Confused About Coronavirus? Imperial College Launches Free Course Explaining COVID-19

Updated February 16, 2021 Updated February 16, 2021

Imperial College London has launched a free online course explaining the science behind the response to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID19) outbreak.

The program, titled ‘Science Matters: Let’s talk about COVID19’, is being offered through online learning partner Coursera and will feature experts in the field.

Healthcare experts from the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA) and the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analytics have been working tirelessly on modelling the epidemic and estimating its size, severity and transmissibility since the first confirmed cases.

The course will update students on the state of the pandemic and also explain the public health and epidemiological principles underpinning their work, with content developing in real-time as information becomes available.

Participants on Imperial’s first ‘Science Matters’ course can view a number of video interviews with leading experts in the field on a variety of topics including:

Basic Reproduction Number (R0) of an infection
Case Fatality Rate: Why it varies and why that matters
Community participation and the role of social media
Economics of an outbreak
Developments of a vaccine in real-time epidemics
Clinical presentations of COVID19

Researchers at J-IDEA and other research institutes at Imperial have been at the frontline of the COVID-19 emergency response with their social science, clinical and epidemiological analyses informing public health services in real-time.

Experts are compiling and sharing useful, empirical evidence with international agencies and governments across the globe to assist them in preparing effective responses for their country.

What you will learn

As the pandemic continues to spread, there is still a lot to learn about the disease itself, and how it can be contained and treated effectively.

Participants will have access to more relevant and useful information than the general public, enabling you to educate others if necessary.

Students on the ‘Science Matters: Let’s talk about COVID19’ course will:

Be aware of the scale of the emerging outbreak and know how to track trends using reliable sources of information
Recognize the key scientific underpinnings of evidence-based outbreak control methods
Recognise the importance of community involvement, multidisciplinary working and global cooperation in outbreak response
Learn about how infectious disease modelling informs strategic and operational response at the local, national, and international level

What can you expect?

Participants on the course will be able to hear from world renowned experts about their thoughts on how the COVID-19 disease has spread at such a rate, while also getting to grips with new information being discovered through social science, public health, medicine, health economics and epidemiology principles.

Students who choose to take the course will watch regular situation reports via video about the state of the coronavirus pandemic, provided to you by Professor Neil Ferguson, Director of J-IDEA as well as the top researchers at J-IDEA.

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This article was originally published in March 2020 . It was last updated in February 2021

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Written by

Niamh O

Niamh is Deputy Head of Content at QS (TopMBA.com; topuniversities.com), creating and editing content for an international student audience. Having gained her journalism qualification at the Press Association, London and since written for different international publications, she's now enjoying telling the stories of students, alumni, faculty, entrepreneurs and organizations from across the globe.