Professor John Edmunds was a key figure on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) that advised the government during the coronavirus pandemic.
At the beginning of April 2020, a group of senior epidemiologists charged with advising the Government on Covid met for their weekly meeting. The country was barely two weeks into lockdown and in the thick of that first devastating wave. That month, the virus would reach its peak for 2020 – out of 13,000 excess deaths in mid-April, around 9,500 were attributed to Covid.
John Edmunds, Professor of Infectious Disease Modelling at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), has received a knighthood in recognition of his influential work during the COVID-19 pandemic.He was honoured for services to epidemiology following intense research and collaboration using models to provide crucial data analysis to better understand the spread of infection. His world-leading research also includes applying these methods to real world problems to enable decision makers to design public health control programmes.