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COVID-19 has highlighted debilitating flaws in England’s public health systems decades in the making. Carol Brayne and John Clarkson from Cambridge Public Health, a new interdisciplinary centre, argue that a radical rethink is long overdue. They recommend bringing a ‘systems approach’ to the challenges, to help make our public health system fit for the future – for everyone. 

There is no way out of the immediate economic hit of a pandemic, says Professor Diane Coyle, but to heal social fractures, we must focus on giving people across the whole of the country access to the opportunities they need.

"It fills me with enormous gratitude that – at the moment of greatest challenge – our collegiate community rallied and rose to the occasion."

Manufacturing firms have had a rocky few months, struggling with fractured supply chains, uncertain supply and demand, and shutdowns. Yet some have not only survived but thrived, re-organising and experimenting with their operations during the pandemic. This could be ‘Operational Darwinism’ in action says Jag Srai – and the results could help businesses prepare for future disruptions.

What links two large furry Loch Ness Monsters, key-cards, and donning a gown to eat pot noodles? ̽��ֱ��answer is the unexpected creativity that blossomed in a time of coronavirus, says Catherine Arnold, Master of St Edmund’s College.

They juggled their jobs and sacrificed sleep to volunteer at the Cambridge Testing Centre, a collaboration between the ̽��ֱ��, AstraZeneca and GSK to support the national effort to boost COVID-19 testing. They say they were simply fulfilling their duty as scientists. Meet the volunteers behind the masks.

Assessing undergraduate admissions was likely to be a very different process in a pandemic, let alone with a changing landscape of cancelled exams and reassessments. One of the team at the forefront of overcoming these challenges was Dr Sam Lucy, Director of Admissions for Cambridge Colleges.

Boris Johnson has urged the country “to lose weight to beat coronavirus” through exercise and healthy eating. Dr Jean Adams suggests that food policies should be sensitive to the fact that healthier diets are beyond the budget of too many people in the UK.

Final-year student Toni Fola-Alade had a plan: secure investment for his startup, focus on his exams and enjoy his final term as a student. Then everything changed.

COVID-19 has forced millions of people to confront the prospect of dying earlier than they expected and under extraordinary circumstances. Now more than ever we need to find ways to talk about death, suggests Laura Davies, from the Faculty of English.