The New chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty is a plague expert raised in Nigeria whose life was scarred as a teenager when his father was shot dead
- Chris Whitty was appointed as England’s chief medical officer in October 2019
- The 53-year-old was born in Surrey but spent much of childhood in Nigeria
- His father was shot dead in Athens when Professor Whitty was just a teenager
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation handed him $40million for malaria research
- Previously has treated AIDS patients in Malawi and those suffering from Ebola
- Chris Whitty was appointed as England’s chief medical officer in October 2019
- The 53-year-old was born in Surrey but spent much of childhood in Nigeria
- His father was shot dead in Athens when Professor Whitty was just a teenager
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation handed him $40million for malaria research
- Previously has treated AIDS patients in Malawi and those suffering from Ebola
He’s only been in the job for five months, but now he has been thrust into the limelight as he leads Britain’s fight against the killer coronavirus.
Professor Chris Whitty, who was born in a quiet Surrey village but spent most of his childhood in Nigeria, was little known outside of medical circles before his appointment as England’s top doctor.
But as fears of a coronavirus crisis have grown, his calm, considered updates have impressed. Some people have even called for the 53-year-old chief medical officer to take over the Prime Minister’s outbreak updates.
Britons have praised the Oxford University graduate for his no-nonsense approach, with him admitting on live TV yesterday there would be a ‘lot more’ cases in the UK.
In front of MPs of all stripes today, Professor Whitty – who has spent decades researching Ebola, AIDS and even the plague – reassured a parliament committee that older people are not necessarily a ‘goner’ if they get infected.
And on Tuesday he was hailed for telling Brits to ‘think’ about whether it was wise for them to travel abroad to countries with health services weaker than the NHS.
Earlier that day, Professor Whitty flanked Boris Johnson as the PM announced the Government’s drastic ‘battle plan’, which could see troops deployed on streets if the outbreak takes hold in the UK.
Whereas Dame Sally was branded the ‘nanny-in-chief’ for her call to ban eating on public transport, Professor Whitty has been hailed by colleagues across the board for being ‘calm’ and ‘collected’.
England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty, who has only been in the job for five months, has been catapulted into the public consciousness as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. The experienced doctor, 53, took over from Dame Sally Davies last October, and until recently, was little known outside of medical circles
Professor Whitty, the youngest of four boys, spent much of his childhood in northern Nigeria after being born in Limpsfield, 11miles (18km) south of Croydon.
As a teenager in 1984, he tragically lost his father – who worked for the British Council – when he was shot three times in the head while driving in Athens.
The New York Times reported at the time that his 44-year-old father, Kenneth, was flagged down by a gunman at an intersection who asked him to roll down his window.
After studying at Pembroke College, Oxford, Professor Whitty worked as a doctor across Africa and Asia, where he treated malaria patients and published a vast array of academic papers at the same time.
The hard-working medic also somehow found time to study for an Open University diploma in Economics and gained an MBA from Heriott-Watt University.
Eyebrows were raised by the security service when he first joined the government, as the chief scientific adviser for the Department for International Development in 2009.
On Wednesday, the medical chief said on live TV that there would be ‘a lot more’ coronavirus in the UK and that deaths should expected
Intelligence chiefs allegedly questioned why he wasn’t married. But his phenomenal work output, would certainly have left little room for a family life.
As a researcher, Professor Whitty was awarded $40million (£31mn) by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for malaria research.
According to academic search engine Microsoft Scholar, the professor is named as an author on more than 200 scientific papers.
Topics range from the overdiagnosis of malaria in Tanzania, the use of steroids to treat meningitis in sub-Saharan Africa, and the death rate for mothers who undergo C-sections in Malawi.
During his time treating AIDS victims in Malawi, Professor Whitty began to gain a reputation for saying what he regards as uncomfortable truths.
In an academic article written in 1999, he said public health is ‘not a branch of morality’ and that ‘taking a stern moral line can sometimes be highly effective’.
Whitty’s straight-talking approach has been praised by ordinary Britons, who took the chance to lay into Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Government
He wrote medics should ‘differentiate sharply’ between stigmatising a pattern of behaviour – which ‘can often be justified’ – and stigmatising a person with a medical problem.
And Professor Whitty added that any doctor who argues that ‘stigma’ should never be used to try to ‘back up a public health message’ is being ‘profoundly naïve’.
Throughout the coronavirus crisis, Number 10 has been accused of lacking transparency by refusing to give clear, concise updates.
WHAT DO PROFESSOR WHITTY’S COLLEAGUES THINK ABOUT HIM? AND WHAT OTHER ROLES HAS HE HAD IN THE GOVERNMENT?
Professor Whitty’s colleagues were also quick to praise their fellow medic, describing him as ‘patient’, ‘courteous’, ‘confident’ and ‘clever’.
Professor Robin Grimes, the former chief scientist at the Foreign Office, was mentored by Professor Whitty when he joined the civil service.
He told MailOnline: ‘At that time Chris was chief scientist in DfID. He was an immensely helpful and patient teacher.
‘His calm and thoughtful approach to explaining what the evidence says and does not say are coming through as strongly in the current circumstances are they always have.’
Professor Simon Wessely, chair of psychological medicine at Kings College London, added that Whitty was ‘made for the post’ of chief medical advisor.
He added that he is ‘calm, collected, courteous, confident and clever.’
Before being appointed as England’s most senior medical advisor to the Government, Professor Whitty was the chief scientific adviser at the Department of Health and Social Care.
And between 2009 and 2015, he held the same job at the Department for International Development.
Before this, he lectured at the University of Malawi and returned to the UK to teach and take up a role as a consultant physician at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2005.
And the Department of Health and Social Care was criticised said they would ‘no longer be tweeting information on the location of each new case.’
In contrast, Professor Whitty’s straight-talking approach has been praised by ordinary Britons, who took the chance to lay into Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Government.
One man said on Twitter: ‘This Chris Whitty fella is good. Clear, authoritative, focused, objective. Puts the government into stark contrast.’
Another wrote: ‘Cancel the PM. Just show Chris Whitty. We need level heads, not blonde idiots.’
On Wednesday, the chief medical officer said on live TV that there would be ‘a lot more’ coronavirus in the UK and that deaths should expected.
He went on to tell Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain that the country will likely end up in the grip of a ‘significant epidemic’.
And he warned Britons that there is no point in them wearing masks because they won’t have a ‘significant effect’ in guarding against the virus, he said.
And today Professor Whitty hinted that there might not be enough space in mortuaries to cope with deaths and also warned that Britain has moved to a ‘delay’ phase in tackling the virus.
Professor Whitty’s colleagues were also quick to praise their fellow medic, describing him as ‘patient’, ‘courteous’, ‘confident’ and ‘clever’.
Professor Robin Grimes, the former chief scientist at the Foreign Office, was mentored by Professor Whitty when he joined the civil service.
He told MailOnline: ‘At that time Chris was chief scientist in DfID. He was an immensely helpful and patient teacher.
‘His calm and thoughtful approach to explaining what the evidence says and does not say are coming through as strongly in the current circumstances are they always have.’
Professor Simon Wessely, chair of psychological medicine at Kings College London, added that Whitty was ‘made for the post’ of chief medical advisor.
He added that he is ‘calm, collected, courteous, confident and clever.’
Professor Whitty’s straight-talking approach has been praised by ordinary Britons, who took the chance to lay into Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Government
Before being appointed as England’s most senior medical advisor to the Government, Professor Whitty was the chief scientific adviser at the Department of Health and Social Care.
And between 2009 and 2015, he held the same job at the Department for International Development.
Before this, he lectured at the University of Malawi and returned to the UK to teach and take up a role as a consultant physician at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2005.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS?
What is the coronavirus?
A coronavirus is a type of virus which can cause illness in animals and people. Viruses break into cells inside their host and use them to reproduce itself and disrupt the body’s normal functions. Coronaviruses are named after the Latin word ‘corona’, which means crown, because they are encased by a spiked shell which resembles a royal crown.
The coronavirus from Wuhan is one which has never been seen before this outbreak. It has been named SARS-CoV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. The name stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2.
Experts say the bug, which has killed around one in 50 patients since the outbreak began in December, is a ‘sister’ of the SARS illness which hit China in 2002, so has been named after it.
The disease that the virus causes has been named COVID-19, which stands for coronavirus disease 2019.
Dr Helena Maier, from the Pirbright Institute, said: ‘Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that infect a wide range of different species including humans, cattle, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and wild animals.
‘Until this new coronavirus was identified, there were only six different coronaviruses known to infect humans. Four of these cause a mild common cold-type illness, but since 2002 there has been the emergence of two new coronaviruses that can infect humans and result in more severe disease (Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronaviruses).
‘Coronaviruses are known to be able to occasionally jump from one species to another and that is what happened in the case of SARS, MERS and the new coronavirus. The animal origin of the new coronavirus is not yet known.’
The first human cases were publicly reported from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where approximately 11million people live, after medics first started publicly reporting infections on December 31.
By January 8, 59 suspected cases had been reported and seven people were in critical condition. Tests were developed for the new virus and recorded cases started to surge.
The first person died that week and, by January 16, two were dead and 41 cases were confirmed. The next day, scientists predicted that 1,700 people had become infected, possibly up to 7,000.
Where does the virus come from?
According to scientists, the virus almost certainly came from bats. Coronaviruses in general tend to originate in animals – the similar SARS and MERS viruses are believed to have originated in civet cats and camels, respectively.
The first cases of COVID-19 came from people visiting or working in a live animal market in Wuhan, which has since been closed down for investigation.
Although the market is officially a seafood market, other dead and living animals were being sold there, including wolf cubs, salamanders, snakes, peacocks, porcupines and camel meat.
A study by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, published in February 2020 in the scientific journal Nature, found that the genetic make-up virus samples found in patients in China is 96 per cent identical to a coronavirus they found in bats.
However, there were not many bats at the market so scientists say it was likely there was an animal which acted as a middle-man, contracting it from a bat before then transmitting it to a human. It has not yet been confirmed what type of animal this was.
Dr Michael Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London, was not involved with the research but said: ‘The discovery definitely places the origin of nCoV in bats in China.
‘We still do not know whether another species served as an intermediate host to amplify the virus, and possibly even to bring it to the market, nor what species that host might have been.’
So far the fatalities are quite low. Why are health experts so worried about it?
Experts say the international community is concerned about the virus because so little is known about it and it appears to be spreading quickly.
It is similar to SARS, which infected 8,000 people and killed nearly 800 in an outbreak in Asia in 2003, in that it is a type of coronavirus which infects humans’ lungs. It is less deadly than SARS, however, which killed around one in 10 people, compared to approximately one in 50 for COVID-19.
Another reason for concern is that nobody has any immunity to the virus because they’ve never encountered it before. This means it may be able to cause more damage than viruses we come across often, like the flu or common cold.
Speaking at a briefing in January, Oxford University professor, Dr Peter Horby, said: ‘Novel viruses can spread much faster through the population than viruses which circulate all the time because we have no immunity to them.
‘Most seasonal flu viruses have a case fatality rate of less than one in 1,000 people. Here we’re talking about a virus where we don’t understand fully the severity spectrum but it’s possible the case fatality rate could be as high as two per cent.’
If the death rate is truly two per cent, that means two out of every 100 patients who get it will die.
‘My feeling is it’s lower,’ Dr Horby added. ‘We’re probably missing this iceberg of milder cases. But that’s the current circumstance we’re in.
‘Two per cent case fatality rate is comparable to the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 so it is a significant concern globally.’
How does the virus spread?
The illness can spread between people just through coughs and sneezes, making it an extremely contagious infection. And it may also spread even before someone has symptoms.
It is believed to travel in the saliva and even through water in the eyes, therefore close contact, kissing, and sharing cutlery or utensils are all risky. It can also live on surfaces, such as plastic and steel, for up to 72 hours, meaning people can catch it by touching contaminated surfaces.
Originally, people were thought to be catching it from a live animal market in Wuhan city. But cases soon began to emerge in people who had never been there, which forced medics to realise it was spreading from person to person.
What does the virus do to you? What are the symptoms?
Once someone has caught the COVID-19 virus it may take between two and 14 days, or even longer, for them to show any symptoms – but they may still be contagious during this time.
If and when they do become ill, typical signs include a runny nose, a cough, sore throat and a fever (high temperature). The vast majority of patients will recover from these without any issues, and many will need no medical help at all.
In a small group of patients, who seem mainly to be the elderly or those with long-term illnesses, it can lead to pneumonia. Pneumonia is an infection in which the insides of the lungs swell up and fill with fluid. It makes it increasingly difficult to breathe and, if left untreated, can be fatal and suffocate people.
Figures are showing that young children do not seem to be particularly badly affected by the virus, which they say is peculiar considering their susceptibility to flu, but it is not clear why.
What have genetic tests revealed about the virus?
Scientists in China have recorded the genetic sequences of around 19 strains of the virus and released them to experts working around the world.
This allows others to study them, develop tests and potentially look into treating the illness they cause.
Examinations have revealed the coronavirus did not change much – changing is known as mutating – much during the early stages of its spread.
However, the director-general of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, said the virus was mutating and adapting as it spread through people.
This means efforts to study the virus and to potentially control it may be made extra difficult because the virus might look different every time scientists analyse it.
More study may be able to reveal whether the virus first infected a small number of people then change and spread from them, or whether there were various versions of the virus coming from animals which have developed separately.
How dangerous is the virus?
The virus has a death rate of around two per cent. This is a similar death rate to the Spanish Flu outbreak which, in 1918, went on to kill around 50million people.
Experts have been conflicted since the beginning of the outbreak about whether the true number of people who are infected is significantly higher than the official numbers of recorded cases. Some people are expected to have such mild symptoms that they never even realise they are ill unless they’re tested, so only the more serious cases get discovered, making the death toll seem higher than it really is.
However, an investigation into government surveillance in China said it had found no reason to believe this was true.
Dr Bruce Aylward, a World Health Organization official who went on a mission to China, said there was no evidence that figures were only showing the tip of the iceberg, and said recording appeared to be accurate, Stat News reported.
Can the virus be cured?
The COVID-19 virus cannot be cured and it is proving difficult to contain.
Antibiotics do not work against viruses, so they are out of the question. Antiviral drugs can work, but the process of understanding a virus then developing and producing drugs to treat it would take years and huge amounts of money.
No vaccine exists for the coronavirus yet and it’s not likely one will be developed in time to be of any use in this outbreak, for similar reasons to the above.
The National Institutes of Health in the US, and Baylor University in Waco, Texas, say they are working on a vaccine based on what they know about coronaviruses in general, using information from the SARS outbreak. But this may take a year or more to develop, according to Pharmaceutical Technology.
Currently, governments and health authorities are working to contain the virus and to care for patients who are sick and stop them infecting other people.
People who catch the illness are being quarantined in hospitals, where their symptoms can be treated and they will be away from the uninfected public.
And airports around the world are putting in place screening measures such as having doctors on-site, taking people’s temperatures to check for fevers and using thermal screening to spot those who might be ill (infection causes a raised temperature).
However, it can take weeks for symptoms to appear, so there is only a small likelihood that patients will be spotted up in an airport.
Is this outbreak an epidemic or a pandemic?
The outbreak was declared a pandemic on March 11. A pandemic is defined by the World Health Organization as the ‘worldwide spread of a new disease’.
Previously, the UN agency said most cases outside of Hubei had been ‘spillover’ from the epicentre, so the disease wasn’t actually spreading actively around the world.
SOURCE: Daily Mail
Sometimes you just have to ask yourself: WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF THAT ? – #watcot