Leaders in the fight against COVID-19 are recipients of this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours. queensbirthdayhonours
If there is one thing that sticks out to former chief medical officer Dr Brendan Murphy about the early weeks and months of the pandemic in Australia, it was how fast everything changed.
But the kidney specialist is probably best known to the public for his stint as the nation’s chief medical officer, a role that was due to wrap up for Murphy in January 2020 before it was extended into the winter of that year as COVID-19 entered the country and Murphy became a leading figure in the national pandemic response.
Murphy said he was holidaying with his family in Rome over Christmas 2019 when he first heard about a new virus in Wuhan, China. “We did avoid the overwhelming of the health system and the tens of thousands of deaths. The US had well over a million deaths, which is sort of mind-boggling,” he said.