Susan Hopkins CBE is an Irish epidemiologist and civil servant working in the UK. She is honorary clinical senior lecturer in the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, [1] and Chief Medical Advisor for the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
Hopkins studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin and trained in infectious diseases, microbiology and epidemiology in Ireland, France and the UK. In 2006 she was appointed a consultant in infectious diseases and microbiology at the Royal Free Hospital. She became Clinical Director of Infection Services at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, and Deputy Director of the National Infection Service at Public Health England. [2]
In 2018 she was called as a witness by the Health and Social Care Committee on antimicrobial resistance. [3]
In January 2020 Hopkins was appointed Incident Director within Public Health England's COVID-19 incident response. In August 2021 she was appointed Interim Chief Medical Advisor at NHS Test and Trace and the Strategic Response Director for COVID-19 at Public Health England. [2]
In November 2021 Hopkins raised concerns about the new B.1.1.529 variant, later named the omicron variant, of COVID-19. [4] In December 2021 she warned that further restrictions might be needed to tackle an "inevitable" and "big wave of infections". [5]
In December 2021 Hopkins was awarded the Presidential Distinguished Service Award by Michael D. Higgins. [6]
In May 2022, she was awarded as Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), for services to Public Health. [7]
Yuen Kwok-yung is a Hong Kong microbiologist, physician, and surgeon. He is a prolific researcher, with most of his nearly 800 papers related to research on novel microbes or emerging infectious diseases. He led a team identifying the SARS coronavirus that caused the SARS pandemic of 2003–04, and traced its genetic origins to wild bats. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he acted as expert adviser to the Hong Kong government.
Dame Anne Marie Rafferty FRCN is a British nurse, academic and researcher. She is the professor of nursing policy and the former dean of the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care at King's College London. She served as President of the Royal College of Nursing from 2019 to 2021. She was nominated for a life peerage on 20 December 2024.
Kevin Andrew Fenton is a public health physician and infectious disease epidemiologist. He is the London regional director at Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, regional public health director at NHS London and the statutory health advisor to the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. He is the current president of the United Kingdom Faculty of Public Health and holds honorary professorships with the University College London and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is the 2024/25 president of the British Science Association.
Rachel Anne McKendry is a British chemist. She is Director of i-sense, a UK-based interdisciplinary research collaboration developing early warning sensing systems for infectious diseases, and was part of the UK's Cross Council Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance. McKendry is also Professor of Biomedical Nanoscience at University College London, holding a joint appointment in the Division of Medicine and the London Centre for Nanotechnology.
Sharon Jayne Peacock is a British microbiologist who is Professor of Public Health and Microbiology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge, and Master of Churchill College, Cambridge.
Professor Jonathan Samuel Friedland is a British physician and medical researcher who is Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Infectious Diseases at St George's, University of London.
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 25,021,035 confirmed cases, and is associated with 232,112 deaths.
Allison Joan McGeer is a Canadian infectious disease specialist in the Sinai Health System, and a professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto. She also appointed at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a Senior Clinician Scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, and is a partner of the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases. McGeer has led investigations into the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Toronto and worked alongside Donald Low. During the COVID-19 pandemic, McGeer has studied how SARS-CoV-2 survives in the air and has served on several provincial committees advising aspects of the Government of Ontario's pandemic response.
Robin Patel is a Canadian born microbiologist and Elizabeth P. and Robert E. Allen Professor of Individualized Medicine, a Professor of Microbiology, and a Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. She is widely recognized as a leader in the field of clinical microbiology and has held a variety of leadership positions including 2019–2020 President of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and Director of the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG) Laboratory Center of the National institutes of Health. She is currently the Vice Chair of Education in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the Mayo Clinic, and Director of the Mayo Clinic's Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory, where she studies biofilms, antimicrobial resistance, periprosthetic joint infection and diagnostic testing of bacteria.
The transmission of COVID-19 is the passing of coronavirus disease 2019 from person to person. COVID-19 is mainly transmitted when people breathe in air contaminated by droplets/aerosols and small airborne particles containing the virus. Infected people exhale those particles as they breathe, talk, cough, sneeze, or sing. Transmission is more likely the closer people are. However, infection can occur over longer distances, particularly indoors.
Alasdair Macintosh Geddes was a British medical doctor who was Professor of Infection at the University of Birmingham Medical School. In 1978, as the World Health Organization (WHO) was shortly to announce that the world's last case of smallpox had occurred a year earlier in Somalia, Geddes diagnosed a British woman with the disease in Birmingham, England. She was found to be the index case of the outbreak and became the world's last reported fatality due to the disease, five years after he had gained experience on the frontline of the WHO's smallpox eradication programme in Bangladesh in 1973.
The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom from July 2021 to December 2021.
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.
Omicron (B.1.1.529) is a variant of SARS-CoV-2 first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) by the Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa on 24 November 2021. It was first detected in Botswana and has spread to become the predominant variant in circulation around the world. Following the original B.1.1.529 variant, several subvariants of Omicron have emerged including: BA.1, BA.2, BA.3, BA.4, and BA.5. Since October 2022, two subvariants of BA.5 called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 have emerged.
This timeline of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant is a dynamic list, and as such may never satisfy criteria of completeness. Some events may only be fully understood and/or discovered in retrospect.
The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom from January to June 2022.
The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland during 2022. There are significant differences in the legislation and the reporting between the countries of the UK: England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales.
As part of the British honours system, Special Honours are issued at the Monarch's pleasure at any given time. The Special Honours refer to the awards made within royal prerogative, operational honours, political honours and other honours awarded outside the New Year Honours and Birthday Honours.
Vietnamese-German Center for Medical Research (VG-CARE) was founded in 2015.
The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom from July 2022 to December 2022.