Irfan Halim was a laparoscopic surgeon who died of coronavirus while working with patients on the intensive care ward. Born into a medical family, his father, Kamal Halim, was a doctor and he was the eldest of three children. When they were young the family spent some time living in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In the UK, Irfan completed his education at Marlborough College from 1992 to 1993. He studied law and also completed an MBA before he turned to medicine and graduated MB, BS London in 2000. After various house jobs he passed the fellowship of the college in 2014. Specialising in laparoscopic surgery, he worked with the West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust for six months as a locum consultant in emergency surgery and is known to have spent some time in Harley Street. By all accounts he was a popular and conscientious surgeon and a very fit man who had, at one time, played squash for England. He was working at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out and had been commuting there from his home in Barking. For the first four months after joining the intensive care unit (ICU) he lived at the hospital to protect his family from passing on the disease. He contracted the virus in spite of having had two vaccinations and taking every precaution with PPE. On September 10, 2021 he collapsed at work and spent 13 days in the ICU before being transferred to the Royal Brompton Hospital where he died 9 weeks later on 14 November 2021, aged 45. He was unaware that his father had also died of Covid-19 shortly before him. His wife, Saila, to whom he had been married for 15 years, survived him with their two sons and two daughters and he was also survived by his younger brother, Amir, who was also medically qualified.