Coronavirus: meet the scientists who are now household names
They are the faces of the crisis, the scientists explaining nightly to anxious audiences how the governments they advise plan to contain the coronavirus. Unknown to most a few short weeks ago, many have since become household names. But who are they?
Germany
When Angela Merkel talks to the nation about Covid-19, she is usually flanked by the head of the Robert Koch Institut, Germany’s central public health institute. The country’s real face of the coronavirus crisis, however, is Christian Drosten, the head of virology at Berlin’s Charité hospital.
As one of the scientists who discovered the infectious agents responsible for the Sars epidemic, Drosten has immaculate credentials. The curly haired 48-year-old also has a natural talent as a communicator that have led the Süddeutsche Zeitungmade to describe him as “the nation’s corona-explainer-in-chief”.
A daily half-hour podcast in which Drosten fields questions about the virus has attracted millions of listeners since he started it with the broadcaster NDR in mid-February. On social media, there have been joking calls for him to run for chancellor and riotous fan fiction: “Touch my face, Christian
