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This disease has not dented our ambitions and plans, but it has required us to turn on a dime to respond to demands from our city, our country, our profession and the world – in fact, to put what we have learned into practice. We have had much to offer. HKUMed is one of the leading research centres in the world when it comes to infectious diseases and pandemics. Our experience with avian/swine/human influenza and SARS, our subsequent investment in growing teams of top-flight infectious disease experts, and our international collaborations with globally-important medical institutions including the World Health Organization, positioned us as the go-to source when news of a new infectious virus started to emerge from Mainland China in early January. Governments sought our input, every major international media outlet (from more than 45 countries and territories) sought our expert comment and latest findings, and the general population sought our guidance on how they could protect themselves against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. We have provided all this and much more. Research firsts include producing the first evidence of human-to-human transmission and, later, of reinfection with a different strain of the virus; the first alert to the world of the likely national and global spread of the disease; and the first epidemiological analyses showing how quickly the disease could spread (the latter, produced with China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, also recommended quarantine and isolation rules). More than 160 scholarly articles have been published on every aspect of the disease including transmission and diagnosis, treatment and vaccine (in fact, we have a vaccine candidate going to clinical trial), and the animal origins of the virus. Knowledge sharing has extended beyond scientific journals to the World Health Organization, Hong Kong government, and the world’s media. We have also endeavoured to help members of the community separate fact from fiction through our social media activities and initiatives such as the #askHKUMed short video series. Our founding mission was to educate medical professionals for Hong Kong and China, and we have worked very hard to sustain the quality of our teaching and the student experience. We were already moving some lessons online, so we stepped up the pace. We also provided ongoing support and advice to students – some of whom were out of Hong Kong as the pandemic broke – and Professor Gabriel Leung, Dean of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong 06