State of the Faculty Address 2020

3 Aside from the firsts that I mentioned, we have produced tests to diagnose COVID-19 that are used in more than 70 countries and territories; published timely evidence on the effectiveness of face masks that received global coverage in social and mainstream media; developed a hamster model that is critical for testing therapeutics and vaccine candidates; and innovated on treatment and vaccine options, among a wealth of other research on the disease. Many governments, institutions and media outlets from around the world have also sought our expert input, particularly the World Health Organization and the Hong Kong government, thus re-affirming HKUMed’s world-class stature. In addition to innovating at direct care by the bedside in both our flagship teaching hospital Queen Mary and the community treatment facility at Asia World Expo, HKUMed also recruited more than 200 students who were joined by as many staff and alumni, totaling over 400 individuals, to operate the Universal Community Testing Programme sites in Kennedy Town and Wong Chuk Hang over a period of 11 days in September. Other KE items concerning COVID-19 include a series of infection control infographics for the general public, a realtime dashboard, a popularly subscribed MOOC; all of which can be found at the one-stop online resource centre – https://www.med.hku.hk/en/ covid-19. Looking forward, HKUMed is privileged to have become the only Asia-based founding member of The Trinity Challenge (TTC), coordinated by Trinity College of the University of Cambridge (https://thetrinitychallenge.org/). TTC’s vision is to safeguard the lives and livelihoods of one billion more people by using data and analytics to better predict and prevent outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics, and to improve the health, economic and social response and recovery to health emergencies and endemic diseases. It provides the brightest minds a platform to partner with leaders from businesses, the social sector and academia to collaborate and contribute insights as global public goods. All these and more have been captured in HKUMed’s first supplement on COVID-19 available at https://www.med.hku.hk/ go/covid19booklet.