Five years after COVID-19 began to disrupt the world, the virus continues to infect and kill people around the world, albeit at much lower levels than at the height of the pandemic.
Here is the current status of the work.
‘Still with us’
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 777 million cases of COVID-19 and more than seven million deaths have been officially recorded since the first infections emerged in December 2019.
However, the true number of victims is believed to be much higher.
The pandemic also paralyzed health systems, collapsed economies and locked down the populations of many countries.
In the second half of 2022, infection and death rates fell due to growing immunity to vaccines or previous infections. The virus also mutated to become less severe.
In May 2023, the WHO declared the emergency phase of the pandemic over.
Since then, the virus appears to have gradually become endemic, experts say, with occasional, though less seasonal, flu-like resurgences.
It has also largely disappeared from public attention.
“The world wants to forget this pathogen that is still with us, and I think people want to leave COVID-19 in the past as if it were already over – and in many ways pretend it didn’t happen – because it has been so traumatic.”, WHO pandemic preparedness director Maria Van Kerkhove said last month.
From October to November last year, there were more than 3,000 deaths from COVID-19 in 27 countries, according to the WHO.
More than 95 percent of official COVID-19 deaths were recorded between 2020 and 2022.
Variants
Since the Omicron variant emerged in November 2021, a succession of its subvariants have been replaced as the dominant strain worldwide.
At the moment, the Omicron KP.3.1.1 variant is the most common.
The growing XEC is the only “variant under monitoring” by the WHO, although the United Nations agency rates its risk to global health as low.
None of the successive subvariants of Omicron have been noticeably more severe than others, although some experts warn that it is not out of the question that future strains could be more transmissible or deadly.
Vaccines and treatments
Vaccines were developed against COVID-19 in record time and have proven to be a powerful weapon against the virus, with more than 13.6 billion doses administered worldwide so far.
However, rich countries bought a large share of the first doses, leading to uneven distribution around the world.
Updated booster injections for the JN.1 Omicron subvariant are still recommended in some countries, particularly for at-risk groups such as the elderly.
However, the WHO has said that most people, including the elderly, have not kept up with their booster shots.
Even among healthcare workers, the rate of booster dose use was less than one percent in 2024, according to the WHO.
Long COVID-19
Millions of people have been affected by long COVID-19, a still poorly understood condition that lasts for months after initial infection.
Common symptoms include tiredness, brain fog, and difficulty breathing.
About six percent of people infected with the coronavirus develop long-term COVID-19, the WHO said last month, adding that the disease “continues to represent a substantial burden on health systems.”
Much is still unknown about long COVID-19. There are no tests or treatments. Multiple COVID-19 infections appear to increase the chances of contracting the condition.
Future pandemics?
Scientists have warned that sooner or later another pandemic will strike, urging the world to learn the lessons of COVID-19 and prepare for the next one.
Lately, attention has been focused on bird flu (H5N1), especially after the United States on Monday reported the first human death from the virus.
The patient in Louisiana had underlying medical conditions and contracted H5N1 after being exposed to infected birds, US health officials said, emphasizing that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
Since late 2021, WHO member states have been negotiating a world-first treaty on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.
However, a deal remains difficult to reach before the May deadline, with a key gap between Western nations and poorer countries, which fear they will be sidelined when the next pandemic hits.
The COVID-19 pandemic also caused a massive increase in skepticism and misinformation about vaccines.
Experts have warned about the possibility that vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr, US President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, could be in charge of the US response. United to a possible pandemic threat over the next four years.
