Smoking and COVID-19 – what have we learned?

Jonathan Grigg is Professor of Paediatric Respiratory and Environmental Medicine at Queen Mary University of London, and a Consultant Respiratory Paediatrician at the Royal London Hospital. His research includes effects of cigarette and e-cigarette emissions on bacterial / viral infection of airway cells. He is a member of the UK Department of Health’s Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollution and Chair of the European Respiratory Society’s Tobacco Control Committee.

Linnea Hedman is an associate professor of epidemiology and public health at Umea University, Sweden. She works as a researcher at the Obstructive Lung Disease in Northern Sweden studies and she has been a member of the ERS Tobacco control committee since 2018.

Dr Sohal is Head of the Respiratory Translational Research Group and Senior Lecturer in Laboratory Medicine at University of Tasmania, Launceston. He is Board Director for the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand (TSANZ). His research group investigates cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying chronic lung diseases such as COPD, lung cancer, asthma COPD overlap and ILDs for novel therapeutic targets. His lab is also home to investigations looking at effects of electronic smoking devices on lung health such as electronic cigarettes and heat-not-burn devices.

Dr Tom Hird a Research Fellow with the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, research partner in Stopping Tobacco Organisations and Products (STOP). Tom’s research focuses on understanding and addressing the commercial determinants of health and, through STOP, works to expose and counter tobacco industry interference in tobacco control policy.

Professor Richard van Zyl-Smit is a consultant pulmonologist, and Deputy Head of the Division of Pulmonology at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town South Africa. He is Head of the Lung Clinical Research Unit at the University of Cape Town Lung Institute. He has participated in over a 100 clinical research trials over the past 14 years and has over 80 peer review publications across a range of topics from smoking cessation, TB and critical care, to asthma and COPD. He serves on the American Thoracic Society International Health committee, and is president elect of the South African Thoracic Society. He is the South African representative on the GOLD assembly, and a GINA global ambassador.