Five years later, COVID-19’s deadly grip persists

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Five years after CoVID-19 began sweeping the world, the virus is still infecting and killing people around the world — albeit at a much lower level than at the height of the pandemic.

Here is the current state of play.

‘Still With Us’

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 777 million COVID-19 cases and more than 7 million deaths have been officially recorded since the first infection emerged in December 2019.

However, the actual number is believed to be much higher.

The pandemic has also crippled health systems, devastated economies and sent populations of many countries into lockdown.

In the second half of 2022, infection and death rates decreased due to increased immunity from vaccination or prior infection. The virus also changed and became less severe.

In May 2023, the WHO announced that the emergency phase of the pandemic had ended.

Since then, the virus seems to have gradually become endemic, with occasional flu-like resurgences — albeit less seasonally, according to experts.

This too has largely disappeared from the public eye.

“The world wants to forget about this pathogen that’s still with us, and I think people want to put COVID-19 in the past as if it’s gone — and in many cases pretend it’s not. – because it has been so painful, WHO pandemic preparedness director Maria von Kerkhof said last month.

According to the WHO, from October to November last year, more than 3,000 deaths from COVID-19 occurred in 27 countries.

More than 95 percent of official COVID-19 deaths were recorded between 2020 and 2022.

Variables

Since the emergence of variants of Omicron in November 2021, successive subtypes have replaced each other as the dominant strain worldwide.

Currently, the Omicron variant KP.3.1.1 is the most common.

The growing XEC is the only “variety under surveillance” by the WHO, although the UN agency rates its global health threat as low.

None of the frequent subtypes of Omicron is significantly more severe than the others, although some experts caution that it is not out of the question that future strains could be more transmissible or lethal.

Vaccines and Treatments

Vaccines against COVID-19 were developed in record time and have proven to be a powerful weapon against the virus, with more than 13.6 billion doses administered worldwide.

However, rich countries bought a large share of the primary foods, creating an uneven distribution around the world.

Updated booster shots 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.

According to the WHO, even among health care workers, the rate of booster uptake in 2024 was less than one percent.

Prolonged COVID-19

Millions of people have long been infected with COVID-19, a still-understood condition that lasts for months after initial infection.

Common symptoms include fatigue, brain fog, and shortness of breath.

The WHO said last month that about six percent of people infected with the coronavirus develop chronic COVID-19, adding that the condition “continues to be a substantial burden on health systems”.

Much remains unknown about prolonged COVID-19. There are no tests or treatments. Multiple COVID-19 infections seem to increase the chances of developing the condition.

Epidemics of the future?

Scientists have warned that another pandemic will strike sooner or later, urging the world to learn from COVID-19 and prepare for the next one.

The focus has been on bird flu (H5N1) recently, especially after the US reported its first human death from the virus on Monday.

The patient in Louisiana had an underlying medical condition and contracted H5N1 after being exposed to infected birds, US health officials said, stressing that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

Since late 2021, WHO member states have been negotiating the world’s first agreement on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

However, a deal remains fragile ahead of the May deadline, leaving a critical fault line between Western countries and poorer countries to be pushed back from the brink when the next pandemic strikes.

The COVID-19 pandemic also saw a massive increase in skepticism and misinformation about vaccines.

Experts have warned of the possibility of vaccine skepticism and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – US President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary – in charge of the US response to a potential pandemic over the next four years.