics specialist. He is the author of more than 250 papers with an H-index of 82,and editor of Nature and Springer journals. Kinane has held professorial appointments in pathology,periodontology,immunology,infection and immunity at medical and dental schools in the UK,United States and Switzerland. He is a director of two large US and Chinese health companies and Scientific Director,CMO and founder of several smaller international companies.
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.
