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.
Stephen Charles Brine is a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Winchester from 2010 to 2024. A member of the Conservative Party,he worked as a BBC radio journalist and in public relations prior to his political career. Brine identifies as a one-nation conservative. In November 2022,he was elected chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee.
George William Freeman is a British Conservative Party politician serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Norfolk since 2010. He previously served as Minister for Science,Research and Innovation from September 2021 until his resignation in July 2022,and again from October 2022 until November 2023.
Caroline Julia Dinenage,Baroness Lancaster of Kimbolton,,also styled as Dame Caroline Dinenage,is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Gosport since 2010.
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.
Simon Laurence Stevens,Baron Stevens of Birmingham is Chair of the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency,Chair of Cancer Research UK,Chair-designate of King's College London,and an independent member of the House of Lords. Stevens previously served as the eighth Chief Executive of NHS England from 2014 to 2021. Earlier in his career he worked in the Prime Minister's Office at 10 Downing Street,as well as internationally,including Guyana,Malawi,and the United States. He was a visiting professor at the London School of Economics from 2004 to 2008.
Paul Stuart Scully is a former British politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sutton and Cheam from 2015 to 2024. A member of the Conservative Party,he served as Minister for London from February 2020 and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Tech and the Digital Economy from October 2022. He was sacked from both roles in November 2023.
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.
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.
The second Johnson ministry began on 16 December 2019,three days after Boris Johnson's audience with Queen Elizabeth II where she invited him to form a new government following the 2019 general election. The Conservative Party was returned to power with a majority of 80 seats in the House of Commons. Initially the ministers were largely identical to those at the end of the first Johnson ministry,but changed significantly in cabinet reshuffles in February 2020 and September 2021.
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 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).
The Vaccine Taskforce in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was set up in April 2020 by the Second Johnson ministry,in collaboration with Chief Scientific Advisor Patrick Vallance and Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty,in order to facilitate the path towards the introduction of a COVID-19 vaccine in the UK and its global distribution. The taskforce coordinated the research efforts of government with industry,academics and funding agencies in order to expedite vaccine development and deployment.
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.
