London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

COVID-19 has touched every part of the global community. Never before has the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s (LSHTM) research, education and mission to improve health worldwide been so vital.  LSHTM has been at the forefront of national and international efforts, from modelling the spread and control measures, to addressing vaccine hesitancy, and training bio-detection dogs to rapidly detect COVID-19 at ports of entry.

Clinically trained staff and students from LSHTM returned to work in the NHS. The communications team tackled waves of misinformation about the pandemic. Academics advised governments and organisations in the UK and around the world. Staff in Africa scaled up surveillance, diagnostic and testing capacity, supported national governments on mitigation efforts and conducted genomic analysis. Students and alumni worked together to rapidly analyse global data on interventions.

LSHTM’s free online COVID-19 course – rapidly developed early in the outbreak – reached more than 200,000 global participants. Existing education programmes continued, training future health leaders, managers and researchers to provide critical expertise to deal with the impact of this pandemic for many years to come. In truly unprecedented circumstances, LSHTM’s expertise and collaboration with partners provided the opportunity and the obligation to take a leading global role in the response to COVID-19.