Research with impact
Our academics have been actively responding to the COVID-19 emergency and other major challenges around global public health.
Find out how our staff are actively responding to COVID-19, a very current global health emergency.
Dr Jonathan Kennedy discusses the response of the UK Government to the Coronavirus pandemic and what lessons can be learned from other nations, such as China and Italy.
More recently, Dr Kennedy wrote a blog post looking at the lessons that can be learned from South Korea’s response and has recorded another film discussing Covid-19 in the context of mental health.
Professor Adrian Martineau is leading on the investigation of risk factors for developing coronavirus as part of COVIDENCE UK, a national study collecting data from volunteers around the UK to answer scientific questions surrounding Covid-19. Q&A
Watch Professor Adrian Martineau introduce the new COVIDENCE UK study, led by Queen Mary University of London. The study aims to recruit at least 12,000 people, aged 16 or over, from across the UK. Scientists are calling on the public to sign up to this new study which will help identify who is most at risk of contracting COVID-19 and why some people become more ill than others with the disease.
Professor David McCoy has appeared on BBC Newsnight discussing Covid-19 testing, and written a number of pieces for the media, from opinion pieces in The Guardian to blogs in the BMJ (British Medical Journal), and CHPI (Centre for Health and the Public Interest). David’s work outlines the reasons behind the severity of the pandemic in the UK including the NHS’s lack of preparedness for such a public health emergency, critiques the UK government strategy, and explains why he believes we need a manifesto to deal with the pandemic and its effects, and that contact tracing is the next government shambles. He recently wrote a blog for the BMJ about why restoring trust and confidence in experts and science is an urgent priority; and contributed to an article about lockdown measures across nine countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. His latest opinion piece for The Guardian considers why countries from Germany to Vietnam got test and trace right, so why didn't England?
Meanwhile, Dr Anuj Kapilashrami was interviewed about the risk and impact of Covid-19 on diverse groups of people, who have different vulnerabilities and advantages, such as age, ethnicity, disability, gender, and socio-economic status, and how these factors intersect to shape their experiences. She has recently written a piece for the British Journal of Psychiatry, entitled 'Mental health and COVID-19: is the virus racist?’ and a blog for the British Medical Journal (BMJ) considering neglect of low-income migrants in Covid-19 response.
Dr Andrew Harmer appeared on a webinar panel organised by Hope for Future, alongside Mary Robinson, the first female President of Ireland. The panel discussed the topic 'Let's be fair: What does a just and sustainable international recovery from Covid-19 look like?' He has also taken part in another webinar on the topic 'The COVID Pandemic and the WHO: Need for Reflection and Global Solidarity', which was organised by The Peoples Health Movement and Tricontinental.
Dr Giuliano Russo contributed to an opinion piece in the BMJ about the crisis in Brazil, which currently has the world’s second highest number of deaths from the disease. The lack of action from the Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, and his open denial of the pandemic is widely seen as being one of the reasons for this crisis. However, while that is undoubtedly one of the causes of the high rate of infection and deaths from Covid-19, Dr Russo and colleagues argue that the country’s underlying conditions—its deeply rooted socio-economic inequalities, the fragmentation and chronic underfunding of its public health system—are equally important factors. Despite all these challenges, it would appear that the checks and balances of Brazil’s democracy, together with its decentralized health system, still seem to be working, and are tapping into the country’s vast, if depleted, capacity to respond to the pandemic.
Dr Russo has recently written an opinion piece about the need for sub-Saharan African countries to prepare for a recession in the wake of Covid-19. He and his fellow contributors, Kevin Deane from Queen Mary, and Gerald Bloom from the Institute of Development Studies argue that most sub-Saharan African countries have not yet experienced a major Covid-19 outbreak, and governments have already taken action to reduce its impact. However, if the objective of the response of governments and international organisations is to reduce excess mortality in Africa, they must not concentrate only on one illness, and their actions should take into account the need to protect livelihoods and health during a possible economic crisis. Realistic preparation and investment need to be made now to prime health systems and economies for rapid reconstruction and recovery.
A number of academics including Professor Carol Dezateux, Dr John Robson, Dr Sally Hull, and Professor Chris Griffiths, were involved in a large-scale observational cohort study of around 35,000 hospitalised patients. This is the largest study of its kind to date and found that patients from Asian, Black and Minority ethnic groups in hospital with COVID-19 were more likely to be admitted to critical care and to have invasive mechanical ventilation than White patients. This was despite similar disease severity on admission, similar duration of symptoms, and being younger with fewer comorbidities. There is some evidence that South Asian patients were more likely to die, due at least in part to a higher prevalence of pre-existing diabetes.
A study by researchers from the Global Public Health team and the Blizard Institute found that pregnant women seen in hospital with COVID-19 are less likely to show symptoms and seem to be at increased risk of needing admission to an intensive care unit than non-pregnant women of similar age.
The study, published in the BMJ, also shows that being older, overweight, and having other medical conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, seem to increase their risk of having more severe COVID-19. They are also more likely to experience preterm birth and their newborns are more likely to be admitted to a neonatal unit.
Since COVID-19 is a fast-moving area of research, the team will update the review regularly as new information becomes available. They say that their living systematic review will produce a strong evidence base for living guidelines on COVID-19 and pregnancy and will enable rapid updates as new data emerge.
Professor Adrian Martineau and colleagues have launched a new clinical trial funded by Barts Charity to investigate whether taking vitamin D could protect people from COVID-19.
CORONAVIT will run for six months and involve more than 5,000 people to find out whether a ‘test-and-treat’ approach to correct people’s vitamin D deficiency during winter will reduce the risk and/or severity of COVID-19 and other acute respiratory infections.
A model that can calculate a person’s risk of becoming infected and then seriously ill due to COVID-19 has been shown to accurately estimate risk during the first wave of the pandemic in England.
Queen Mary researchers will be supporting the implementation of the new risk model in east London General Practices.
The model called QCovid was developed using anonymised data from more than 8 million adults in 1,205 general practices across England and uses a number of factors such as a person’s age, ethnicity and existing medical conditions to predict their risk of catching COVID-19 and then being admitted to hospital or dying. This has the potential to provide doctors and the public with more nuanced information about the risk of serious illness due to COVID-19.
Queen Mary’s Clinical Effectiveness Group (CEG) is supporting local GP teams in east London with disease management during the Covid pandemic. As part of this Dr John Robson, CEG clinical lead, has been part of the collaboration team who have produced QCovid.
If you would like to explore any of these in more detail, you can access the publications below: